Apple Announces MacBook Air Shipping, Apple TV Update Delayed

[sanford]

While I broadly agree with your assessment, there are two factual errors.

1) "Composite cables" is not the term used for audio. Just say RCA stereo audio cables. For people using AppleTV to HDTV using HDMI, they don't need anything but HDMI cable. Still only stereo though.

2) HDMI audio processing receivers are pretty cheap now a days. About $400. Check for Sony 910, Onkyo 605, H/K 247, Yamaha 661, etc. These are low end receivers but they process multi channel audio through HDMI including PCM 5.1 (some 7.1). I prefer the H/K sound (I own a H/K 745).

Yeah, yeah I know. But most audio cable packaging reads "composite", so most people who are connected to RCA audio inputs and think they have digital surround call them composite cables.

Sony, blech. I checked the Onkyo and can't find anything definitive indicating it's more than a switch, but I'll take your word for it. Plus it's 7.1 90 watts/channel, both of which are pointless in most listening spaces, so I'd feel like I was wasting money.

And you gotta tell me why the H/K 745? For the video processor? I mean I like the H/K sound just fine, but unless you just bought the thing recently after the price has dropped way low, for the $3,000 you would have paid not too long back, you're starting to head into Sunfire territory. Which of course no one can really hear the difference in Sunfire equipment, either, over a cheap 5.1 Onkyo, but at least you can say you own Sunfire, like owning a Lexus or something.

 

[AppleMojo]

Two weeks vs. 4 weeks ... that's the difference and why I'm upset. I downloaded it because I wanted to see how long it'd take on my connection. Surprisingly not very long. And I'd have 30 days to watch it. But, with how this is panning out, it'll be 28+ days until I am able to enjoy it how I want to. I mean, yes I can watch it on my laptop, but I'd much rather enjoy it on a larger screen and in a more relaxed state.

I'd have to say that was rather silly (in regards to the Apple TV portion).

If you think you are justified, then hey... what do we care? Just don't whine here about it.

lol - and all of this over less than $5... I will bet you have a lot of disappointments in your life that are similar to this.

I personally, make several poor decisions a year... but choose not to broadcast to the world my lack of judgement.

 

[UMHurricanes34]

That is what I like about Apple...

They aren't going to release sloppy software or products because of consumer pressure, they take there time to make sure everything is flowing smoothly when it hits the market.

It's a bummer that the update isn't available yet but like I said...

That's all fine and dandy...but Leopard.


Nuff Said.

 

[Poll Smoker]

EDIT: Ok, I'm mistaken. But I still think Gizmodo are douchebags.

Whatever. Jealous much?

 

[Avatar74]

Yeah, yeah I know. But most audio cable packaging reads "composite", so most people who are connected to RCA audio inputs and think they have digital surround call them composite cables.

But you weren't talking with most people when you said "composite audio"... Hey, just being fair.

Sony, blech. I checked the Onkyo and can't find anything definitive indicating it's more than a switch, but I'll take your word for it. Plus it's 7.1 90 watts/channel, both of which are pointless in most listening spaces, so I'd feel like I was wasting money.

"Sony, blech"? I've done professional 5.1 mixes certified to bear the Dolby trademark for meeting their analysts' fidelity criteria. I use a Sony ES receiver in my home theater. Onkyo I can't comment on...

And you gotta tell me why the H/K 745? For the video processor? I mean I like the H/K sound just fine, but unless you just bought the thing recently after the price has dropped way low, for the $3,000 you would have paid not too long back, you're starting to head into Sunfire territory. Which of course no one can really hear the difference in Sunfire equipment, either, over a cheap 5.1 Onkyo, but at least you can say you own Sunfire, like owning a Lexus or something.

Ok now I'm not sure who is on which side of the audiophile snob fence here...

You dismiss sony but simultaneously call Harman Kardon overkill? I'm not endorsing Sid Harman's junk (Infinity, JBL, HK, etc.) ... they have some good brands too like Lexicon and dbx on the pro side... but I don't get it.

Can you explain why you think Sony is junk and what you'd recommend instead?

