macbook air, everybody bitching

[mick4394]

When you miniaturize, you PAY for the engineering required to make stuff smaller. That takes a lot of work, and hence money. Ultra-portable PCs are much more expensive than their larger, more full-featured brothers. This has always been the case.



Then clearly you're not in the market for an ultra-portable, a family of machines that have ALWAYS been (and always will be) less powerful and more expensive.

You're right that ultra-portables are almost always less powerful, and more expensive. But you're wrong to assume it will always be this way, at least from an expense standpoint. Companies like Asus, Acer, and Via, among others, are leading the charge for extremely small and extremely inexpensive computers.

Times are changing. You no longer have to sell off your first born to get into an ultra-portable machine.

 

[Pressure]

an utlraportable also means mobile = good battery life or swappable batteries, or DUAL batteries. also ultraportables are also still as functional as the regular notebooks

mba is missing the following to be a real sub notebook

cpu should be the same speed, 2-2.4ghz (they went with a crippled cpu because of the thinness, the heatsink is not near big enough for a real cpu
most other 12" have the 2.0GHz cpu
gigabit lan/modem (these usually come together)
3+ usb ports (even the 7" eee pc from asus has 3 usb ports)
firewire, its a mac, it should have it, ALL other laptops have it even if its only the 4 wire connector
external but INCLUDED DVDRW or DVDRAM drive (they give you recovery dvds which is good, but no dvd drive? thanks...)
dual batteries, most acer and asus laptops come with both a small and large battery
mic port? it has a web cam but no mic port?
SPDIF? or optical out? my 4 year old laptop had optical out, my new one has spdif
docking port? it barely has any connectors at all, a docking port would make sense
even the smallest laptops (7"-11.1")have a socket for ram, mini pcie, removeable battery, HDD compartment, why cant the mba have it? btw almost all the other notebooks are cheaper

Thanks for the laugh.

Most, if not all, ultraportables have at maximum a 1.30Ghz Core 2 Duo.

Let me list a few ultraportables from last year, 2007.

The Sony Vaio VGN-TZ: Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage U7500/U7600 1.06/1.2 GHz CPU, 1–2 GiB RAM, 60-200 GB hard disk/32-64 GB solid state, 11.1″ WXGA display, internal optical DVD write-capable drive. Dimensions: 277 × 198.4 × 22.5–29.8 (mm). Weight: 1205 gram.

LG C series: Intel Core Duo/Core 2 Duo ULV 1.2 GHz CPU, nVidia Geforce Go7300 GPU, 1–1.5 GiB DDR2 RAM, 80 GB hard disk, 10.6″ WXGA touchscreen display, external bundled DVD optical write-capable drive. Dimensions: 269 × 203 × 27 (mm). Weight: 1300 gram.

And then the MacBook Air: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6-1.8Ghz, GMA X3100, 2GB ram, 80GB hard disk/64GB SSD, 13.3" WXGA+. Dimensions: 325 x 227 x 4-19.4 (mm). Weight: 1360 gram.

 

[Dybbuk]

The MBA strikes me as a novelty item more than anything else. It's lighter, and it's thinner, but I don't think those are the issues people want addressed in an ultra-portable. It is the width of the machine that is the most important. Honestly, I think what people wanted was a thinner, upgraded 12" PB, and I think that would have been a better move as well. I can't see any realistic advantage to this machine over the MacBook unless you have some sort of disorder that makes your muscles unimaginably weak or you often have to carry your laptop in a manilla envelope.

 

[yegon]

I can't see any realistic advantage to this machine over the MacBook unless you have some sort of disorder that makes your muscles unimaginably weak or you often have to carry your laptop in a manilla envelope.

Nail. Hit.

The price, the dip in power, the lack of optical drive, the non-replaceable battery, lack of ports etc would ALL be tolerable if it actually was an ultraportable. If it was smaller, it'd be an excellent product and I'd snap it up in a heart beat. As it is, it's basically a lighter, snazzier looking, extremely crippled MacBook.

 

[queshy]

A lot of people were predicting a "mobile" version of OS X like the iPhone has...imagine the MacBook Air shipped with such an OS? Could you imagine the riots?

It seems like people were expecting way, way, way too much from this launch.

 

[Dybbuk]

Nail. Hit.

The price, the dip in power, the lack of optical drive, the non-replaceable battery, lack of ports etc would ALL be tolerable if it actually was an ultraportable. If it was smaller, it'd be an excellent product and I'd snap it up in a heart beat. As it is, it's basically a lighter, snazzier looking, extremely crippled MacBook.

Pretty much.

Also, all of this just seems so suspicious to me ... read this from the Apple site:

So instead of watching DVDs, you can rent movies wirelessly from the iTunes Store.

Yay! Now I can rent a movie instead of owning the physical medium which I can use whenever I want! ... uh?

Also, the ethernet adapter and superdrive should've been included in the package. Is Apple trying to phase out optical media entirely? It's just not realistic at this point.

 

[yegon]

It seems like people were expecting way, way, way too much from this launch.

