The MacBook Air doesn’t impress me

by billso on Monday, 21 January 2008

I’ve had a few peo­ple ask me what I think of the Mac­Book Air. I haven’t seen one in per­son, but based on what I’ve read, I’m not inter­ested in this new model. The Air looks like the Steve Jobs’ lat­est new toy. What if sales are low? What if he gets inter­ested in another project? It’s hap­pened before, as Forbes points out.

Flash mem­ory that replaces the hard drive is a great option. But it’s an extra US$1000.

The mul­ti­point track­pad? We saw that com­ing when Steve unveiled the iPhone a year ago.

But there’s only one USB port? No RJ-45 jack? No FireWire port? It’s deal­breaker after deal­breaker, I’m afraid.

The sealed bat­tery is the real killer. Sure, the replace­ment fee is only US$129. But the user still has to take their Mac to an Apple store or send it to a depot. What if I want to pop in a spare battery?

As Forbes reports in another arti­cle, Mac­World atten­dees weren’t very impressed, either.

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Tagged as: Apple, hardware, iPhone, mac, mobile, network, USB

  • dpeters1

    I wasn’t too impressed by the Mac­Book Air either. This state of unim­pressed­ness is also not only bred from my dis­taste for all things under the aegis of “Mac Cul­ture” but actu­ally has grounds in practicality.

    If I had a lap­top that thin, I would be deathly afraid of break­ing it about every 5 min­utes. And no opti­cal drive? How will i watch movies whilst I’m out and about? The option for an SSD drive is intrigu­ing, but ahead of its time. Until large capac­ity flash dri­ves become cheap and are well on the way to being ubiq­ui­tous, such an option will be well out­side of the realm of prac­ti­cal­ity for all but the mega-wealthy. It is my belief that thin­ness is not an indi­ca­tor of qual­ity and I’m not just say­ing that because I’m a large guy.

    While I’m dis­pas­sion­ate about this newest Mac release, I’m sure it will ener­gize the rabid Mac fan base just like any other shiny new release. Despite my say­ing oth­er­wise, it does look like a beau­ti­ful device; Mac under­stands style in this bleak world of IBM-compatible boxiness.

    At 1,800+ dol­lars how­ever, it’s just about the most imprac­ti­cal lap­top I’ve seen in quite a while.

  • http://billso.com billso

    Mac­Book Air looks and sounds more like a fash­ion acces­sory than a reli­able com­puter. It’s pretty, not prac­ti­cal. Per­haps Apple will sell a pink model later this year.

  • dpeters1

    They’re doing pink ipod Nanos for Valentine’s. I’m will­ing to wager the pink model Mac­Book Air will show up in time for V-day ’09.

  • dpeters1

    They’re doing pink ipod Nanos for Valentine’s. I’m will­ing to wager the pink model Mac­Book Air will show up in time for V-day ’09.

    In a com­pletely unre­lated ques­tion; is the capcha for this site the one that helps trans­late books into english?

  • http://billso.com billso

    Yes, I’m using the real recaptcha. It doesn’t trans­late books from other lan­guages into Eng­lish, though. This captcha does qual­ity con­trol on OCR scans of Eng­lish lan­guage books. Recaptcha’s devel­op­ers have more info at this link.

  • dtay­lor

    Although I do agree with the main points in these post­ings, about the imprac­ti­cal­i­ties of its stur­di­ness and how it sym­bol­izes some­thing of a fash­ion state­ment, I think its tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions are in align­ment for where the mar­ket will be reaching.

    The new IT devel­op­ments by Apple have to be intro­duced to the mar­ket while devel­op­ing a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage with its aesthitics, and in this mod­ern era, sleek and attrac­tive­ness seem to go a lot fur­ther with retail than the phys­i­cal durable­ness and forms rationalism.

    I think it will do sur­pris­ingly well sim­ply because of Steve Jobbs’ uncanny way of tap­ing into the desires of Apple’s tar­get mar­ket. His shinny new prod­uct will more than likely be a suc­cess­ful prod­uct (plus I have shares in Apple, so I have my fin­gers crossed).

  • http://billso.com billso

    The Mac­Book Air doesn’t com­pare to any­thing on Wired’s list of Apple’s 8 worst products.

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