 

[jouster]

Disappointing - but there's no question they'll refund you if the Apple TV update doesn't arrive before your 30 days is up. In fact, I'm sure they'll do something for you even it comes out just before the 30 days is up.

Why? You can watch it on your computer. They gave no guarantees on the exact time of the TV update.

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

How upset? Really? Four whole dollars upset? Jeez, it's the price of a cup of coffee.

$4 for coffee? Outrageous!

Anyway, it would've been considerably worse if the Air was delayed.

 

[HLdan]

Son of a! I bought the AppleTV after the keynote and have been waiting ever since.

I understand when you buy something you expect it to be as it's suppose to be but it's only been 2 weeks since Macworld. Be patient, it's a free update.

 

[HLdan]

First of all, $4 to a college student is a lot of money. lol. And upset that when I come home from being at school all day and at work after that, I'd like to be able to lay on my bed and watch the movie from my TV, not my laptop.

Hmm, if $4 is a lot to "college student" then what the hell does a "college student" doing with an AppleTV? You can rent movies for dirt cheap anywhere.
I wish you college students on the board stop acting like you are POOR victims. Many of you have Macbook Pros when all you really need is a basic Mac to get through school.
This "college student" crap is getting tired. There are people on this board less fortune than you, some people here support families and can't afford to go to college or buy Apple toys so pipe down.

 

[pondie84]

BTW, it is already a great product not a shaky one. As an tv owner since April last year, we use ours all the time. My wife loves watching photos on it while listening to music as well as movies and YouTube and trailers, etc. So the rentals are delayed and you just bought yours. Big deal. You should have waited till the software was available then. Or use it now and like it now.

I didn't mean shaky technically, I meant shaky commercially. I'm not aware the apple tv has been a great commercial success but please correct me if I'm wrong.

I didn't actually purchase the apple tv so I'm not 'whinging' or anything. While I personally don't own one I can see what the benefits of the product would be and have seriously considered it from time to time. I'm also not complaining about the rentals because I will never use that service in any case. I watch all my movies when they're on at the cinema and rarely see the need to watch them again.

There's really no need to be so rude just because I offered an opinion. You say 'Big deal' to me... well I did actually acknowledge it wasn't a big deal when I said 'It's not the end of the world'. However, I also offered my opinion as to why it's not good PR to announce a release and then have to announce a delay.

 

[HLdan]

Hopefully this means that the 10.5.2 is coming out soon since the Air is shipping? Don't the update bring support for Remote Disc drive?

Once and for all where did Apple ever say that 10.5.2 was required for Remote Disc? I was at Macworld and they were demoing Remote Disc and I personally checked the System Profiler and it said 10.5.1.

 

[sanford]

You know, that was totally unfair. Pre-digital I had a Sony PL A/V I loved, for years. I have a Sony center and two surrounds. (I had two Sony full-size fronts, but in small cabinets, and they were on the floor; I had to get them up off the floor and had no place to put them. So I went shopping for a couple stands. All the stands these days are made for the little micro-size surround-kit loudspeakers. To get top platforms big enough for the fronts, it was $100 for the pair of stands. The audio store where I went for the stands had a few discontinued $250 a pop Polks in cabinets the perfect height, on get-rid-of-them-now clearance for $40 apiece, cheaper than the freaking stands. Plus these Polks have a bit more presence than the Sonys; you know, not *louder*, I just think I get a little more "detail" listening to music, especially LPs -- movies, nyah, I can't tell, but for a lot of music, a bit better.)

The "blech" came from one analog Sony PLII my wife had, still have around here somewhere. Sounded fine, really, it was just that it was like a damn desert on available inputs. It wasn't marketed to people who were going to connect more than a VCR and a CD deck, which was perfectly my wife before I married her. But that thing hassled me, though there was nothing wrong with it one bit for its target market. My Blu-ray players are Sony. I'm cool with Sony, I just have this bizarre hangover resentment against that Sony PLII receiver and its input shortage. The "blech" was just a personal thing; Sony isn't junk.

I like my clearance-price Onkyo 5.1 -- God bless HDMI for knocking the price of models without HDMI pass-through down into the dirt. Any comparable Sony I'd like just as much.

