Slashdot Mirror
Apple Announces MacBook Air
Apple made four announcements at MacWorld Expo: the new MacBook Air, new features for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and movie rentals via iTunes from a TV without a computer involved. The new portable gets most of the attention. It is 0.76" thick at the thickest part, tapering to 0.16". It weighs 3 pounds and has a 13.3" screen and full-size, backlit keyboard. Its Intel chip is the diameter of a dime and the thickness of a nickel. The MacBook Air will cost $1799 and up. Its storage is either 80 GB disk or 64 GB solid-state drive. 2 GB of memory. It has no optical drive (an external one is available for $99) and features a way to wirelessly use the optical drive of any nearby Mac or PC with the proper software installed.
Or you can buy them from Apple, download them from other sources, or rip them from your own DVDs.
How is this related to lock-in again?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Just because it costs a lot doesn't mean it's overpriced. It's a deal compared to comparable Sony models with less power and aren't as thin.
Then get a MacBook. Sorry but you are not going to fit it into that form factor.
"Wah Wah Wah, I want a replaceable battery in the iPod."
Get a Nomad. Some companies even have players which take AAs.
"But they're not tiny like an iPod".
Compare a AA to an iPod... there's no way you're going to get it into that form factor.
Go take the battery out of your laptop. Notice all the extra plastic around the battery. And then the laptop has to have plastic where the battery sits. So you're already essentially doubling the case thickness.
Do you want a laptop that is 0.16" to 0.76" thick? Go grab a ruler and put that in perspective. There is no way in hell you're going to do that with a standard external battery.
If you are not willing to accept those tradeoffs then you are not the target market for the MacBook Air. Might I suggest a MacBook or a MacBook Pro?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
What happens if your battery goes dead? You throw away the all thing? You pay for expensive service to install a new one? For many people swapping batteries are just a way to keep going with their work.
Compared to Vaios that have a DVD drive or 200GB second drive built in?
Really thin is only so useful. The Vaio TZ (along with some Japanese laptops that we don't get here in the states) allows you to change the way that you live. You can stuff those notebooks into a man-purse (Tumi makes some that fit rather well) and go. You can use them in the coach section of an airplane without fear of screen-crunch.
I'm not saying that the Macbook Air is a bad thing. Thin notebooks are nice, but thickness is the dimension that I find least annoying in a notebook (keeping in mind that my thickest notebook is a comparably enormous Vaio FZ, and my favorite notebook is my Thinkpad T42). I wouldn't want my sub-notebook to be as thick as the old Thinkpads were (think DSM-IV hardcover) size, but the footprint matters as well.
If only someone would bring back the old butterfly keyboard of the Thinkpad 701...
Target audience? When was the last time you were in an Apple store? The place was flooded with teens and parents. Right before fall semester starts its flooded with college freshmen. I was in there after christmas. A guy was in there with his daughter, she was going to get an iPhone. She was 14. There is a large population that falls under "rich" but above $100,000 a year. People that probably have insane amount of debt but have the latest and greatest.
Could you imagine this in a college setting? 90% of these kids just use AIM, Mail, & Word. And before you go off ranting about how expensive it is for some college kid. Imagine those kids who drive new cars to college. The ones whose parents live in 500,000 houses and drive the latest from Mercedes. $5k is a drop in the bucket, I'm sure they can find another credit card to put it on.
But you know what, they keep Apple in business. And as long as they do that I'm happy with the other toys Apple gives me (ZFS, Unix, Stuff that just works(tm)).
The same reason I don't have a problem with BMW selling their 3 and 5 series to any yuppie that wants to buy it. People that won't even touch the performance of what it's capable of. Because those people give BMW money to make nice toys for me like the M3 which I can take out to the track.
Huh? Who made you the official spokesperson for the needs of business users everywhere?
I imagine this will see excellent sales among business users, regardless of the "integrated battery". A Core 2 Duo at 1.8Ghz isn't exactly "poor performing". My Macbook Pro is the first generation model with the original Core Duo (not Core 2) CPU in it. It still performs quite well for me, so I'd expect to see similar overall performance from the Macbook Air.
Furthermore, as Apple pointed out, the thickest portion of this notebook is THINNER than the thinnest part of Sony's Vaio slim notebook line. The battery life is rated as high as 5 hours. The keyboard isn't some "compact" model with keys too closely spaced together, and the display is a full 13.3" instead of some 11" or 12" compromise.
Considering the fact that notebooks are largely non user-serviceable to begin with, the need to mail this off for battery replacement shouldn't be a huge change for most laptop users. (When's the last time your full-size HP, Toshiba or Gateway laptop malfunctioned, and you were able to swap out the defective motherboard or video or display with parts picked up at your local retailer, huh?)
