Andrew Cunningham
HP's Elitebook Folio.
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Whether you want to admit it or not, Apple's laptop designs have an enormous impact on the rest of the industry. Early systems released under Intel's "Ultrabook" label, created back in 2011 as a way to subsidize MacBook Air competitors from PC OEMs, look a whole lot like Apple's thin-and-light laptop. PC OEMs have done a lot in the intervening years to introduce their own innovations and improvements and define their own styles (Lenovo's Yoga and Microsoft's Surface have been especially influential), and in many ways laptops like Dell's XPS 13 have become more interesting and more advanced than Apple's. But Apple's influence can still be felt when, say, a bunch of laptops suddenly come with gold finishes for some reason.
The most explicitly Apple-like of all the laptops I saw at CES was probably HP's new EliteBook Folio G1, a thin-and-light member of the company's business lineup that's a dead ringer for Apple's one-ported MacBook. But HP has outdone Apple by resolving some of the biggest gripes reviewers had with the new MacBook—its clicky, super-shallow keyboard and its single port.
The Folio has two Thunderbolt 3 ports on its right side, which are used for everything from charging to data to display output—HP says both ports have the same capabilities and can be used interchangeably. Since they're Thunderbolt, you're getting full 10Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 speeds compared to the 5Gbps standard USB port in the MacBook. We would have preferred to have one port on each side, which makes it easier to charge laptops like the Chromebook Pixel no matter which side the power adapter is on, but Thunderbolt ports typically have to be pretty close to the controller on the motherboard (so it may be a technical limitation). As it is, the only thing on the left side of the laptop is a headphone jack.
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