Just a small correction: the company has been around since 1998. They’ve only been making PCs for 2 years though.
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I read it. I don’t buy it.
I actually thought this made a lot of sense. This USB port can be used in every single product in their line until USB 3.0 is obsolete - designed smart once and will identify their machines for many years. While they might be paying more per unit than if they purchased generic ones, the branding is very valuable. Having worked with projects involving custom plastics, I didn’t think the cost was outrageous or the production cycle. I’m shocked that an engineering company actually managed to get the aesthetics right, because usually this kind of thing is discussed at preliminary meetings and then by the time people start getting their hands dirty with prototypes the whole “acid green USB” port is by the wayside and, yep, their product looks like everyone else’s plastic box because it’s easier and faster to develop generic products than interesting ones.
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Have a look at a Google Image Search of Razer mice. They tend to go for fairly “out there” designs, to be all “extreme” and what have you 
I suppose I’m nitpicking, but isn’t part of the reason USB 3 ports are blue to allow users to easily distinguish them from USB 2 and USB 1.1 ports? The thought process being “I’ve got a USB 3 device. The plastic bit in it is blue, I’ll plug it into a blue port.” Now the user will have to add an exception to that rule in their minds for Razer computers. And then other companies might start using their own colours for USB 3 ports. It’ll be anarchy!
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I thought that, but it isn’t part of the USB standard.
Apple did it before them, making all their USB sockets white. Maybe IBM was first, with black USB 1 ports.
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Great. Now we’re going to give Steve Jobs credit for something he had nothing to do with because he’s dead? How about applauding Razer for what they accomplished. I doubt they were asking themselves “What would Steve do?”
The Cult of Steve is really bringing me down. You know who else obsessed over details? Edison. Do we write stories about how Steve picked up on Edison’s influence?
Thanks a lot. I now have that image in my fricken head before I go to sleep. You just Balmered me, you bastard.
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Now we’re going to give Steve Jobs credit for something he had nothing to do with because he’s dead? How about applauding Razer for what they accomplished.
Razer has said themselves that Steve Jobs is the inspiration for a lot of their meticulous detail. They have even said that without Steve Jobs, they’d never even be in existence today.
Like all Microsoft and Linux users, they thank Steve Jobs for everything they have before they go to sleep at night. I’m sure you do as well. We all do.
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the Apple model of selling commodity hardware at premium prices by claiming that they really, really care about design was an excellent way of making quite a lot of money. However, as I’m not a gamer, I suppose there are things I’m missing
You are missing something. That’s not the Apple model except for RAM and no one in their right mind purchases RAM from Apple.
Case and point. There are certain circumstances when even the dreaded, so-called “overpriced” Apple product is the better choice (depending on the user, timing, etc. of course).
… and because the cycle from concept to product - and let’s recall just how complex a laptop like this looked 10 years ago - is so short, and the market fragmenting so rapidly (remember beige computers?), it makes all the sense in the world to do anything you can to be a bit rad, stand out, and get more margin per device.
Compared to the cost of the new GPU in these things, this port is seriously chicken feed.
Metrics like this are always such bullshit - sure, on paper - people probably spent a cumulative $380,000 worth of time on the feature… does that mean it “cost” the company $380k? Of course not. It could have easily been time people would have just spend browsing Facebook if they didn’t have USB ports to work on. That’s the salaried life.
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