I don't think it'd take rocket scientists to deliver a small notebook, minus an optical drive, with MB level power. Bit trickier to deliver a compact MBP though of course.

 

[HLdan]

Yay! Now I can rent a movie instead of owning the physical medium which I can use whenever I want! ... uh?

Also, the ethernet adapter and superdrive should've been included in the package. Is Apple trying to phase out optical media entirely? It's just not realistic at this point.

2 of your arguments I have to disagree with you on. Firstly a very large amount of people (myself included) hardly watch the video more than once or maybe twice then the DVD just sits with the rest of my library with it's pretty cover while collecting dust.

A digital movie rental makes much more sense, watch the movie once and move on, there are just too many hundreds of movies to see rather than clinging on to the same one.
Secondly, Apple IS trying to phase out DVD's and it's very realistic. People said this very same thing when Apple was the first to phase out the floppy by not including it in the first iMac. Now nobody includes a floppy anymore.
Dude, we are living completely digital now, in five or some years we won't be using wires with the latest equipment and no physical drives.

 

[iPhil]

what i don't understand is the complaining about price. go look at all the other ultra portables on the market. this is the low end of their base pricing, ive not lower. so i don't quite understand why people thought it'd be so cheap. the Sonys start at 2k and go up a lot more from there.

Here's a short links of Sony's Tz series 160N/B and 150N/B and 170N/N and of course Apple's choice of UMC™ @ $1799


Why would people pay more $$$ for a slower cpu/smaller screen..

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

Also, the ethernet adapter and superdrive should've been included in the package. Is Apple trying to phase out optical media entirely? It's just not realistic at this point.

Apple isn't trying to phase out optical media. They're just detailing workarounds to the lack of an internal optical drive, something that the PowerBook Duo didn't have, either.

As for ethernet, if you're on the go often, I'd imagine you'd be using Wi-Fi more. HSDPA would have been nice to have (that or an option on the iPhone that lets you tether the iPhone to a MacBook Air at the very least, since it's not all that unreasonable to assume that people that have a MacBook Air are possibly going to have an iPhone as well).

 

[Mavimao]

What? ...You're delusional. You can't have "smaller, faster, AND cheaper" all at the same time. That only happens as time marches on (as in newer tech will be smaller, faster, and cheaper than older tech).

I don't necessarily care about faster. I think the free market would love to have something like an apple version of the OLPC or the Eee PC. Small little computers that you take with you to do email, internet, office stuff, some music playback. As long as it were cheap and small, people wouldn't care about how fast it was.

 

[dawnraid]

1 usb port no ethernet, WTF ???

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

I don't necessarily care about faster. I think the free market would love to have something like an apple version of the OLPC or the Eee PC. Small little computers that you take with you to do email, internet, office stuff, some music playback. As long as it were cheap and small, people wouldn't care about how fast it was.

With the impending OS X mobile (for lack of a better term) SDK which is bound to lead to Office mobile or iWork mobile or something of that nature, then get an iPod touch.

 

[Mavimao]

With the impending OS X mobile (for lack of a better term) SDK which is bound to lead to Office mobile or iWork mobile or something of that nature, then get an iPod touch.

As cool as the iPod touch and iPhone are, they do not provide a satisfactory webbrowsing experience. It takes me several minutes to type a URL on an iPhone, I can't imagine writing a paper with it!

 

[Dreamail]

Nail. Hit.
As it is, it's basically a lighter, snazzier looking, extremely crippled MacBook.

Many of us were looking for an ultra-portable, something rivalling the dimensions of the PowerBook 12", only thinner.

Clearly the MacBook Air is not that as it has pretty much the MacBook width and depth.


So what is the MacBook Air then, if it is not an ultra-portable?

I have the sneaking suspicion that it is an 'upsell' MacBook.
For people who want to buy a MacBook but find the plastic enclosure 'too cheap' and not stylish enough.

In a way the MBA is a 'deluxe' edition of the MacBook placed in between the MacBook and MacBook Pro - as was seen in Steve Jobs' slide.


The question is whether there will be a big enough market for a deluxe edition of the MacBook...

Personally it's not what I was looking for as I need a replacement for my 12" PowerBook, something with substantially smaller width/depth than the MacBook.
Oh well, maybe my old PowerBook 12" will last me another year. Although the 1.25 GB RAM is starting to hurt....

 

[Catch]

The hard part is waiting for it to arrive!!!!!

Now thats the most accurate post I have seen regarding the MBA since its release! You are right on the money!

C

 

[Dreamail]

I don't like crammed keyboards or squished screens where every window has to be maximized to see it well.

Neither do I!
Yet no one said anything about cramming the keyboard or squishing the screen!

Did you see how much rim space there is around the MBA screen? 3/4" almost! How about reducing that to 1/4 inch on the left and right? That instantly saves 1" in total width - without squishing the screen one bit!

And did you see how much space the MBA has left and right of its keyboard? Almost 1" either side by the looks of it.
How about reducing that to 1/10"?

