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Apple Announces MacBook Air
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Apple going back to doomsday
Well, wellwellwell, Apple, what on earth are you trying to do? Planning a return to the doomtime when you almost stopped existing?
First the iphone, which for business users is completely useless. I mean, other phone offerings can do so much more, business speaking! The iphone is nothing else then a very cleverly marketed gadget. Yes, superb in its technological assets, yes a breakthrough advance in technology, but a big lack in many things business people need - well documented.
Now the macbook air ... If you want a truly portable computer, make the thinnest in the world :: GREAT! I applaud this and look forward to this. But, also get it an as large as you possible screen and leave out the simple necessities like no ethernet and no diskdrive ... I mean, for portability you can drag a bigger then A4 sized computer and its necessities along, externally. Oh, and please, make it slower then the current offering! Now to really call this one a breakthrough, make it a breakthrough. This is nothing else then existing tech poorly repackaged, but with I'm sure the best marketing in the world they can make us believe that this is completely new and a breakthrough. The iPhone is on some levels, this macbook air is nothing but shame!!!!
I've used apple's since the quadra 610. Over the last 2 years, little by little, apple is moving from a company that makes a difference and that thinks different into a company that does exactly the same as the lame PC manufacturers. Marketing gadgets, yesterday's technology and functionality in a way to make us believe that it was never done before.
OPEN YOUR EYES!! Apple, turn the tide and come back to what you were, truly inventing and truly different!
Well, wellwellwell, Apple, what on earth are you trying to do? Planning a return to the doomtime when you almost stopped existing?
First the iphone, which for business users is completely useless. I mean, other phone offerings can do so much more, business speaking! The iphone is nothing else then a very cleverly marketed gadget. Yes, superb in its technological assets, yes a breakthrough advance in technology, but a big lack in many things business people need - well documented.
Now the macbook air ... If you want a truly portable computer, make the thinnest in the world :: GREAT! I applaud this and look forward to this. But, also get it an as large as you possible screen and leave out the simple necessities like no ethernet and no diskdrive ... I mean, for portability you can drag a bigger then A4 sized computer and its necessities along, externally. Oh, and please, make it slower then the current offering! Now to really call this one a breakthrough, make it a breakthrough. This is nothing else then existing tech poorly repackaged, but with I'm sure the best marketing in the world they can make us believe that this is completely new and a breakthrough. The iPhone is on some levels, this macbook air is nothing but shame!!!!
I've used apple's since the quadra 610. Over the last 2 years, little by little, apple is moving from a company that makes a difference and that thinks different into a company that does exactly the same as the lame PC manufacturers. Marketing gadgets, yesterday's technology and functionality in a way to make us believe that it was never done before.
OPEN YOUR EYES!! Apple, turn the tide and come back to what you were, truly inventing and truly different!
It's nice looking alright. And I bet it will just melt in your hands when you see the real thing up close. It's certainly thin (although they've helped create the illusion that it's thinner that it actually is by creating a tapering bevel shape, not that it's particularly thick mind).
But I think I'll find it hard to justify right now. What's wrong with an inch thick anyway? Do I really carry my laptop around much anyway?
Outside shot I was going to go for the MacBook Air. But realistically I should get the 15" MBP. When it receives its imminent multi-touch upgrade of course. Besides, I'd only be wishing I'd got the solid state version, even though it's twice the price. I'll get an Air when it ships with a 128GB Solid State drive in 6 months for the lower price
What happened to the dock, Steve?
But I think I'll find it hard to justify right now. What's wrong with an inch thick anyway? Do I really carry my laptop around much anyway?
Outside shot I was going to go for the MacBook Air. But realistically I should get the 15" MBP. When it receives its imminent multi-touch upgrade of course. Besides, I'd only be wishing I'd got the solid state version, even though it's twice the price. I'll get an Air when it ships with a 128GB Solid State drive in 6 months for the lower price
What happened to the dock, Steve?
I think it looks awesome!
I'm gonna get two, one for me and one for the wife to replace our old 12 inch Powerbooks.
I only really use it for web browsing and keynote presentations so this should be perfect. So at least apple has found one (two) people in their target market.
I'm gonna get two, one for me and one for the wife to replace our old 12 inch Powerbooks.
I only really use it for web browsing and keynote presentations so this should be perfect. So at least apple has found one (two) people in their target market.
so... i don't know too much about solid state hard drives. i'm going to be getting a new computer and i want to run pro tools and ableton live on it. is a 1.8 ghz processor with a solid state hard drive going to be enough to hack it? or should i just go with an imac...
What the...well at least I played it safe. I'm getting a Macbook next week. No more point waiting. I thought that is could be good but...it really is just a weaker but more expensive Macbook. Oh yeah it's thin
I just wish the Macbook also had ambient keyboards.
I just wish the Macbook also had ambient keyboards.
Not worried about having Apple doing or sanctioning it. I can buy a 160GB ipod drive off eBay. Just curious of the likelihood of such an effort succeeding.
