A flurry of emails has arrived to tell me that Apple have launched the MacBook Air - the latest incarnation of their supercool laptops (if you are reading this on a computer that is just a black or grey box with sharp corners, and running Windows, then you don’t known what I’m talking about…).
From its publicity, the MacBook Air does indeed look very cool indeed: its main feature is how thin it is (just three-quarters of an inch at its thickest point), but it also looks generally very smooth and sexy, immediately making even the mainstream MacBook look a lot like just a boring box.
When the sensible me next loses its struggle with the techie-enthusiast me to upgrade from my existing computer, I suspect this machine may well be the beneficiary - though it is about 50% more expensive than the basic MacBook.
Two features do however make me pause. I’m not quite sure that I could really live without having either a CD/DVD drive or a FireWire port. Presumably these have been sacrificed to making it even thinner, but I do use both and would struggle not have either.
On the other hand, some of its innovations, in addition to those from the Leopard OS (which as I wrote here I’m generally not wildly impressed by), do seem good: in particular I am seriously dead impressed by some of the things it allows you to do with the trackpad - which make your standard old-fashioned two-button mouse look the prehistoric relic from the twentieth century that it is.
My other problem with it is that its hard drive is only 80Gb (and from what I can tell there does not seem to be space to expand this internally). I never thought I would find myself saying that 80Gb (80Gb!) wouldn’t be enough for me. But the way things are going, I’d fill most of that straight away now, and with the inflation of memory needs over the next 2 or 3 years I can certainly see that it might well not be enough.
Memory expansion, it seems, is inexorable: I treasure the story from a former Lib Dem committee colleague about the day in (I think) 1968 when as a computer salesman, a sale he had made of 4Kb of memory that day, was enough to get his boss to take him out for a drink to congratulate him on a remarkable achievement!
But I digress. It does seem somewhat difficult to believe that something as extraordinarily thin as the MacBook Air will really be properly robust, and that its components may not be just too, well, thin, to survive long. But of course Macs’ reputation for being robust and reliable machines argues strongly against that - but it is another reason why perhaps I’ll hold back buying one for a while while some other poor souls try out first!
January 24th, 2008 at 11:39
Although the MacBook Air is cool as f*ck, for me it has come a touch too early. It is going with the google idea that soon you simply won’t need local storage - everything will run via virtual desktop straight from remote servers where you store all your data and use software packages that will run straight from the web. And you won’t need DVD/CD’s because everything will be available via streaming. Most people haven’t subscribed to this yet but perhaps this kind of next-gen computer will drive that kind of thinking.
January 24th, 2008 at 13:25
you can use an external USB CD/DVD driver, and I think this is the basic idea also for the HD, know external 500Gb HD are very cheap. I think the trend is not only that of using external archives for stock data (both on the net as said OnHourAhead or on removable devices) trying to create a kind of “separation” between elaboration and memory.
The other point that seems interesting is that you can connect wirelessly to your desk PC creating a kind of hierarchy between them: the desk PC is the center of your work and the laptop is the “handy” thing for moving here and there. I think this can be their market trend and usability vision
January 24th, 2008 at 13:36
“OneHourAhead” is right: the idea’s supposed to be that you can access everything wirelessly rather than needing lots of internal storage or sockets. But like he also said, I think I’m with those who are not yet convinced this is the way to go… (and we’ve heard before that this is the future, and it turned out it wasn’t, or at least not yet).
Giacomo: Sure, you can link it up to an external drive - but why not with FireWire? And to be honest, endlessly linking up to external drives is surely not really the point of laptops…
I definitely don’t want to connect an Apple laptop with a PC, desktop or otherwise - and surely I’m not the only person who uses their laptop as their main and only machine - having *two* personal computers at home, just for me, both dripping with state of the art features, is more than I really need…
January 24th, 2008 at 18:46
For storage they obviously want you to get a Time Copsule - up to 1TB of wireless networked storage. Meaning the only thing you really want an optical disk for is installs and the new one USB port optical drive looks seriously cool if you need to burn a lot or somethinmg like that.
I think this is a good step by Apple. They removed the floppy from most of their machines half a decade and more before most other manufacturers dared to and now they’re doing the same with the wires. Critical mass of wireless enabled devices is fast approaching when it makes metropolitan area wi-fi seriously worth developing and the technologies to make them more useable and secure are also comiong along.
That said - I won’t be getting one for now. I don’t need a laptop particularly and like my twnety inch screen on my iMac and if I were in the market right now I’d just get a 24 inch one. My old G4 Powerbook is enough for when I absolutely need to roam (rarely). But if I had the money just to blow on something I don’t really need I’d have my pre-order in already. I think this time others won’t be far behind, unlike the floppy business.
January 24th, 2008 at 20:22
Jock - thanks for your very well-informed comments. You’ve also got me to read some bits of the MacBook Air site on this that I hadn’t found before!
Time Capsule is good for backups but not very convenient for day to day storage - and I can see in 2-3 years’ time I might well be wanting more than 80Gb (say 60Gb usable) on the laptop itself. I use half of that already.
But very good points about the optical drive. Does seem a bit strange having to use another computer for it, but fair point that I don’t really use it that often.
And I was very interested to see Apple dismissing FireWire as old technology - I hadn’t realised that was how they see it!