Judging by how many notebooks I see in service with totally non-functional, worn out batteries in them - I think for many people, it's not even a priority..... They don't like the price of new li-ion batteries anyway, so they do without when the original wears out. If you have you car and airline charger/adapter, along with your AC power adapter, the ability to plug it in wherever you go still makes your portable computer pretty darn portable.
The MacBook Air is NOT designed to be a "primary computer."
In fact, the brilliance on Apple's part here is the recognition (FINALLY) that there are lots of people with big honkin desktop machines who also need a portable computer for going out to meetings, travel or just reading the web (on something bigger then a 3" screen) at the local coffee shop. For us, the Air is perfect - a minimalist extension of our main work computer.
The only two complaints I have about the Air are the hard drive (you get to choose slow or obscenely expensive) and the fact that Apple hasn't really taken the concept of a satellite laptop as far as they could in OS X. It would be cool if my MacPro and my laptop used WiFi to sync up documents, preferences, media files and such. This problem is especially acute in iTunes where I have hundreds of GB of media on my main machine, but have to manually manage those things on my laptop. I wish Apple recognized this problem and solved it elegantly.
Other then that, I already pre-ordered my MB Air with the SSD. I can't wait!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609244 Looks pretty decent to me. Newegg 64GB SSD for 1533, 64GB SSD from Apple for 999. This may be the first Apple upgrade ever to be cheaper from the factory than DIY.
It's not a subnotebook. It's a thin notebook that sacrificed an optical drive to be really thin. This is exactly the same width and depth as the standard Macbook (give or take a couple hundredths of an inch). It even retains the insanely thick bezels around the edge of the screen of the Macbook. The eee is a subnotebook. This is just a very attractive, very thin standard notebook.
/wanted the new 12" that apparently just wasn't meant to be. desperately. *sobbing*
But yeah, you're spot-on about the lock-in nonsense. If you want a thin machine, ditching the optical drive and moving to a 1.8" drive is the way to do it. It's been rumored for months that if Apple made a thin/small/light/sub notebook, it wouldn't have an optical drive. It's not like streaming DVD-quality video over 802.11n is a challenge - I can stream 1080p through two floors where I can't even see 802.11g signal.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
No ethernet port, only ONE usb2 port, no microphone jack? Honestly, how are you supposed to use this thing? What if you need to use Ethernet and a flash drive at the same time? Are you supposed to carry around a USB-to-ethernet dongle and a hub... possibly a POWERED hub?
I love how people rave about Apple's "all-in-one" designs, yet in practice every all-in-one computer is a mess of external devices and cables. My grandma, for example, has an all-in-one iMac... with an external modem, an external floppy disk drive, and a hub... since the stupid computer doesn't have any convenient front ports for a USB flash drive.
Oh, and no user-replaceable battery? Thanks but no thanks... there are lots of other ultra-portables that I'd choose over this one.
My bicyles
omg you're not genuinely unaware of the fact that for electronics, smaller is generally more advanced and hence more expensive are you?
if not, why do you constantly talk about its price in terms of its size? ("For a little tiny thing like that...", "the cost of these small machines...")
Everyone goes to the Dodge dealer to look at a Dodge Viper. Some of them buy a Stratus or Neon. It's the halo effect. Even if the Macbook Air just gets people into the stores to buy the "omg better deal" Macbooks, it'll be a success for Apple.
Note: Women are getting more education, and filling more elite/management positions than men.
Note: The CEO of Avon cosmetics joined Apple's board.
Apple got a Gap board member to help with retail design and strategy. Apple got a Google board member to have a strong ally in networks and data distribution.
Apple is not looking in to selling cosmetics, I can guarantee that. What Ms. Jung brings to the table is a huge amount of experience in marketing to women. Women who, per the first note, are going to be earning more, spending more, and who are an expanding market for techno-doo-dads which have been traditionally marketed to men.
Oxygen network vs. Macbook Air? I don't know if that's what's going on here, but I think it's likely to think that Apple will be pushing their products--naming, ad campaigns and more, possibly even specific designs--in ways that will be more and more appealing to women. Making a laptop that's 3 lbs instead of 5 is not something that should be ignored by anyone who has ever noted the difference between the average man's hand/wrist strength and that of the average woman.
Sony has done something similar, but half-a$$ed, with their "Bravia - A TV both Men and Women can Love" campaign. I think Apple will go down this road, and they will do it right.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Wanna bet the touchpad shows up on the other Apple notebooks as they are refreshed?
People DO pay for size. A friend of mine paid almost as much for a Lenovo x61s (IIRC) a few months back. He loves it - it weighs half what his old laptop did, gets about 3-4x the battery life, and takes up so little room that he doesn't need a separate bag for it anymore. That's worth a few hundred bucks for a lot of people, and isn't simply a matter of "being trendy".