Get the 15" MacBook Pro. You'll love the extra screen realestate, more ram and faster processor.
Everything about today was sh*t. Don't care about any of it. So they've become more efficient at spoon feeding the world hollywood crap movies. Yay! And the price of the Air!!!!! JFC! At least it's a computer instead of all this adolescent gimmick crap that Apple is obsessing about. Bah humbug.
No One Will Say If It's Penryn Or Merom Inside
I asked all over the Apple Booth and no one at Apple even KNOWS which family processor is inside. Does anyone know?
I asked all over the Apple Booth and no one at Apple even KNOWS which family processor is inside. Does anyone know?
Loaded Air with 80GB HD and all the dongles + AppleCare is $2500. With the 64GB RAM Drive it's $3500. No 4GB upgrade option. Have A Nice Day!
1.18 x 10.9 x 8.6 inches - Powerbook G4 12" (2006)
0.76 x 12.74 x 8.9 inches - MacBook Air (2008)
MBA is certainly thinner & lighter... but it's not smaller.
Not sure it's sufficiently different from a normal MacBook. Perhaps I'll change my mind when I see one in person.
0.76 x 12.74 x 8.9 inches - MacBook Air (2008)
MBA is certainly thinner & lighter... but it's not smaller.
Not sure it's sufficiently different from a normal MacBook. Perhaps I'll change my mind when I see one in person.
Likes-
The size, not the shape though
That it's a probably a very good portable.
2gb RAM as standard
The no optical drive solution - very smart move Apple.
Doesn't like-
The look. Black keyboard doesn't suit it IMO.
The cost especially with SSD as a storage option (extra £600! Thats a MacBook! almost.)
I'd replace my PowerBook with that machine in an instant if not for the £1200 cost.
A newbie influx like never before!
The size, not the shape though
That it's a probably a very good portable.
2gb RAM as standard
The no optical drive solution - very smart move Apple.
Doesn't like-
The look. Black keyboard doesn't suit it IMO.
The cost especially with SSD as a storage option (extra £600! Thats a MacBook! almost.)
I'd replace my PowerBook with that machine in an instant if not for the £1200 cost.
A newbie influx like never before!
Why? Let's see Steve listed four things:
- They fixed a bug in their airport routers so now the air-disk feature works. But you have to replace the entire box to get the fix
- software update for the iPhone and ipod
- Apple is now in the movie rental business,
- New notebook -- a striped down and smaller macbook but for $800 higher price.
Not much is it? What would have happened if Steve had said "Apple is going to enter the mainstream desktop market". If he had people would be lining up at the stores now. All Apple has in some odd-ball niche products on the desktop. A $3,000+ tower, an "all in one" and a "brick". where is the "normal computer" that 90% of everyone wants? If they ever do bring out a "normal desktop" Apple could triple their sales volume.
Of course the stock drops. Investors wanted to see stuff that would actual;y sell in large numbers.
The functionality is perfect for the target market...
Which is obviously not you, so stop complaining and get a MBP instead.
No. Apple's obsession with thinness has been bugging me for a while (mostly due to the integrated battery on the iPhone) but now it's just getting ridiculous. Steve says "thin" more often than any of the presidential candidates say "change". His wet dream is to have a product so thin, it's invisible from the side. Sure, it only has one button, 10 seconds of battery time and 64 kB of memory, but hey... it's THIN! They're painting themselves into a corner, because no product can be thicker than their last one, and there will always be dealbreaking functionality compromises like missing connectivity, slower processors, second rate components, integrated batteries... blërg.
No one is forcing you to do anything. If you don't like it, buy a Macbook or a MBP.
Some thoughts..
As someone in the Ars Technica IRC MWSF channel put it, I'm 'whelmed'; neither over nor under-whelmed.
The MBA feels like a very, very niche product to me. It's a very nice design, but it's far too pricey to be something that I would consider buying. At $1799, it has closed itself out of most of the edu market, and it lacks too much in connectivity to appeal to the high-end power users. It's a second computer that will appeal to people who already have a more capable desktop or notebook computer. It's a good companion to the iMac or Mac Pro, but it's not a replacement for an MB or MBP.
But, the design is really nice. That alone will be enough to push a fair number of people to buy it. Clever name too. They clearly had to sacrifice a lot to get it into that thin case (only 1 USB port? No firewire? Non-user replaceable battery??), but they turn this 'bug' into a 'feature' by calling it the "Air" and trying to make cables sound completely obsolete. All it took was a bit of software handiwork to make up for the big shortcomings (optical drive sharing sounds neat but problematic) and now along with Time Capsule, iTunes movie rental, and the like, Apple has put together a complete 'wireless lifestyle solution'. Except you probably will want to have a more traditional computer to do the stuff you need to do.
The Macbook Air is actually more interesting for what it might tell us is coming down the line. Multi-touch trackpads for the entire MacBook line is nearly a certainty, and possibly LED displays (though Apple might keep ordinary LCDs around to distinguish the high-end from the entry-level.) Most interestingly, if the rumors about the multi-touch tablet/panel computer are true, then the Macbook Air is more like a testbed for more compact components. It's going to test whether people will tolerate life without an optical drive. I'm sure Apple will be watching very closely how people use this, and the things they complain about as they put together their next product.
