On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 9:42 PM, Russell McMahon wrote: > I note the super slim Mac Air > whatevers. Heft one (as I do with all small notebooks) and you find another > story. HEAVY!. Amazingly so. Small is only half the story for portability. There is a high correlation between weight and a user's perception of sturdiness/solidity/reliability. Take the same laptop, remove 30% of the weight, and let someone handle the two machines - they will have the sense that the heavier of the two is 'better', the lighter one being flimsier, 'toy like', etc. Of course it's less portable, but the goal of Apple is presentation at the time of sale - they don't care that your back aches a month down the road, they only care about what you are feeling when you are pulling out the wallet. The portion of the population that actually tabulates all the features they want and picks according to the feature set rather than what they see, feel, hear (and even smell) at the store is vanishingly small. User perception is very interesting. Car manufacturers spend a significant amount of time tailoring the sound of the car door to the vehicle and the segment they are marketing the vehicle to. Luxury vehicles get a nice, muffled, 'weighty' woompf sound, while the cheaper compact cars get the quick, light, tinny slam. There's a very specific audio signature over time that is tuned by modifying things around the whole vehicle - a car door slam gives a lateral force tot he vehicle frame, and other parts rattle, vibrate, etc elsewhere on the vehicle. All these parts are affixed not just for mechanical stability, but for the sound they make when the various doors close. The type of gasket around the door, where it's placed, etc makes a bigg difference in whether you hear the door latch clicking, and whether the door travels noticably far beyond the latching point. And all this so the consumer can _feel_ the difference between the vehicles and believe they are getting something of greater or lessor value even though it's largely artificial - a way to segment the market and extract the amount the consumer is willing to pay for a product, rather than the lowest amount that will meet their needs. -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist