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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.
(from tech specs page on apple.com)
"Integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery"
Are they serious? No way to swap out a battery halfway through a 10 hour flight? No way to take it out at security check points (or if it catches fire)?
Please tell me I'm misinterpreting that phrase. Want to buy one now, but that's a deal breaker. Argh!!!
-Chris
I thought this was a pretty big part of todays Keynote:
Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, FOX, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Sony all on board.
Library titles: $2.99,
New Releases: $3.99,
HD rentals are $4.99.
Rules: 30 days to start watching. 24 hours to finish
Watch anywhere (Macs, PCs, all current iPods and iPhone
Thanks MacRumors.
I wonder how durable that thing is.... put that in a bag and drop it, see how it compares to the macbooks and thinkpads.
Also why nobody mentioned the EEE pc yet? though the similarity seems to end at portability....
So, somebody's going to buy one, and when they foobar their OS and drop it off at the helpdesk, how do we fix it?
Yes, there is USB, so we'lll need to keep a few USB CD-Rom drives around for these things. >p>ah well, it looks real nice.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
Just a USB2. FireWire target mode has saved my butt so many times, I would really hate to give it up, especially on a portable machine.
Although, you probably don't need it as much if you have that $1000 solid state disk...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Lock-in?
Seriously?
How is it lock-in?
As far as I can tell, Apple still sells plenty of laptops with optical drives. They even sell one as an accessory for this machine.
The fact you are gleefully glossing over this fact in your hurry to paint this one item as a lock-in tool is that this is a subnotebook -- meaning that it doesn't have all of the features that you might expect from a regular laptop in order to meet a number of design goals. If your design goals are small form factor and extended battery life, what are the first things you sacrifice? Bulky, power-consuming electronics like a DVD drive.
But don't let me get in the way of your lock-in rage...
Can you link to something cheaper with a competitive hardware spec? Please do not link to anything physically larger, as size is the primary discriminator in its class. I went looking for a Vaio to price against it but couldn't find anything in its class. HP, Dell, and Lenovo all fell short as well. Before saying it's more expensive than its competition, please actually tell us what its competition IS, keeping in mind that to compete, you have to compete on form factor first.
I already have the Airport Extreme that supports Air Disk which I was lead to believe would be a target for Time Machine, but then they dropped that feature at the last minute. Now they come out with this which still doesn't do what I want. I hope that they will add back Air Disk support for Time Machine.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I'm a tad annoyed by this. iPhone users get the new software update for free, new iPod Touch users get them for free, yet the early adopter iPod Touch people have to stump up $20?
I know I'll end up buying them, but it's the principle of it all...
Exactly. My Macbook Pro has been tweaked every which direction, and now the LCD doesn't sit flush when closed, and part of the case above the F12 key bows outward. I don't know how an even thinner laptop would handle travel duties.
I actually find the hub quite useful. I've never had an issue with Linux or windows recognizing devices. I have a printer/keyboard/mouse hooked in to it so that I only have to plug/unplug one usb cable instead of 3.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Underwelming displays are not exclusive to the Air. Look at the 15in MBP for example. Any other manufacturer offers wuxga upgrades for their 15in laptops. Leopard apparently even has resolution independant control rendering.
How sweet would it be to both see most of your photo and check if it is in focus without zooming in and out? Ahh... one day someone will see the light... Until them, I guess I am getting a dell, dude.
I agree. My claim is that this is going to limit the market for this laptop to a fairly small niche. This is where we disagree:
$1799 is a fairly hefty price tag to pay for a second computer. People have complained about the lack of replaceable battery hampering business use (perhaps that's a big deal, I don't know). My point was for the "travel" user who wants something for entertainment, I thought that the inability to easily watch DVDs with it would limit that use. That's why I suggested a terrific feature would be the ripping of DVDs into iTunes. This will only happen on a large scale on Macs when Apple does it itself and thus does it legally.
This laptop is competing directly with the Sony Vaio market. That's fine, but my point was that it seems like a much smaller market than a good successor to the 12" Powerbook could have.
So yes, my entire point about it not working as a primary computer is that it is playing for a much smaller market, and that Apple has continued to leave a bit of a hole in the Macbook Pro lineup.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I also just noticed that it doesn't come with the Front Row remote by default... you have an option to pay $20 more to get that... what's the deal with that, when the other MBs include it?
The SSD is a $999 upgrade. Have you looked at the prices for 64GB SSDs recently? They tend to run in the $1500 range. I know it's hard to believe, but the SSD from Apple is actually *cheaper* than retail at the moment. It's not something you usually see in BTO upgrades for a Mac.
Frag 'em all...
I can see the attraction of a true small form factor machine (e.g. libretto, eeepc, VAIO TZ ) but other than showing off I just don't see the use of ultra thin but large area machines. They seem like they would be very fragile and no less awkward to pack than slightly thicker machines like the regular macbook.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You're more right than you know.
The difference in price between the 'middle' MacBook and it is $500. I put together a WHOLE PAGE of stuff that is on the cheaper MacBook but not on the Air. And for less money, seriously, look at the specs, it's freaking hilarious. I'm a huge Apple fan boy but I can't say I'm enthusiastic about something that is so blatantly only sold for the 'cool' factor (insert your 'isn't that all Apple products' line here).
