I don't understand the belief that minimalist design is obvious and that everyone else totally would've designed it the same way.

It's almost like when someone walks up to a work of art and remarks that they easily could've done it themselves. Yeah, but you didn't.

Minimalist design is hard, and you're kidding yourself if you honestly think that Vizio's line of computers would've looked the same had Apple never existed.

I totally agree minimalist design is hard. But I believe that in a given genre, minimalist designs will converge. Not completely, but they will tend toward one another simply by virtue of having a common destination. In this case having the simplest laptop design that can still get the job done.

I think that Apple has done the grunt work of whittling away the bulk material toward a minimal design. It would be stupid of somebody else with the same goals to try to pretend that Apple's efforts bore no fruit (sorry, camp not intended) and ignore them.

Beyond that, Apple's minimalist design isn't manufactured by Apple -- so they tool up companies all over the world to make these Intel based 24" / 27" all in one computers. Obviously when Visio goes to a company that already built them for Apple, there is way lower production risk.