You'd like this: I was in one of these consumer electronics chains, Best Buy or Circuit City, some place like that, struck up a conversation with the "audio expert". He had what he swore was a 100 watts/channel, not 100 watts aggregate, receiver -- I mean I asked for clarification on that, and he swore *per channel* and no tomfoolery on the specs. He didn't like it so much because it was "a little underpowered". I asked him how much he was paying in rent to live on the field in the Astrodome. I don't think he got it, though.

Speaking of Sid Harman, I gotta admit Bob Carver and his Sunfire rap drive me bonkers, too. Sure his gear *looks* nice. Sure, a machine may tell the difference, but a human being? I mean today we have guys with the knack -- no, not the band, people -- producing major-label records in freaking GarageBand, and then lying about it and *no one can even tell*. At the same time you gotta drop two grand on an A/V receiver, minimum, or you won't get "the full audio experience today's technology brings you." Uh, yeah.

But you weren't talking with most people when you said "composite audio"... Hey, just being fair.



"Sony, blech"? I've done professional 5.1 mixes certified to bear the Dolby trademark for meeting their analysts' fidelity criteria. I use a Sony ES receiver in my home theater. Onkyo I can't comment on...



Ok now I'm not sure who is on which side of the audiophile snob fence here...

You dismiss sony but simultaneously call Harman Kardon overkill? I'm not endorsing Sid Harman's junk (Infinity, JBL, HK, etc.) ... they have some good brands too like Lexicon and dbx on the pro side... but I don't get it.

Can you explain why you think Sony is junk and what you'd recommend instead?

 

[zedsdead]

The Apple TV thing does suck, but what are you going to do.

Much more excited about the Macbook Air, but I have the SSD version and that still appears to not be shipping until Tuesday at the earliest.

 

[macfan881]

Hey stop whining please atleast you dont have to pay 20 bucks for new features....

 

[EagerDragon]

This reminds me of an old programming saying:
You can have the new software to be quality, fast, or cheap, pick two.

In other words you can have the software correct and complete or you can have it developed fast, or you can have it delivered within budget, pick two.

Unfortunately as we all seen Micro$oft only picks one and delivers none, the software takes forever to come out, is well over budget and is ussualy full of features/bugs.

Lately we seen Apple picking two and delivering only one or none. Many of the products lately are late, with incomplete features and full of significant bugs. They are rushing too much, not sure why, as they do not have that much competition in a lot of products since Apple a lot of times is offering something no one else can offer.

While competition is usually good for consumers, competition also causes companies to deliver less quality to ensure they get to market sooner and sometimes they also cut features out and deliver them much later.

IMHO this is what is happening, and we are the beta testers of their "production ready" software and hardware.

I like Apple a lot and I am a very entusiatic Mac fan, hardware and software systems are a lot more complex and Apple is not taking the time to deliver a quality product in every case.

The Intel transition is a very good example, lots of hardware issues every time they release a new product and then they release a software patch to mask or prevent the hardware issue. Then several months later they release the new logic board with the issue corrected after they get new chips that do not have the issue and run some new leads between some of the chips.

Lots of examples: iPhone speaker, iPhone reception, Leopard lots of bugs and features missing, Time Machine, Airport Extreme, Macbook case with staining and cracking, MacBookPro screens, LED off color, and many more.

If you look at all these I think you will agree that Apple seem to have limited talented personnel for some of the projects, needs more people in QA, needs better QA USE-Cases, and needs to allocate more time for the projects.

Some of you may disagree, but if you let it sink in before you flame me, I think you will come to a similar conclusion.

 

[lkrupp]

What's the big deal?

What's the big deal with the MBA shipping? Didn't every single poster in the known Mac universe rant that the MBA was DOA and that nobody would purchase them because (insert deal killing missing feature here)? So how could Apple ship any if nobody bought any because they're lacking so many show stopping features that are absolutely necessary for a laptop to have?

And yes, I'm being extremely sarcastic and condescending.

 

[bilbo--baggins]

Why? You can watch it on your computer. They gave no guarantees on the exact time of the TV update.

