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The real point of MacBook Air - and why everyone is missing it.

Excellent points.

You stated that battery will charge up within 5 minutes- thats kinda cool. You also state double amount of battery power compared to now. It would be better to give a range in time span instead. As differnt laptops have differnt battery power capacity.

Eg Macbook air may have 2 hours.

But the new Hp laptop has over 24 hours.

Are you saying by 2010 we will have over 4 hours of battery as standard or 48 hours battery life as standard.

Stuart in Oz said:
It seems to me that everyone is missing the real point of the MacBook Air.

This computer was not released to be a great laptop. It wasn't released to sell in large volumes and it wasn't released to give you everything you currently get in a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Air was released to remind the world that Apple is way ahead of the rest of the industry. It is to plant in the minds of the consumer today the seed that will sprout into a visit to an Apple shop for a new laptop in 2010.

Apple have always been deeply involved in the development and progress of portable computing and they want to stay at the cutting edge.

In 1989 they broke new ground with the Macintosh Portable, setting the basic design for modern laptops. In 1991, (to quote Wikipedia), "The Apple PowerBook series, introduced in October 1991, pioneered changes that are now de facto standards on laptops." In 2001 we got the Titanium Powerbook - that machine set the basic standard in design (both stylistic and technical) for laptops for the next 7 years (and still counting).

Now, once again, there are technologies coming together that make a radical redesign possible. And so Apple have given it to us. The MacBook Air. Think of the MacBook Air as the pioneering generation of the next 10 years of Apple laptops. Like the Titanium Powerbook it has set a basic size and shape that breaks new boundaries and it has brought together a grouping of technologies that will become standard over the 10 year life of this design.

  • Multi Touch not very useful? Wait until the software makers have had 3 or 4 years to explore it's potential.
  • Fixed battery with poor life? The battery industry is promising new generation batteries by around 2010 with double the current life and 5 minute recharging times (do a Google search - look for Hitachi especially).
  • No optical drive? Think how far iTunes has come with music in the last 3 years. How far do you think it will go with movies in the next 3? And my local computer store is selling 8GB USB keys for A$49 (US$39) at the moment. In 3 years you don't think 64GB keys will be the same price? Who wants a DVD burner then?
  • No inbuilt Ethernet & only 1 USB? 3 years ago I was the only person with a wireless network in my street. Right now my computer is detecting 18 home networks and my middle aged non-technical neighbour proudly showed me her new wireless printer two weeks ago. Wireless really is the future. Even hotels will catch up.
  • Scared by the price of the SSD? 3 years ago a 64GB SSD would have put a premium on the machine of over $10 000. Today it's down to a few hundred dollars. By 2010 it will be the standard.

So sure, the MacBook Air of early 2008 has limitations, is missing heaps of stuff we all think is essential and probably won't sell that many. But when you go to buy your next laptop, and the one after that, it will likely be an upgraded version of what we have seen released today.

And ever newspaper reader and TV news watcher of today's unveiling will remember for the next 10 years that Apple were the first to do this modern new design that everyone else is now copying, and honey, shouldn't we see what they have in their store before we look at a PC laptop?
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Tosser said:
Are you saying that people's arguments against the MBA is only valid if they purchased one? You know where that argument takes you, right? Unless you murdered someone you cannot say it's immoral and shouldn't be done. Hell, you could even say that unless you killed of an entire people, you shouldn't have any qualms with it.




So? I could earn money with it too. It wouldn't be a great experience and certainly not the most productive choice, but I could do it in a pinch.


Or if you needed, say, firewire, an extra/swappable battery, smaller footprint (it's the size of the MacBook), more hdd-space, an ethernet plug or a 3G modem while using an external HDD and most other things, you'd hopefully buy something else.



See above.


Sounds like a pda would do the job just splendidly. I'm not surprised a MBA works for you.


Utility? Which utility? But again, I see you emphasizing the "style"-portion of the MBA.


Propably. Hence most of those can make do with a smart phone, a PDA and/or an EEE-PC.


Wait. So you're saying, after stating more or less that the MBA in it's current incarnation is close to perfect, that it's not? That it actually will need to get some more features? If not, why would it become more featured after a year with feedback from users like yourself?



I'll take a lenovo over any recent Apple any day when it comes to quality.
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The MBA is a for a niche market. Just like a Mac Pro. I have a Mac Pro and an MBP. Fits my needs. An MBA wouldn't. However, my wife has an MBP... used it for several years. Now she has an MBA too. Its perfect for her needs. She doesn't want a smart phone or PDA or ... she wants a full sized key board to write with, she researches on the internet, she uses the browser and MS Office. Did I mention she needs a full sized keyboard. And she travels with it. The MBP was great, but heavy. The MBA she can take anywhere... its light and small.