I wouldn't want it as my primary computer, but it would certainly do the trick as a second computer (as my iBook does now...).
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I have a Toshiba Portege R500. It's 2.4lbs, .77" thick, includes an optical drive, and has a replaceable battery (usually runs me a full 6hrs on one charge with average usage). Granted it's not as powerful as the mac (it has a 1.2ghz Core 2 Duo) doesn't have all the cute features of the mac (my favorite is the backlit keyboard), but it's lighter and has some essential practical benefits over the mac. IMHO I don't fully understand the hype that's behind the Air. It's not nearly as revolutionary as people are suggesting.
The only consistency in life is the lack thereof
> what are the advantages over a normal laptop?
There are three consistently important things about portable devices - size, weight and battery life. Many people who can afford it are willing to pay for smaller, lighter and longer. It's that simple. If this perspective does not make sense to you - simply write yourself out of the target audience and get on with that which is important to you.
Many users do not need a removable battery, optical drive or additional connectors. It's that simple. If you do, simply write yourself out of the target audience and get on with that which is important to you.
There's a lot to be said about being able to understand another person's perspective and requirements. On a geek site, an engineering achievement such as an incredibly small laptop that (for instance) required Intel to produce a new, smaller chip design is worthy of respect rather than puerile comments about shiny toys. Reducing height by 25% and weight by 40% is a tough design goal. But if you can't understand the user, or appreciate the engineering - just get on with other things.
People say that Apple missed the mark with everything they release. Sometimes they do, but lately it hasn't been very often. One thing Apple knows is their customers. Apple Marketing is truly superb. When you say that Apple "missed the mark," what you really mean is they missed the mark for you, but most likely you weren't in their target market for this device in the first place.
That said, you may be right. Maybe nobody will buy it, but I don't think so.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Well, I've only had a MacBook for four months, which isn't a huge amount of time to go on, but I've not used the Ethernet port once so I'm guessing because it's not necessary. And in eight years of doing the whole road warrior thing with PC laptops - ditto on two USB ports. I know many of my colleagues would disagree because of a need for USB mouse + memory stick. But presumably there's enough people like me out there for whom the design does provide something we need.
I'm pretty sure the 22mm package is new, but I'm happy to be corrected if you can provide a reference.
Oh, come on. Yes, the OQO is smaller but it's a handheld. Yes, similarly sized PC notebooks have been on the market for years and guess what - I think they're incredibly small too! And dearly wish I got something like that from my work. However, from an engineering perspective I can also recognise the effort and achievement in the shape of the MacBook Air, because the tapered shape means less space to work in. Engineering at the margins is usually tough. The M300 damn sure wasn't $300 when it came out - it was $1000 more expensive.
It's even easier to bullshit online, and the lack of comparable alternatives available suggests you're full of it.
Actually, it is. When intelligent, experienced, successful IT people say "I like the look of that product, it's what I need for mobile computing" and you can't understand it - that is a problem with you. And if you can't understand, just walk away.
Yeah, gee, I'm such a sucker. Spending a few weeks wages on something that I know fits my requirements based on years of experience. How ever do I manage to get through life? My last expensive purchase was an American Deluxe Series Ash Telecaster. Pretty basic, no fancy paint job, simple wiring, no humbuckers, no auto-tuning, no whammy bar, no B-Bender, no onboard processing, no mother of pearl scratch plate, no trim, no access to the 24th fret, etc etc. But hey, I've got other guitars. This one looks great, feels great, and provides all the functionality I need from a guitar when I want to just pick up and play. I know my tools, I know their limitations, and I'm willing to part with cash for designs I like. Just because Springsteen's guitar lacks the functionality of Steve Vai's doesn't mean Bruce doesn't get good artistic and/or commercial results out of it. I can live with a single tone control. If that kind of thinking makes me a fanboy, so be it. Having experienced the joy of going from opening my notebook lid to recording riffs within seconds, I'm currently believing Apple have an overall better understanding of what I want from a computer than any other vendor.
Fuck you, my insecure little cupcake.
If you don't like it don't buy it. But get off your sanctimonious high-horse, your false belief that your purchasing decisions are the One True Way and that anyone who differs is a fucking idiot. What you chose to buy does not make you better than other people.
"No nothing"? Except for... a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 gig of RAM, 802.11n wireless, USB2, backlit keyboard, built-in iSight, LED display, 5 hour battery life. Not to mention the software.
Yeah, I guess other than that nothing. If I were a business traveler I'd want one of these. I'm not, so I don't. But I'm not such a child as to think that I'm better than anyone who might.