Like others have said, it's only $4.00. Apple aren't going to piss off their customers by standing firm on issues like this. IF someone complains that their computer crashed while watching a movie, or whatever else excuse I'm sure they'll just give a free download credit to keep their customers happy.

 

[sanford]

What's the big deal with the MBA shipping? Didn't every single poster in the known Mac universe rant that the MBA was DOA and that nobody would purchase them because (insert deal killing missing feature here)? So how could Apple ship any if nobody bought any because they're lacking so many show stopping features that are absolutely necessary for a laptop to have?

And yes, I'm being extremely sarcastic and condescending.

I think there are three camps, brother. Haters, lovers and the celibate monks of the laptop world. The haters hate for the feature trade-offs disregarding the fact it works and it's nice looking kit; the lovers are dying for it, explaining away, often with no logic at all whatsoever, valid usability concerns. The monks absolutely admit it's whizzy but for many, many people impractical as a second computer, and for just about every computer user, totally impractical as a one-and-only computer. You can figure how the haters and lovers vote. The monks vote, if you like it, you can deal with the limitations without major frustrations, you have the money and will not fail to feed your kids or the like to get this thing, then go for it. The MacBook Air is an $800 pair of off-the-rack shoes. Looks and style, but you wouldn't want to do much walking about town in them. But that doesn't mean you don't want looks and style on your feet from time to time; you cab it that night.

 

[GQB]

You weren't thinking Leopard as you typed this? I was thinking it as I read it. Not even 3 months have gone by since it's release and sp2 is eminent. I dunno about your experience with Leopard, but mine has been terribad. If 10.5.2 doesn't resolve the stability problems I'm headed back to Tiger.

So many Apple fans are completely blinded by their lust for Apple co^H^H products. Apple can, does, and will continue to do wrong by their customers. They will continue to make promises they can't, wont, or never intended to keep because they know they can count on their fans to make their excuses for them.

UD.

What a whiny load of crap. Sorry, but "promises they can't, wont, or never intended to keep" is just nonsense.

 

[BWhaler]

This press release concerns me.

Kinda feels slimey and crappy big company to bury bad news like this.

At least Apple is not shipping a crappy product before it's ready. Yes, Leopard, I am looking at you.

 

[Kevin_B]

Lost revenues

While everyone is b!tching about the delay of the tv take 2 software update (myself included, being that I bought one last week), just think about how Apple must feel! I mean - every day they postpone the release is one day's less worth of movie rental revenue. Combined with the purchases that tv owners might be making that they wouldn't otherwise, and the net result is that they're loosing out on huge $$$ by postponing the update.

I'm not about to go as far as to say that we should applaud Apple for making "such a sacrifice" for the sake of stable software or whatever, but I think it's worth noting that it probably sucks a lot more for them than it does for us...

Cheers,

Kevin

 

[GQB]

This press release concerns me.

Kinda feels slimey and crappy big company to bury bad news like this.

At least Apple is not shipping a crappy product before it's ready. Yes, Leopard, I am looking at you.

Where is this "Leopard is crap" meme coming from?
I've been running it for 2 months of heavy use on 2 machines (high end and low) with zero issues. Really curious.
If there are some catastrophic issues with it, I'd like to know so that I can keep an eye out for them.
Or maybe 'crappy product' means "someone somewhere said something... I think".

 

[sanford]

Where is this "Leopard is crap" meme coming from?

I think it's the new "3D" dock. It's terrorized a lot of people, causes intractable vertigo, something like that. Otherwise, I couldn't tell you. Leopard all rock steady here.

 

[iCeFuSiOn]

I think it's the new "3D" dock. It's terrorized a lot of people, causes intractable vertigo, something like that. Otherwise, I couldn't tell you. Leopard all rock steady here.

You can change that with a defaults write command, problem solved.

 

[zedsdead]

I think it's the new "3D" dock. It's terrorized a lot of people, causes intractable vertigo, something like that. Otherwise, I couldn't tell you. Leopard all rock steady here.

Same with me...except for Back to my Mac...Apple failed big time on that one. Still is not working correctly.