What impact does Apple’s Mac line have on the PC industry? Look at Windows PC notebooks and Chromebooks. Except for the clunky and cheap plastic models, most decent PC notebooks look like Macs.
Every week or so we get news of another MacBook or MacBook Pro killer and so far Windows PC sales continue to drop while the Mac flirts with record sales every quarter. The latest to take aim at the Mac is from Chinese maker Huawei. The same Huawei that makes smartphones. Is it a MacBook killer?
Made In China
That Chinese knockoff makers copy Apple’s iPhone and Mac line is nothing new. Huawei has problems selling their smartphones in the U.S. because there’s a trust issue with Chinese name brands, the U.S. government, and U.S. cellphone carriers. Should a Huawei notebook be any different? This one mixes Apple’s names to come up with Matebook X Pro.
Surely this looks familiar to Mac notebook users.
What’s different is what makes up the latest class of Windows-based notebooks. Touchscreen. Large trackpad. Intel Core i7 Inside. Thin screen bezels. That alone sets the MateBook into non-Mac territory. Only the Dell XPS 13 has bezels as thin. The display is 3000×2000 to keep it in the 13-inch screen size.
In fact, Huawei seemed to go out of its way to copy the MacBook Pro but failed in a few areas. The MateBook X Pro has a metal unibody frame, a similar color to the Mac line, and even the speaker grills are in the same place.
Wedge shape? Check.
Rounded corners? Check.
USB-C? Check.
What’s missing is a Touch Bar. What’s included is a standard full sized USB-A port. Let’s hear a cheer for the Notch in iPhone X. The MateBook Pro’s display bezels are too small to incorporate a FaceTime-like video camera so that’s been dropped into the keyboard. Press a key, get a pop up camera. I’m sure that will catch on.
The only thing missing so far is, well, there are lots of items missing in the introduction. Intel chip configurations, storage, how many ports, battery life, and all the other goodies most people want to know before they try to order a MacBook Pro killer that won’t make a dent in the U.S. market because Huawei.
Price? Trust me. It will be less than a comparable MacBook or MacBook Pro. But a MacBook killer it ain’t.
