How many software developers and authors are there? Time was when 100,000 units a year was enough to make a highly successful company.
When did we decide that only trillion dollar companies were worth considering? At that point we lose economies of scale and get into rent seeking. We'd all be much better off with a hundred $xxB companies than one or two $xT companies.
How many developers and authors have a workflow that doesn't include a GUI with a pointer?
I for one would not like to go back to terminal-only. There's a lot to be gained from decent graphical interfaces, and having them smooth makes working on them more pleasing, which reduces my stress and allows me to be more productive.
LCDs of the 1990s had ghosting, and this was solved with pointer trails and other accessibility features, like disabling animations. People should be able to make the choice of outdoor visibility versus update smoothness.
Outdoor visibility can be solved with a brighter screen.
I have worked under bright summer sunlight on my Air whose screen is 400 nits. It was not comfortable but it was workable. The M1(Max|Pro) laptops are "up to 1000 nits sustained (full-screen) brightness, 1600 nits peak brightness". Surely that would work well enough outside, although I haven't tried it.
No amount of trickery like pointer trails will make up for the fact that the pointer lags behind the input by a very noticeable amount. It's like trying to play a musical instrument with 200ms latency. You'll get distracted and lose your tempo and timing. Or at least I would, and I suspect the vast majority of computer users, pro or otherwise, would as well. This should again answer the original question:
> how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this?
Outdoor visibility can be solved with a brighter screen.
To an extent, but eye strain is reduced quite a bit when surfaces are front-lit by the environment rather than back-lit by a uniform light.
No amount of trickery like pointer trails will make up for the fact that the pointer lags behind the input by a very noticeable amount.
As I understand it, small parts of an e-ink screen can be updated very quickly, but sacrificing grayscale accuracy and glitchiness. Either way, I'd 100% buy an e-ink laptop with specs comparable to current developer laptops, so how many people does it take to make a market for that?
Fair points, and I'd love to find that out. Perhaps start lobbying with one of the existing laptop manufacturers? They might do some market research to understand if there is an actual market for it.
> I'd 100% buy an e-ink laptop
> how many people does it take to make a market for that?
I honestly have no idea but my guess is, more than one. Probably _a lot_ more. Not only the company would need to sell the first batch but they'd have to keep improving on it, selling more and getting them replaced constantly, otherwise it would become vapourware after the first (few) iterations. If the first iteration is not great, at least some users will hold off and think twice about getting the second. If it's not good enough for a lot of the users, I suspect it would go totally bust after the second iteration.
It's not just the cost of the hardware either, they would likely need to solve drivers, and if it's going to be a dev laptop, they'd at least need to support both Linux and Windows. This is no small feat.
Sure, they could try to offload drivers and software to the display manufacturer, but now you'd have to prove to them that there's a market worth pursuing as well.
> how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this?