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MacBook Air

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rocketman

rocketman

flying low
Apple - MacBook Air

It's a neat concept and an impressive feat, but frankly I don't know why Apple made this thing. I don't see how it fits in their current product line-up.

If I need a super tiny laptop, I don't want to carry around $2000 in hardware everywhere I go.

I was more impressed with their Time Capsule. A 1 TB wireless NAS for $500 is not a bad deal at all. Let's you wirelessly back-up your files automatically with Time Machine in Leopard.

Apple - Time Capsule
 
To install programs from disk, all you need is another computer! Um... okay.

It's cute and all, but 80GB doesn't cut it for a primary computer anyway, so I guess the market is people who only need it for a few things, but need to do those things in a snazzy sort of way. Not surprising they brought up presentations so often - seems well suited for a sales tool.
 
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I have a 2 pound dell, tiny ass laptop, that I use for work a lot. It's nice when I need to do some network testing and the testing equipment in my tool box isn't enough. I don't know much about Mac networks, but I can guess that any admin would need some sort of access to administrate it, and when you're traveling all over to keep things running, installing new data center, etc... the lighter the better. The same can be said for sales people on the go, toss it into your brief case, doesn't take my space, plug it into a projector at the location and display your whatever...
 
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Deety;1067462; said:
To install programs from disk, all you need is another computer! Um... okay.

It's cute and all, but 80GB doesn't cut it for a primary computer anyway, so I guess the market is people who only need it for a few things, but need to do those things in a snazzy sort of way. Not surprising they brought up presentations so often - seems well suited for a sales tool.
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To be honest, I think I've used the optical drive on my MacBook maybe a dozen times or so in the year and a half that I've had it. I might be in the minority because I don't watch any movies on my computer and download almost all of my software off the internet. The lack of an optical drive wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me, but the fact that, for the MacBook Air, I'd have to pay a huge premium to not have it is a pretty shitty proposition. An Asus Eee PC is like $500 - if portability was the priority, I'd get that.
 
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rocketman;1067483; said:
An Asus Eee PC is like $500 - if portability was the priority, I'd get that.
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Bastard beat me to it!

I'm seriously thinking about picking one up to play with.

top.jpg
 
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OCBucksFan;1067470; said:
I have a 2 pound dell, tiny ass laptop, that I use for work a lot. It's nice when I need to do some network testing and the testing equipment in my tool box isn't enough. I don't know much about Mac networks, but I can guess that any admin would need some sort of access to administrate it, and when you're traveling all over to keep things running, installing new data center, etc... the lighter the better. The same can be said for sales people on the go, toss it into your brief case, doesn't take my space, plug it into a projector at the location and display your whatever...
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One problem with the MacBookAir is that you don't have any connectivity options to do any of that. Most of my network troubleshooting requires not only RJ-45 wired ethernet, but a serial port too.

As for presentations, having done that gig for years, I wouldn't want to deal with all the damn dongles to have basic VGA or S-Video out. Just give me an old clunker that's durable and has eleventy-thousand ports built in to the back, plus two PCMCIA cards already setup to cover anything that it couldn't do out of the box.

No. This MacBook probably has few practical real-world uses. It's a very pretty laptop for gadget freaks and snobs. Honestly, it probably borders on being so thin it might even be uncomfortable to use -- I don't know, I'll have to see for myself.
 
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Dryden;1067701; said:
One problem with the MacBookAir is that you don't have any connectivity options to do any of that. Most of my network troubleshooting requires not only RJ-45 wired ethernet, but a serial port too.
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I use a usb to serial port adapter.

As for presentations, having done that gig for years, I wouldn't want to deal with all the damn dongles to have basic VGA or S-Video out. Just give me an old clunker that's durable and has eleventy-thousand ports built in to the back, plus two PCMCIA cards already setup to cover anything that it couldn't do out of the box.
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I agree, the Dell I have is a p3 900mhz, and does everything I need it to for the reason that it's basic, light and just about that.