And so in the end, people who were expecting another market-defining product from Apple will be disappointed. A lot of people seem to be comparing the MBA to the Cube. There's probably something to this. I've had a suspicion for a long time that the Cube (released in mid-2000) was a testbed to see how well they could cram a computer into a tiny space, and that whatever expertise they gained there was applied to the G4 Tibook, which first appeared in January 2001. The Cube was a very niche product in the same way that the MBA is. The MBA probably won't be a huge hit, but it'll lead to much more interesting things in a year or so.
As someone in the Ars Technica IRC MWSF channel put it, I'm 'whelmed'; neither over nor under-whelmed.
The MBA feels like a very, very niche product to me. It's a very nice design, but it's far too pricey to be something that I would consider buying. At $1799, it has closed itself out of most of the edu market, and it lacks too much in connectivity to appeal to the high-end power users. It's a second computer that will appeal to people who already have a more capable desktop or notebook computer. It's a good companion to the iMac or Mac Pro, but it's not a replacement for an MB or MBP.
But, the design is really nice. That alone will be enough to push a fair number of people to buy it. Clever name too. They clearly had to sacrifice a lot to get it into that thin case (only 1 USB port? No firewire? Non-user replaceable battery??), but they turn this 'bug' into a 'feature' by calling it the "Air" and trying to make cables sound completely obsolete. All it took was a bit of software handiwork to make up for the big shortcomings (optical drive sharing sounds neat but problematic) and now along with Time Capsule, iTunes movie rental, and the like, Apple has put together a complete 'wireless lifestyle solution'. Except you probably will want to have a more traditional computer to do the stuff you need to do.
The Macbook Air is actually more interesting for what it might tell us is coming down the line. Multi-touch trackpads for the entire MacBook line is nearly a certainty, and possibly LED displays (though Apple might keep ordinary LCDs around to distinguish the high-end from the entry-level.) Most interestingly, if the rumors about the multi-touch tablet/panel computer are true, then the Macbook Air is more like a testbed for more compact components. It's going to test whether people will tolerate life without an optical drive. I'm sure Apple will be watching very closely how people use this, and the things they complain about as they put together their next product.
And so in the end, people who were expecting another market-defining product from Apple will be disappointed. A lot of people seem to be comparing the MBA to the Cube. There's probably something to this. I've had a suspicion for a long time that the Cube (released in mid-2000) was a testbed to see how well they could cram a computer into a tiny space, and that whatever expertise they gained there was applied to the G4 Tibook, which first appeared in January 2001. The Cube was a very niche product in the same way that the MBA is. The MBA probably won't be a huge hit, but it'll lead to much more interesting things in a year or so.
I don't mind that this was the announcement and I can see were some people will use and love this machine. For me though it just does not fit.
I can pretty much deal with everything except for the lack of a proper graphics card. I understand why a proper card was left out, to conserve power most likely, but i don't quite get why this did not include one firewire port. I don't mind having to carry around adapters and the like to connect it to things.
Anyway, the computer I was hoping to see announced was a proper replacement for the 12in Powerbook that use to be. It still really annoys me that apple has not addressed that part of the market. The MacBook lacks the graphics card but has the right screen size. The MacbookPro has the nice graphics card but is a little large to carry around.
Oh well here is to hoping that apple releases a replacement for the 12in Powerbook
I can pretty much deal with everything except for the lack of a proper graphics card. I understand why a proper card was left out, to conserve power most likely, but i don't quite get why this did not include one firewire port. I don't mind having to carry around adapters and the like to connect it to things.
Anyway, the computer I was hoping to see announced was a proper replacement for the 12in Powerbook that use to be. It still really annoys me that apple has not addressed that part of the market. The MacBook lacks the graphics card but has the right screen size. The MacbookPro has the nice graphics card but is a little large to carry around.
Oh well here is to hoping that apple releases a replacement for the 12in Powerbook
They make a $29 adapter so that iPhone users can use off-the-shelf headphones, too, but that doesn't mean it was a ridiculously stupid move not to make the jack standard in the first place.
Making a laptop without an ethernet jack in 2008 is like making a cake without flour. They missed the boat bigtime on this one.
Yet it's the second-most popular smartphone in USA, and it's #1 when measuring net-usage. An obvious failure the iPhone is! And there are other people on this planet than "business people". And pray-tell: what shortcoming does the iPhone have, business-wise?
I use ethernet practically never, same goes to the superdrive on my MBP.
And you no longer have a USB port then. And then you need to plug in a hub in order to plug in the ethernet adapter. That is no simplicity. There is target market for it, but the first rev of MBA will not be the bestseller....
I asked all over the Apple Booth and no one at Apple even KNOWS which family processor is inside. Does anyone know?
Maybe it's a 22mm Montevina, though they are not due till May...
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