Ah, the knives have come out for Apple, and the trolls for the blogs. Suddenly accused of thinking that "no-one's done it before until Apple do" (except that we covered all the other skinny laptops too, and I don't see the words "world's first" appearing in any of MY posts) and failing to mention the shortcomings, what professional Apple haters and even disappointed fans have studiously ignored is that actually, most of the flaws aren't serious flaws at all.
It's all about fitness for purpose. Had the Air replaced the MacBook Pro, I would have been baying for blood along with the anti-Apple hounds. A laptop with one USB port, no Ethernet and a host of expensive peripherals as your standard laptop? Are you kidding? But I can't see how that's the intended market for the Air. It's clearly not designed to be your one and only laptop, but a supplementary machine for travellers on exactly the same lines as the eeePC, which the CES team found was great except that they still needed a drive for CD-based press kits and their fingers got cramped typing. But it doesn't matter because it's £300. So the only real problem with the Air is the same issue Apple always, always has: price.
Let's face it, you're paying for quite standard specs with extraordinary design. And if it matters to you, you'll pay it and if it doesn't you won't. Simple as. Why that makes people so angry, I'll never know. You are not required to buy an Apple Mac of any description and furthermore if someone else has it is not your bounden duty to insist that they're only interested in what's on the outside. For the whopping majority of consumers, only the basic spec is necessary. And while we're talking about value for money at least consider the fact that the software Apple bundles with its machines is in much greater abundance than you'd get with a Windows offering - whether that's useful to each individual is another story.
And now onto the sealed unit. You can't replace the battery or hard drive, and you can't upgrade the unit. Okay. I'm going to stick my neck out on behalf of the average consumer here and say "big deal". I passed literally hundreds of journos heaped up in corners at Macworld and you know, hardly any of them had a bag full of peripherals and spare batteries with them. Because 99% of the time, if you're a travelling laptop user, you won't actually bother and you'll just plug it in somewhere when you can. There will be some who will need this feature but in all likelihood they'll also need a more complex machine anyway. And given that it must feature an extremely tightly packed chassis, it's probably in the average consumer's interest not to be able to fiddle with it.
Apple didn't make this product exclusively for geeks, remember?
There is one point where I will swing over to the critical side and agree 100%. It's an old issue with Apple - the fact that because the battery unit is so locked down, you can only go to Apple if something goes wrong. And that's expensive and just plain cheeky but the company knows very well it can get away with it because it's been doing it with iPods for six generations and it turns out most people who buy them either don't realise or don't care. Remember you're dealing with a company that locks down downloads to one device, as well. If anything, the monopolistic attitude that Microsoft has been criticised for time and again is alive and well at Apple. But if you worry about that kind of thing, then no matter what I say about how very beautiful the machine undoubtedly is, you're still not Apple's target audience anyway.
Opinions always make people needlessly angry. Because I said I'd love a MacBook Air, I must be misleading everyone who ever reads this blog. Because you're all that stupid except for the angry commenter, right? Charming.
Alexandra Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny and will happily engage in reasoned debate. Reasoned.
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Bravo to this piece for pointing out the patently, but frequently overlooked, obvious: Apple makes brilliant but not flawless products. Time and again pushing the envelope of design and interface and aesthetics and usability, Apple has released jaw-dropping gizmos that, under scrutiny, reveal a plethora of annoying quirks.
I loved my iPod nano 2G -- Jobs rest its soul: battery dead after 18 months. I love OS 10.4... except when it renames instead of opens a selected folder when I hit Return. I love Safari, though it runs Flash about as fast a three-legged pig in the La Brea tar pits.
I've had Macs for 20 years. Loved 'em all, but not without the occasional "WTF were they thinking!" moments. Yet I keep spending my own money on them. Why? Because, on the whole, they offer a more satisfying computing experience than non-Macs. That's subjective of course, but I've never had problems finding people who agree with me.
Macs ain't perfect. Just great.
- mattmchugh.com
the design is o die for! its really awesome! but no optical drive?! what were they thinkng? im from the philippines and itunes is not available here yet so i cant "rent" movies like they said. i still need my optical drive to watch movies and software installation and stuff. i think the era of ced and dvds will not be over soon..
kudos for their design and software... just give us our optical drive!
what the heck! maybe im not the intended user anyway...
Two points I think are missing the ball:
1) Price: At $1,799 with a full-sized illuminated keyboard, mag-safe power adapter, and 13.3" screen at 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo speed with 2 GB of RAM, this blows away any Sony mini box on the market - oh, and the MBA is amazing strong and rigid (you'll notice that immediately when you hold one, it is amazingly impressive in person). I do not know of a single sub-notebook with this size screen, weight and power - at any price - let alone $1,799, so the price gripe is very baffling.
2) Locked Down Battery: It's been over a week since this post was made (so perhaps Alexandra has a change opinion since more information has been revealed about the MBA), but battery is simply not an issue. 6 easy-to-remove screws and any 3rd party battery can be easily swapped out. The only issue the battery has is if the user is a two or three battery nerd... I no of no-one who does this, but perhaps there are a few out there. In that case I would submit this point - those are large full-sized laptop users who drain batteries in 2 hours or less - not sub-notebook 5-6 hours per charge users. Anyone buying this laptop is not a massive battery swapping user, nor would this laptop be targeting that market. Another non-issue for whom this laptop is intended, which is guys like me that are sales professionals - using Windows even.