The Mac Pro is a niche product, the iMac is niche product, the iBook was a niche product. The Air is a niche product. Hell, all Apple computers are practically niche products.....

The Air does what it was designed to do. It does it well. Its not for everyone. Nor is Apple for everyone. If you don't like the Air, don't buy it. But don't denigrate it because it doesn't work for you when it obviously works for others. [/scotch fuelled rant]
 
I never understood why people freak out and "need" firewire ports, lots of USB ports, dedicated video etc. I consider myself a very average user. I use my computer for normal tasks like writing papers, email, viewing lecture PDF's, working in Excel, browsing, music, etc. I use the USB port for two things: transferring music to my Walkman, and getting lecture recordings off my voice recorder (which doubles as a flash drive).

I am totally satisfied with the specs of the MBA, and the only thing I would change is to reduce the size of the bezel.

Also, the overall "feel" of the computer can be worth a lot for those who appreciate it. The MBA just feels and looks incredibly solid.
 
trygve said:
Do you remember when Apple stopped equipping their computers with floppydisks? Everyone was howling about how terrible this was, lots of external floppys became available, and so on. And where's the floppy now?
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Your point is valid and well-taken, but think back to when floppies went bye-bye - CD burners had become easy to get hold of, and blank CD-R's were shy of a quarter apiece. You could still burn some files to a medium that was inexpensive enough to give away to someone (I'm thinking of how often these days I give an entire group of files, 100-300 Mb total, to a client - not always practical with FTP).

Maybe the day will come when optical media are completely phased out, but I don't see that happening until something inexpensive replaces it. I'm sorry, but I still don't see anyplace where I can buy a spindle of 50 thumb drives for under $20, so I'm not about to start giving those away to people.
 
Tomorrow said:
Your point is valid and well-taken, but think back to when floppies went bye-bye - CD burners had become easy to get hold of, and blank CD-R's were shy of a quarter apiece. You could still burn some files to a medium that was inexpensive enough to give away to someone (I'm thinking of how often these days I give an entire group of files, 100-300 Mb total, to a client - not always practical with FTP).

Maybe the day will come when optical media are completely phased out, but I don't see that happening until something inexpensive replaces it. I'm sorry, but I still don't see anyplace where I can buy a spindle of 50 thumb drives for under $20, so I'm not about to start giving those away to people.
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Actually, IIRC, when Apple got rid of floppies, CDR's were about $1 and RW's were even more expensive. And the drives themselves were very expensive too. Our first burner was a Plextor 12x drive which cost $150 in 2000.

Also, when Apple phased out CRT's, flat panels were very expensive and had not gained wide acceptance yet. I think Apple is ahead of the curve here, even though the Air has some drawbacks. One thing that's really missing from Mac is a unified app delivery system like Steam... lots of games come on physical media still, but then again gaming on Macs isn't really supported anyways.
 
Nothing is ahead of the curve on the Air.

The real point of the Air is that it's a non-optimal compromise in the interests of style, appreciated by people who can only determine a computer's worth in the way it looks. Inside it's an engineering disaster in many ways.

If that's the future - well I guess I'd better get back to abacus proficiency. There have been better executed - if not quite as stylish - example of this type machine in the past, and there will be in the future. But likely not from Apple.
 
Santa Rosa said:
To the OP. That is a hands down brilliant post. I wish I had a time machine so we could go and prove you right. Great post.
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While the battery may have been a little exaggerated, he nailed most of it, 4 years later. Kudos to the OP if he's still around these boards.
 
The wireless part is also untrue. Researchers have found the opposite: wireless overcrowds the ether and is very inefficient (about 80% is overhead, 20% is actual data). Right now the future isn't wireless but wired until we can solve the overcrowding problem and make wireless protocols efficient again (flipping the numbers: 80% data, 20% overhead). Apple seems to have realised this: there is the usb-ethernet adapter as well as the thunderbolt-gigabit ethernet adapter.

The most amazing thing is that the OP was true about Apple setting a standard in notebooking. Look at the Ultrabooks.
 
I'm pulling numbers out of my arse, but it seems like 80% of the users can have their needs met by today's Air and Ultrabooks, while the rest of the 20% represents gamers and professionals who want/need the most power they can get from a desktop replacement meaty laptop.

Where is the money to be had from companies wanting to maximize profit and exposure? I am thinking by attracting the attention from those in the 80% group, that's largely where the focus is I think.
 
ee13lbp said:
lol, reading the predictions people had for the MacBook air back in 2008 is strange, lots of them are actually right :S
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I had the original Air (and the Rev B). Back then Air owners took a lot of heat on the Macworld forums because it was "overpriced" and "you're just lazy if you think a 4.5lb notebook is too heavy." I couldn't believe how much resistance there was to dropping the optical drive, even though there was an external option. Even in 2008 I didn't use a DVD or CD that often (mostly just to install programs or encode a CD).
 
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