Manjaro Bladebook, Pinebook brethren?

[soupbowl]

Hey chaps. Was browsing the Manjaro website after the Pinebook release of Manjaro when I noticed something...



Looks awful similar to the Pinebook! Dual mic, familiar keyboard fn layout, trackpad, LEDs... Even in the other photos the ports on both sides match up (inc. 12v barrel power). Difference? This is a much higher spec machine, and runs Intel.

Do these guys happen to have the same supplier as the Pinebook?

[Wizzard]

Many of notebooks looks similar to Pinebook, I think this is nothing special. Also my Teclast looks quite similar.

[cvmiller]

It is not a 11" pine book, look how w-i-d-e the right shift key is. I can not tell you how many times I hit the up arrow instead of the right shift key.

[UltraBloxX]

As it seems, most ultraportable notebooks have converged on same design conception. If you look at many examples, there are lots that look very alike. In case of Pinebook, it's pretty similar to Apple Macbook Air, Xiaomi Notebook Air 13.3"... Manjaro Bladebook also seems to be similar to these. But there's no connection between those vendors at all.

Moreover, most of Intel-based ultraportables have a motherboard that spans pretty much entire case. But in case of Pinebook, due to use of ARM SoC, there's a lot of free space inside the case. In theory, Pinebook probably could've been made under 6" (like Psion or Gemini PDA), but that just wasn't practical (keyboard would've been way too small), so they have chosen a larger and more common screen/case size and usable keyboard (it wouldn't be very pleasing to use Linux DE from a very small screen). And it's natural that it looks like other laptops in same size and form-factor category.

[Wizzard]

It is not a 11" pine book, look how w-i-d-e the right shift key is. I can not tell you how many times I hit the up arrow instead of the right shift key.

It looks like 14" Pinebook

[soupbowl]

[...]Pinebook probably could've been made under 6" (like Psion or Gemini PDA)[...]

While not Psion level, they are exploring a detachable tablet product, so they are seemingly moving in this direction. Note that this is just an experimental concept at this stage and might not even see fruition. 

I'd love something like that though, but the new Psion is so expensive and more powerful than I need. If only there was a bespoke keyboard vendor, we could easily build one with a Rock64 and a 3D printer.