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MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security
Ant writes "MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."
TSA agents have a difficult job as it is. How much harder do Apple fanboys have to make it for them by insisting that their toys are "computers"?
Anyone who's ever tried to bring a less-than-common piece of electronics through airport security has probably had them happen to this. I've had TSA agents inquire about my TI-89 on two separate occasions. Is this story really news? or just cleverly embedded marketing?
He should've gotten to the airport earlier. It sounds like he was operating on razor-thin margins, and got bit. Tough. Deal with it.
In other news, the Ooga Chaka tribe brutally murdered a tourist to their village who was carrying a double-blunt-ended walking stick.
Apparently, the "spear with a lack of features" was cause for great alarm among the Ooga-Chakas.
Not just any bomb, mind you. It's a really thin bomb. With NO optical drive, which makes it perfectly useless to me.
Everyone else should read the original blog post, and note that his flight was taking off AS he was talking to customs. Meaning he showed up at or after boarding time. Airlines suggest showing up 1 to 1.5 hours before takeoff, not at the last minute. Furthermore, I call bullshit on this story. I've recently traveled internationally and went through 8 major airports (plus 'random selection' secondary inspection in Philadelphia) throughout the world, with a laptop, Nintendo DS, two Ipod Mini's, and a case of DVD's all stuffed into my laptop bag, while returning from an Islamic nation and nobody asked me to show them anything.
Perhaps those technically adept people choose not to stand behind an X-ray scanner for 12 hours a day.
Since the purpose of the TSA isn't to stop terrorism but to act as a social placebo, would you really want to waste hundreds of thousands of intelligent and educated man-hours on it?
It really boils down to the technically ignorant doing work that requires at some point a certain minimum level of technical competence. Kind of like a PHB making computer and networking decisions. I have not flown commercial in many years. The more stories I hear from my friends who still fly, the more I will take the train. There may be a case where I will fly again some day, but not if a viable alternative is available. I used to like to fly. I liked zipping into different cities, doing my job and popping back. It was exciting. Now, it would just be painful. Not my cup of tea.
BTW, if you fly on private craft, my experience so far has been a decided lack of idiots to deal with. Kind of makes the cost and time to get a pilots license that much more attractive.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
No irony is misspelling the word "first" in a first-post.
It's not even Alanis ironic.
The whole story is part of a viral marketing campaign intended to establish the Air as different, iconic.
Behind me, I hear the younger agent, perhaps not realizing that even the TSA must obey TSA rules, repeating himself."It's a MacBook Air."
It's 1984 all over again..."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I too have been through countless security check points with enough electronics in my bags to make my back hurt. I have never had a problem with the people at security. However, I travel with a wife and colleagues who are not always so lucky. The difference? I am a white guy and they are not. Sad but true. Next time you are in line watch who is being searched or detained.
One morning the fate of the free world depended on my screener's determination on if a pair of Vibram Five Fingers was a shoe or not. Never mind that I own bulkier socks than this, but apparently it's a shoe.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
This seems very reasonable. No ports, no disc drive, completely metallic instead of plastic. I could see how it would set of some warning bells that there might be more to this guy's laptop than he claims. Taken in this light it actually raises my views of the TSA and certainly makes it seem like they're actually looking out for potential safety threats.
Either way, had he been there a little earlier he could have had plenty of time to explain his new gadget and boarded the plane. TSA (and common sense) - 1, jackass blogger - 0.
Don't bother. End of this year the government has a new tax package and special user fees that will increase the costs by over 400% (proceeds going to fund tax breaks for the airlines, of course) and "increase security" for private airfields as well. It was nice while it lasted but the party's over.
"I'm sick of some guy with a triple digit income and a double digit IQ rooting around inside my bag and never finding anything" -- George Carlin
Ace
I categorically resent that. Historically our business transformation architecture achieves multipoint synergies by the close-tracking of business channel optimisation strategies, and our decision workshopping with regard to procurement of necessary infrastructure precludes the detail assessment quid-pro-quo with regard to non-executive decision makers. If I say we need duplicate DHCP servers then by god I want them to be exact duplicates, from their highly redundant address lists right down to the tiny little rubber feet!
And I have great hair! Just ... not much of it any more.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
See.... "private craft" is all well and good, but unless you can afford a Gulfstream or some other such ridiculousness, you're stuck in a Cessna 172 doing about 140knots. After paying for the aviation fuel and spending and hour dicking around getting it out of the hangar, checklists, etc, then worrying about where to put it when you arrive... and what to drive...
Your break-even distance is almost 8 hours... in other words... if you aren't expecting to have to drive 8 hours, use your car or take a bus.
If you're going further than 8 hours by car, it's going to be like 5+ hours by Cessna and just suck up the 45 minutes to get through security (and the $500 in fuel) and take Southwest Airlines for $99.
I've only ever heard of about 3 situations where it was actually ECONOMICAL (both time and money) to take a private plane, unless you're god-awful rich and can afford a pilot to handle the checklists before you arrive.
SI
I don't know who is dumber, the TSA screeners, or the guy who paid $3100 for an SSD MacBook Air.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Hey give them a break. You try working full-time for $20k/year, lifting heavy bags all day and dealing with smug assholes that think they are better than you.
Frankly, I am surprized one of those guys/gals doesn't pull a gun and go postal.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It's entirely fair! The airport "security" is just silly "security theatre" and does nothing to improve safety. At the risk of a holiday in Cuba: it's trivially easy to knock an airliner out of the sky with ordinary, innocuous materials. No amount of "security" checks can prevent this!
You must appreciate the IT Director who demands (and I mean vehemently demands) that all 5000 computers deployed MUST HAVE FEET. I think it's so that they can evacuate in case of fire. Makes sense to me.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
It doesn't even succeed against known threats. They have regular security screenings where a TSA agent sneaks through a fake bomb disguised as a back brace or something innocuous. Less than a 50% success rate at stopping it. If "the terrorists" actually get to that point, it's more likely than not that TSA will let them through.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
That's not irony, that's just gaming the slashdot first-post delayer (tm). If an otherwise first post contains the word first or post, Slashdot delays it until a second post is available, and posts it afterwards. This is meant to protect against overzealous frist psot hunting. Indeed, in the olden days, you had to first wade across some 20+ posts per story which all called out first post, and it became a distraction. They had to put the delayer in, in order to stop the madness. So nowadays trolls just mipsel.