No. This MacBook probably has few practical real-world uses. It's a very pretty laptop for gadget freaks and snobs. Honestly, it probably borders on being so thin it might even be uncomfortable to use -- I don't know, I'll have to see for myself.
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I agree here, I don't know how practical it is, then again, I don't know how practical any mac item is, other than limited Adobe Illustrator work back in the day I have never actually used one for anything. It's a showoff toy as best I can tell, like the Libretto laptop was way back in the day, but I can see how people would justify it.

Then again, I have a hard time even seeing a businessman carrying a laptop around. My treo has an optional component to output to a display, or projector, and can view and redisplay spreadsheets, pdfs, word documents and powerpoint, sure it may not be as spiffy as a mac laptop, but for the "businessman doing a presentation" purpose, I can see it being more viable and easier to carry around than this macbook air.
 
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OCBucksFan;1067866; said:
I agree here, I don't know how practical it is, then again, I don't know how practical any mac item is, other than limited Adobe Illustrator work back in the day I have never actually used one for anything. It's a showoff toy as best I can tell, like the Libretto laptop was way back in the day, but I can see how people would justify it.
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If "practical" equates to "cheap," then yeah, Macs aren't practical. However, Macs are very capable computers in their own right. I suppose if you're in IT they wouldn't be much use to you, unless all your computers ran OS X or Linux or something.

I've built every computer I've owned before getting a Macbook and I can't think of anything I'm not able to do now that I was able to do on PC (with the obvious exception of playing games - but I don't have time to do that now anyway).
 
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Taosman;1067942; said:
Just how big is it's "flash drive"? 32G?
This thing is just a toy!
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Like most of the Apple lineup. Mac's are designed for the vanity crowd not for hard core techies or IT work. My work with computers never takes me into a world where I work with anything Mac. What I find most comical about Apple are their absurd lineup of commercials where they try to make it seem as though they are superior to PC's in every way. Fact is that in most every way a well built PC out performs a MAC from top to bottom.

The few Mac's I have come into contact with have been nothing but trouble and two of them were returned and exchanged for PC's. Could just be I have come across a few that were different than the norm but I have not been impressed before and I doubt I will be now. I'll stick with my two Dell laptops.
 
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One thing I'll say about macs vs pcs, I don't see many mac users that avoid the new OS for 3-4 years like with XP (2000) & now Vista (XP).
I'll stick with my two Dell laptops.
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Interesting choice for a contrast to instability/problematic.
 
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I will preface this by saying that I will not even consider getting this thing. However, some of the things they did with this reflect the kind of things I'd like to see in my next notebook.

Here is the list of crap my old (but still reliable) clunker of a notebook has that I have pretty much no use for:
  • Expansion slot for floppy drive
  • PCMCIA slot + empty expansion slot for another
  • VGA output
  • Parallel port
  • 56K modem
  • Ethernet port
  • S-video output
  • Proprietary docking station output
Granted, there are a lot of people who need those things, but I'm not one of them. Despite the limited connections on the MacBook air, it has everything I need and then some. The only thing that it is really lacking as far as my demands are concerned is an optical drive (as has already been mentioned), specifically a DVD writer.

I don't use any video outputs, but if I had that need the included mini DVI adapters would probably suit my needs. I wouldn't anticipate needing more than one USB port at a time (I have three on my current notebook), but a bus-powered travel hub takes care of that problem for me. I use wireless networking exclusively, so I don't have a need for any of the other connection options.

That said, price, lack of an optical drive, and the fact that the battery is not replaceable by a typical consumer by myself are each dealbreakers for me. It should also be noted that they are claiming a 5-hour battery life for this thing, but I have no doubt that that is only the case with every power-saving measure in place - including forking over the cold $1000 for the solid state drive so you have no moving parts.

I'm excited about it though because like I said, it reflects a lot of the things I would want in a more reasonably priced Window-based notebook, and it stands as a pretty good accomplishment by Apple regardless of whether or not it is practical for anybody who isn't a Mac blogger.
 
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