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Thin MacBook Design Details?
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I think you want an iPhone/iPod Touch with third party apps from the upcoming SDK
I really have a hard time understanding why there would be a touch screen on a laptop. the ergonomics are all wrong. Do you use your finger as a mouse? Type with it? Think about how much strain you are putting on your forearms when using your finger as a mouse while trying to keep your hand and wrist from contacting the keyboard.
My opinion is that its either a laptop with no touchscreen, or a tablet with a touch screen but no keyboard. The combo makes no sense unless it folds back on itself.
My opinion is that its either a laptop with no touchscreen, or a tablet with a touch screen but no keyboard. The combo makes no sense unless it folds back on itself.
Tks, Aiden...you are probably right, especially since my only potentially "free" times are gonna be tomorrow after work or wednesday lunch time...oh well, gonna have to find'em back in Europe then...
I have an old PowerBook and it only has 2 USB ports. Only a handful of times did I hook up more than two USB devices and that was an edirol keyboard, mouse, and m-audio session. Problem was solved with a usb powered hub.If it's that thin, it looks like only 2 USB ports at most...that sucks! And probably underpowered too....sigh
I see how that could fit a few situations. However, I have a Mac Pro for my photoshop and illustrator work, but I'd like something light and portable for meetings and going to the coffee shop, especially if I could sync the documents folder. I wouldn't bother doing much PS on the portable. I did that for a few years and it doesn't compare to a big monitor, my 27" monitor works much better for me personally.
I think maybe they want to push forward with technology and release a laptop of the future using almost solely wireless technologies.
Apples current lineup is pretty tied to certain legacy technologies. So it is hard for them to push the boundaries.
At a guess.
I have not done that since the 80's! No joke
And it came on magnetic cassette tape.
And it was called Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cITHSHT_YRw
Why does the 'external' optical drive have to be usb? Apple is EVERYTHING Apple. Do you really think they're gonna leave it up to people to go buy an external USB optical drive for $40? No. They are not. I'm not saying eitherway, but they COULD have integrated a highspeed wireless proprietary communication system between an 'optical' base and the computer. IE, put a CD in underneath the coffee table then load Adobe or watch your girls gone wild DVD or..you know, whatever.
Just a thought.
And ontop of that, why couldn't they have their own special port that you could plug in special dongles to get gigabit, dvi, etc. I've seen plenty of long flat connectors that would be perfect.
Just a thought.
And ontop of that, why couldn't they have their own special port that you could plug in special dongles to get gigabit, dvi, etc. I've seen plenty of long flat connectors that would be perfect.
I can't believe that anyone is asking, "What will I do without an optical drive?"
Have you never seen or heard of an external drive?
Have you never seen or heard of an external drive?
That would be great but Apple needs to then invest in a nation wide mega wifi solution. It would be nice if AT&T would let us use wifi with iPhones for calling because I get a horrible mobile single in my house.
Don't forget the Vaio
Sony's TX or TZ series has had a very thin 5/16th" screen for the past few years with LED backlight and a carbon fiber case.
So combine a screen like that with a super thin keyboard and no optical components base and Apple's really got a super light..
Sony's TX or TZ series has had a very thin 5/16th" screen for the past few years with LED backlight and a carbon fiber case.
So combine a screen like that with a super thin keyboard and no optical components base and Apple's really got a super light..
come up with a standard for distribution of software and move on and do it every ten years.
http://evolationmedia.com/macbook-air-and-what-it-maybe-means/
I really must be a nerd, somehow, or one who's really just affected by design in some (possibly-twisted) way, but...
I don't know how else to express it, but this look--even though I know it probably isn't quite the real thing-- is so beautiful, so absolutely essential to our time, that I hesitate in saying that this might in fact change our entire sense of what technology is. Not now, oh no... not with Leopard's bugs and a window-based interface and the clumsy hacked-together kludge of the Web at this particular moment. Not even, maybe, for ten or fifteen years. But this is the first object that may well be designed for who we really are as people. We are explorers. We were out there hunting and gathering and using our hands--that is, until we recently decided to take that little industrialized break and coop ourselves up in our homes. We spend a lot of our time feeling like we aren't really doing enough, and that worry leaks out in our aggressive spending, our internal dramas, our petty goals. We stopped being in touch with what it really felt like to be alive. We built great tools, and gradually our tools became our focus; somewhere along the line, we lost track of the absurdity of this compromise.
The real promise of the Web has always been its omniscience. It has nothing to do with information, or information overload-- it has to do with ubiquity and transparency. It has to do with offloading the sum of human consciousness and leaving it floating out there, a sea of awareness permeating us like a second soul. Think different, people. This has nothing to do with specs. Nothing to do with current technology--or the lack of an optical drive. This is about coming a step closer to organic technology.
