HP addresses Apple-like laptop design, tells fanboys it didn’t copy
HP’s Vice President of Industrial Design Stacy Wolff discussed his company’s current design philosophy in Shanghai today and claimed its laptop styles were developed by research centers across 11 different cities. Despite his anecdotes, Engadget said one journalist asked Wolff if he feared being sued, because the new Envy Spectre XT looks strikingly like Apple’s MacBook Air.
The V.P. simply replied:
“I would go back to the TC1000 [Tablet PC] from about 10 years, and that’s a tablet. I think if you look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don’t. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities.”
Oh, but it does not end there: Wolff even addressed fanboys’ reaction to HP’s Apple-esque design approach:
“Yeah, fanboys are wonderful, right? You guys gotta be my fanboys, come on. [Laughs] I think the big thing for me is that we’re doing what’s right for the customers, so one of the things is by going with the isolated island style of keyboard, there’s only so many ways to do it, right? If I put it on a black surface you’d go, ‘Oh you didn’t copy.’ If I put it on a silver surface, ‘Oh you’re copying.” How can that be? You know, it’s a change of color, there’s no intent to mimic or to follow. What you have is a common theme of island style keyboard, use of silver, wedge design. So if I measure things on a macro level, well, you know, maybe you can judge it that way. I don’t.”