Apple really missed the mark with this one here. At $1000-1200, it's reasonable but at %50 more it becomes laughable. I was really hoping for something in that range so I could replace my girlfriend's aging iBook but now it looks like I'll wait for an LED-backlit refresh of a MacBook, you know, that laptop that actually does something for $1200.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
I'm on a 1.5 year old MacBook Pro, on my fourth battery. The first one was recalled, and the next two started performing poorly and both times I called AppleCare and had a new battery on my doorstep the next day without paying a dime.
Actually, that added feature pushed me to buying one of those when they come out. I've got an XBox and a PS3 in the living room fighting over the single ethernet cable there, and a very noisy 2.4ghz spectrum. I've been thinking about getting an 802.11n router for my MBP so I can switch over to 5ghz networking, but the AEBS wasn't doing it for me. However, an AEBS with an internal 500gb drive well get me: Some more zero-downtime networked storage (which I need) A small gig ethernet switch to let my living room devices live in harmony An 802.11n router to let me get off the 2.4ghz spectrum A good place to add external drives from guests or as a later expansion Consolidating all that stuff in the living room (which keeps the light, heat and noise out of my bedroom), in a single box, for a reasonable price seems like a win/win/win to me.
Too much repetition my too much repetition!
Removing unnecessary stuff from a computer - I mean really removing it, not just taking half away and ignoring the half that's left - is difficult when the cheap option is to leave crap hidden inside, and to tell the suits "no, really, people will pay MORE to have LESS!" Sounds goofy, but true. Ever consider building a really really small computer? even with the "micro" and "nano" sized motherboards, there's always a whole bunch of useless ports on it; want to get rid of the unused stuff? go build yer own motherboard is the answer.
... instead, it's within arm's reach or a short walk all the time. The one thing holding me back from Apple was the absence of an ultraportable (and now my only hesitation is no 1024-line display).
Crossing the 3lb barrier has huge physical and psychological changes. Getting a Vaio ultraportable has (dare I say) changed my life: having a computer so light it's harder to not have it around than to drag it everywhere. Never do I have to go home to get email, or look stuff up, or run handy tools, or decide whether to lug the durn heavy thing around
Part of the genius of Apple IS the gumption to say "no, you're not going to have it that way". They compel people to think forward to better ways of solving a long-running problem, rather than hanging back to old solutions. No optical drive? yeesh, they're so 20th Century, get with the download/bittorrent/thumbdrive/802.11n future already. Limited hard drive? wireless shared drive, man. No Ethernet port? get a USB adapter for those rare no-Wi-Fi times.
Time to switch. Apple is hitting the tipping point: just a hair (or 224 lines of video) away from "PC? Vista? why bother what that old stuff?"
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Well, I dunno what macs you bought, but, I seem to think they hold up pretty well, and hold their value amazingly well for resale.
I've only got one mac computer right now...an iBook G3 800Mhz. I think it was built around 2000 or 2001 maybe. I bought it used for $800 with all original cd's, a nice travel case and full accesories in about 2003-20004. I originally bought it to turn into a Gentoo Linux laptop. I kept a very small partition for OSX on it...just to play with. Over time...I redid the box, and put all OSX on it. (Don't worry, I have plenty of gentoo on other boxes). This is 2008 and still my only laptop I work with. It is just now getting a bit long in the tooth for me and slow. I'm about to buy a new macbook pro....and then, I'll relegate this old iBook to the kitchen...as my kitchen computer for emailing while cooking...or looking up recipes..or playing a dvd on.
I don't know of many other laptops out there that stay useful for so long. The OS upgrades seemed to help it keep its usefulness over the years...and it was a solidly built machine.
I don't find that fashionable obsolescence was something built into this product. And, aside from only being USB 1.1....it has served my needs for quite awhile, and I do use it for more than email and surfing. I'm often sshed in from it to my other boxes in the house doing jobs or developing on it....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The difference in price between the 'middle' MacBook and it is $500. I put together a WHOLE PAGE of stuff that is on the cheaper MacBook but not on the Air. And for less money, seriously, look at the specs, it's freaking hilarious. I'm a huge Apple fan boy but I can't say I'm enthusiastic about something that is so blatantly only sold for the 'cool' factor (insert your 'isn't that all Apple products' line here). What amazes me is the gist of the comments, here:
"There's no optical drive!"
"You can pay Apple more money to solve that!"
"There's only one USB port!"
"You can pay Apple more money to solve that!"
"There's no user replacable battery!"
"You can pay Apple to solve that!"
I'm sorry guys, I just don't get this one.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I have to disagree. My wife is a flight attendant. She makes the business frequent fliers look like sunday tourists. There is no way that this thing is going to stand up to the kind of abuse a very frequent traveler needs. Even her macbook, built as solid as it is, is starting to show cracks and wear after 6 months.
The oqo2 has the upgrade option for 650 bucks and they don't have nearly the volume as Apple. Apple is way over priced on this.