All in all it would have been possible to reduce the width of the MBA without changing neither keyboard nor screen, same 13" screen, same full size keyboard.

Yet it would have made the MBA truly ultra-portable.

If you look at the internals there really seems to be wasted room to the left and right of the motherboard.
Almost as if Apple wanted the MBA to be wider than it needed to be...

 

[Catch]

Did you see how much rim space there is around the MBA screen? 3/4" almost! How about reducing that to 1/4 inch all around? That instantly saves 1" in total width - without squishing the screen one bit!

And did you see how much space the MBA has left and right of its keyboard? Almost 1" either side by the looks of it.
How about reducing that to 1/10"?

I agree the rim on the screen is the least attractive part of the MBA. However, do you really think Steve left it there to upset people? I am sure that if it was possible to reduce the width by even 1mm they would have done so. More bragging rights for Steve, and we all know how he likes those!

I am the first to agree that if it could be smaller and even lighter it should be. As long as it does not loose me the screen size and full size keyboard!

C

 

[MacsAttack]

Neither do I!
All in all it would have been possible to reduce the width of the MBA without changing neither keyboard nor screen, same 13" screen, same full size keyboard.

But would require them to make that fancy new trackpad for the new gestures smaller... Also - that screen is very thin. I wonder how much reinforcement is in the surround to keep it from being flexed (which would be a "bad thing").

I'm not sure there is as much "fat" on the design as you think there is.

 

[Catch]

If you look at the internals there really seems to be wasted room to the left and right of the motherboard.
Almost as if Apple wanted the MBA to be wider than it needed to be...

The left side has the 'flip down' expansion ports. The right side has the power supply connection. I could personally not live without at least 1 USB port... Power I think we can all agree is pretty essential .

C

 

[j26]

...
I think Apple nailed the Ultraportable, though if it had a 12 inch screen that would have been nice, but I don't think it's possible without compromising the Keyboard, which they kept the same.

I'm comparing to the Macbook as it has the same dimensions, and keyboard.

There are 4cm of wasted space around the Macbook keyboard. The bezel takes up 3.5cm. Of course there needs to be a bezel, but even using a 13" screen, certainly at least 2cm (nearly an inch) could be shaved off the width. Dropping to a 12" screen would mean the entire 4cm (over an inch and a half) could be saved in the width and STILL have a full size keyboard.

This is the thing that disappoints me the most about the MBA.

 

[Dreamail]

I'm pretty sure Apple could have made the MBA a whole inch less wide, if not more - at the cost of making the screen 2mm thicker.
But that would have meant they would have lost the 'Thinnest' notebook title by a tiny margin.

Personally, I'd rather had a MBA that's 2mm thicker than its current size but with the same footprint as the PowerBook 12".
I don't agree with Steve Jobs to have the 'Thinnest' notebook at the cost of giving it the same footprint as the MacBook.
But that's just personal preference...

 

[MacsAttack]

The MBA strikes me as a novelty item more than anything else. It's lighter, and it's thinner, but I don't think those are the issues people want addressed in an ultra-portable. It is the width of the machine that is the most important. Honestly, I think what people wanted was a thinner, upgraded 12" PB, and I think that would have been a better move as well. I can't see any realistic advantage to this machine over the MacBook unless you have some sort of disorder that makes your muscles unimaginably weak or you often have to carry your laptop in a manilla envelope.

As I have to carry two laptops (one of them a Dell), the MBA is a perfect machine if I wanted to replace my MacBook. When you are flying - weight matters - cause they bill you for it.

 

[MacsAttack]

Personally, I'd rather had a MBA that's 2mm thicker than its current size but with the same footprint as the PowerBook 12".
I don't agree with Steve Jobs to have the 'Thinnest' notebook at the cost of giving it the same footprint as the MacBook.
But that's just personal preference...

And as i carry a Dell laptop and a bunch of folders and books that are the same footprint as a MBA anyway - thinner and/or lighter far more preferable.

The PowerBook argument only works if the PowerBook is all you carry.

 

[Catch]

I'm pretty sure Apple could have made the MBA a whole inch less wide, if not more - at the cost of making the screen 2mm thicker.
But that would have meant they would have lost the 'Thinnest' notebook title by a tiny margin.

Personally, I'd have rather had a MBA that's 2mm thicker than its current size but with the same footprint as the PowerBook 12".
I don't agree with Steve Jobs to have the 'Thinnest' notebook at the cost of giving it the same footprint as the MacBook.
But that's just personal preference...

2mm is not much to talk about I agree, but in general I think for myself and allot of business people out there, thick < wide. The reason for that is that as a business person I carry documents of some sort daily. A thinner laptop will fit in my A4 document briefcase better than a less wide machine. Being slightly larger than an A4 even gives a degree of protection for the documents edges. Nothing like pulling out a contract with crumpled up edges at a meeting!

For the vast majority of business people making a laptop smaller than a page of A4 by dropping screen size really makes no sense in my opinion.

C