Like the iPhone, which was the result of a realization that people like to control THINGS, not the abstract representations of them, this Macbook Air heralds a different kind of future. One in which our primary untethered-ness is finally understood; one in which our need to just live life is finally brought back into focus. Computers are a long long way from being truly intuitive, but this design evokes something incredible, something thrilling in me. We are leaving behind the wires, the force, the efforts of communicating with a stupid machine. We are free, and so is it. We are endlessly capable, and so (battery life willing) is it.
When Apple does its best work, they create products that are so perfect in their approach that they literally cannot be reimagined.
Looking at this machine, I can honestly say that it is perfection. Not necessarily in specs or in daily use; I mean as an idea, as a created object, as a trendsetter. The iPod wasn't perfect either when it first debuted, but it was obvious why it was needed. It removed everything but the experience of choosing what to listen to and hearing it. It removed the technology and became an extension of one's life.
The Macbook Air, with inductive-based charging and ubiquitous networking, if such things ever came together (and if they came together tomorrow? oh my god) is another of these ideas. Something so radically ahead on a fundamental level that we don't even know how amazing it will become.
For Apple to come back to the "tiny laptop" game, they realized they needed something new, something revolutionary to justify the absence. We've been expecting decent upgrades from them, but we forget that this is a brand-new Apple, one so visionary as to often arrive at solutions before anyone understands the depth of the problem; a company that innovates even when no one understands what it is they can see. When they made a music player, they made the iPod, for god's sake. When they made a phone, it wasn't a phone-- it was a new way to communicate with technology.
Well, they're back, and they removed such a huge part of the "computer" from the equation--the charging cables, ethernet, tethered disks (Time Machine backup to AirPort MUST be coming...) the extra weight, and maybe even the need for wi-fi tethering--that it is now the digital equivalent of a notebook. It is ever-present, yet completely unobtrusive. It is as ready as you are. Long ago I envisioned (as many have-- it's not at all an original concept) a device I called "the Reader"--a notebook-type wireless communication system. This device simply existed to tap into the framework of human awareness in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. Gesture-based, context-sensitive, intelligent and uncomplicated, it would express a nearly infinite potential without ever feeling overwhelming.
Many of these ideas may make their way more readily into an Apple tablet, but I can see that their design language is definitely on to something. It's the teardrop shape. The colors (neutrals yet beautiful). The organic, weightless feeling of it. It's the sense that this is no longer a foreign object. It's the first step towards something altogether new--a true fusion. And it's weightless the way we are weightless, ultimately free of any connection to anything but the earth we're born on and the identity we give ourselves.
I know it's all hyperbolic, and perhaps I'm simply overthinking, but if the device Apple releases tomorrow is anything like this image, it's a bigger deal than anyone but a few people at Apple realize.
Just think about it.
I really must be a nerd, somehow, or one who's really just affected by design in some (possibly-twisted) way, but...
I don't know how else to express it, but this look--even though I know it probably isn't quite the real thing-- is so beautiful, so absolutely essential to our time, that I hesitate in saying that this might in fact change our entire sense of what technology is. Not now, oh no... not with Leopard's bugs and a window-based interface and the clumsy hacked-together kludge of the Web at this particular moment. Not even, maybe, for ten or fifteen years. But this is the first object that may well be designed for who we really are as people. We are explorers. We were out there hunting and gathering and using our hands--that is, until we recently decided to take that little industrialized break and coop ourselves up in our homes. We spend a lot of our time feeling like we aren't really doing enough, and that worry leaks out in our aggressive spending, our internal dramas, our petty goals. We stopped being in touch with what it really felt like to be alive. We built great tools, and gradually our tools became our focus; somewhere along the line, we lost track of the absurdity of this compromise.
The real promise of the Web has always been its omniscience. It has nothing to do with information, or information overload-- it has to do with ubiquity and transparency. It has to do with offloading the sum of human consciousness and leaving it floating out there, a sea of awareness permeating us like a second soul. Think different, people. This has nothing to do with specs. Nothing to do with current technology--or the lack of an optical drive. This is about coming a step closer to organic technology.
Like the iPhone, which was the result of a realization that people like to control THINGS, not the abstract representations of them, this Macbook Air heralds a different kind of future. One in which our primary untethered-ness is finally understood; one in which our need to just live life is finally brought back into focus. Computers are a long long way from being truly intuitive, but this design evokes something incredible, something thrilling in me. We are leaving behind the wires, the force, the efforts of communicating with a stupid machine. We are free, and so is it. We are endlessly capable, and so (battery life willing) is it.
When Apple does its best work, they create products that are so perfect in their approach that they literally cannot be reimagined.
Looking at this machine, I can honestly say that it is perfection. Not necessarily in specs or in daily use; I mean as an idea, as a created object, as a trendsetter. The iPod wasn't perfect either when it first debuted, but it was obvious why it was needed. It removed everything but the experience of choosing what to listen to and hearing it. It removed the technology and became an extension of one's life.
