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Apple MacBook vs. HP Envy (part 2)

The MacBook Pro and Air both now face tough competition from Hewlett-Packard: a response to reader comments.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
2 min read

The trend-setting MacBook Pro and Air both now face tough competition from Hewlett-Packard, which has the resources to match, and in some cases exceed, Apple laptop designs.

HP Envy 13
HP Envy 13 Hewlett-Packard

I will expand very briefly on a previous post where I compared, on technological merits, the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro and Air laptops with an HP Envy 13 in response to some of the comments attached to the post.

I had stated, as an opinion, that the aluminum-clad HP Envy 13 had eclipsed Apple MacBooks technologically in some crucial areas. Namely, processors offered, screen resolution, graphics, and battery life.

The assertion that the HP Envy 13 has surpassed, in some important respects, the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro in technology shouldn't be that surprising considering the financial and technological resources that HP has.

Companies like HP and Dell bifurcate their lineups into inexpensive (typically retail consumer models) and more expensive (often business models). Some models are of decidedly lower quality than Apple--as many comments quickly point out--but some are equal to or better than a roughly equivalent Apple laptop both in quality and technology.

The Envy 13--which is HP's entry into the luxury laptop category--falls into the better-than-Apple-laptop-technology category, in my opinion. The luxury Adamo line from Dell is also making a play to, at the very least, achieve parity with Apple's MacBook line.

Again, this is an opinion, not a be-all, end-all verdict on the fate of Apple. And not a review per se that gets into benchmarks. I'm just looking at the raw technology.

Opinion pieces invariably elicit strong counter arguments--not to mention strong opinions (or invective). Especially when Apple is involved.