Question of timing

SubZer0 said:

What do you think? Was Apple too slow in bringing this to market?

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I don't believe all the technology was there and working well a year ago. I'm guessing the MBA has been in development for a little over two years. This was a case where the world had to catch up to what the concept envisioned.

From my point of view, I think Apple brought this to market as soon as they were able.

Apple is never too slow in bringing something to the market, one thing you'll learn fairly quickly in the Apple world. The tech didn't exist a year ago.

There isn't anything better currently available in the market.

The MBA brings attention to ultraportables, thats the big difference I see. You have some people looking at the MBA as a laptop and that is it. They haven't looked into ultraportables till now.

I don't think Apple makes "mistakes" when it comes to marketing their products. I'm sure A LOT of thoughts goes into their marketing and development department

You should take a look at the pics of the "guts" of the MBA. It really is amazing.

SubZer0 said:

I am aware that the technology was recently refined that allowed for a smaller Core2Duo processor and the engineering it took to make the whole package in these dimensions took until now. To clarify a little bit: Do you think the MBA would have been met with less negativity if they could have come to market sooner?

Mark

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What difference does it make? No matter what Apple releases there will always be someone who doesn't like it and wants everyone to know it.

ahaxton said:

Apple is never too slow in bringing something to the market, one thing you'll learn fairly quickly in the Apple world. The tech didn't exist a year ago.

There isn't anything better currently available in the market.

The MBA brings attention to ultraportables, thats the big difference I see. You have some people looking at the MBA as a laptop and that is it. They haven't looked into ultraportables till now.

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That's exactly how it was with me. I've had no interest in ultraportables until the MacBook Air was released. They all made compromises that just didn't work for me--like too small a screen and keyboard, too slow a processor, too ugly (yes, we can all be shallow sometimes, can't we?), etc. The MacBook Air isn't what a lot of people expect from an ultraportable, and some don't even consider it one (which is kind of silly). But the MacBook Air really opens up the market to a lot of people who would never have considered an ultraportable before for the same reasons as me, and don't really care about number of ports and "features" like that that really just go unused for most of us. And it may be slow compared to the MacBook and others, but in the world of ultraportables of similar weight, it's pretty damn fast, and certainly fast enough for me.

SubZer0 said:

I am aware that the technology was recently refined that allowed for a smaller Core2Duo processor and the engineering it took to make the whole package in these dimensions took until now. To clarify a little bit: Do you think the MBA would have been met with less negativity if they could have come to market sooner?

Mark

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Certainly it would have been, because then everyone would be blown away by Apple's ability to release technology that won't exist for another year. Apple made this as soon as technology allowed. Technology is always advancing, and the MacBook Air is pretty cutting edge right now. Very soon it won't be, because that's how quickly tech changes these days, but it'll be updated again, and so on.

I think the majority of the negativity (not including the haters here on MR, who have their own reasons I have yet to comprehend) comes from a) a fetish of many for bashing Apple and b) not everyone knowing enough about ultraportables to realize why the MBA has to make the sacrifices it makes. Not much to say about (a), but (b) is pretty prevalent, I think. Often people make comments about it not being worth the money, but they only point at the specs as why. E.g. "Look at the MBA's specs compared to the MacBook! The MacBook clearly wins!" That's just missing the point. It's one thing to dismiss the Air because it makes different compromises, and you'd rather have the compromises of a more standard ultraportable, but to dismiss the Air simply because it makes compromises for its size is just misinformed, and I think that's the source of a lot of public negativity.