The Macbook Air, with inductive-based charging and ubiquitous networking, if such things ever came together (and if they came together tomorrow? oh my god) is another of these ideas. Something so radically ahead on a fundamental level that we don't even know how amazing it will become.
For Apple to come back to the "tiny laptop" game, they realized they needed something new, something revolutionary to justify the absence. We've been expecting decent upgrades from them, but we forget that this is a brand-new Apple, one so visionary as to often arrive at solutions before anyone understands the depth of the problem; a company that innovates even when no one understands what it is they can see. When they made a music player, they made the iPod, for god's sake. When they made a phone, it wasn't a phone-- it was a new way to communicate with technology.
Well, they're back, and they removed such a huge part of the "computer" from the equation--the charging cables, ethernet, tethered disks (Time Machine backup to AirPort MUST be coming...) the extra weight, and maybe even the need for wi-fi tethering--that it is now the digital equivalent of a notebook. It is ever-present, yet completely unobtrusive. It is as ready as you are. Long ago I envisioned (as many have-- it's not at all an original concept) a device I called "the Reader"--a notebook-type wireless communication system. This device simply existed to tap into the framework of human awareness in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. Gesture-based, context-sensitive, intelligent and uncomplicated, it would express a nearly infinite potential without ever feeling overwhelming.
Many of these ideas may make their way more readily into an Apple tablet, but I can see that their design language is definitely on to something. It's the teardrop shape. The colors (neutrals yet beautiful). The organic, weightless feeling of it. It's the sense that this is no longer a foreign object. It's the first step towards something altogether new--a true fusion. And it's weightless the way we are weightless, ultimately free of any connection to anything but the earth we're born on and the identity we give ourselves.
I know it's all hyperbolic, and perhaps I'm simply overthinking, but if the device Apple releases tomorrow is anything like this image, it's a bigger deal than anyone but a few people at Apple realize.
Just think about it.
Pfft, to heck with class, I'll be staying home for the afternoon
About the design mockup, I can't say I really like it. I've never been a fan of the tapered designs.
I'm anxious to see if there's something worth replacing my current MacBook though.
I'm going to be on my Sidekick getting SMS updates and web updates while on the way to school. I get 45 minutes of watching, though.
This isn't always true. More likely than not the last few announcements of products at MWSF have not been available immediately.
So now 9to5 Mac implies that it will be both a subnotebook and a tablet. It's all starting to make sense now!
That would be quite brilliant, indeed...
http://www.9to5mac.com/wired-is-like-90-right-452324534523
That would be quite brilliant, indeed...
http://www.9to5mac.com/wired-is-like-90-right-452324534523
Yes! Please! Let it look like this! Lose the firewire! Lose the optical drive! Lose ethernet! THIN is the ONLY thing that matters in a machine like this...it's not for Photoshop, DVD authoring, or sitting on your home network...add a tiny $29 USB to ethernet dongle as an option (a la the USB modem), include an external DVD writer (slim of course), and sell it for $1500...this could be huge. Perhaps built-in 3G wireless (something in the air)?
Am I the only one here who wants to say "Hold your horses?"
I don't want to rain on the parade, but if this MacbookAir is the same dimensions as a macbook today, except 8mm thinner, and 3 lbs instead of 5 lbs, is that really a big deal (and i'm guessing based upon the mockups)?
Especially if we lose processing power or battery life. At some point, we need to say is it worth it for it to be any thinner?
There has to be something new- not just smaller size....
Multitouch COULD be it, if this Macbook Air fully folds 360deg to a tablet. If it is a Thin Macbook with no DVD, wireless everything, and a multitouch SCREEN, then a lot of people are going to say cool, but my arms hurt using multitouch just to spin and magnify photos (is there really any big reason for multitouch except the cool factor yet?).
The price is going to be $1999
I don't want to rain on the parade, but if this MacbookAir is the same dimensions as a macbook today, except 8mm thinner, and 3 lbs instead of 5 lbs, is that really a big deal (and i'm guessing based upon the mockups)?
Especially if we lose processing power or battery life. At some point, we need to say is it worth it for it to be any thinner?
There has to be something new- not just smaller size....
Multitouch COULD be it, if this Macbook Air fully folds 360deg to a tablet. If it is a Thin Macbook with no DVD, wireless everything, and a multitouch SCREEN, then a lot of people are going to say cool, but my arms hurt using multitouch just to spin and magnify photos (is there really any big reason for multitouch except the cool factor yet?).
The price is going to be $1999
Why are Mac lovers obsessed with thin? I mean, who cares if something is 1.0" vs 0.8". For practical purposes, no differences and it becomes MUCH more fragile. I don't understand how you can say half the things you just did. The only thing that matters is thin? So even if it isn't usable or practical, as long as it's thin, it's golden? Makes no sense. Primary purpose of the thing's very existence is to be USED. Not usable= no point.
I DO that a 2" thick laptop is all but worthless, but come on. That was too much.