The MacBook Air
By Nilay Patel 
posted January 15th 2008 11:59AM
posted January 15th 2008 11:59AM
posted January 15th 2008 11:59AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I think you guys / gals just blow this completely wayyyyyy out of the water.......even if this macbook will only be a niches machine, it make great marketing, just imagine tomorrow when all the major newspaper start carrying this issues....then you have the WSJ carrying the issues.....3g is not too much for someone who have to drag a machine around a lot and have money to play with
i.e. If you are traveling a lot, and you are a mac fan, or a nature photographer who want to edit photo on the go...this would be perfect...
Beside, it's not like they are not going to improve the technology over time....just look at how much the ibook / macbook change since they first move from the ifruit design to the current design.
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Johnny Rotten
Only two ones I care! First, I want a new version which could replace the battery! Second, I want to know how to get the remaining battery info by touching the button watching the LED lights as MB & MBP do now!
Sorry if this has been posted before but how can you be surprised about the lack of optical. This thing was the worst kept secret and everyone knew that it would not have an ODD, but now everyone is flipping out like it's new info. Where was the out cry last week? Oh and the target market for this is slim (pardon the pun) but it does exist. News.com (uggh a CNET source, I know) summed it up well; this is a flagship product meant to show off Apple and the things they can engineer. Its a status thing, and the good stuff will trickle into the products that actually matter to the rest of us. Anyone expecting the messiah of portables is naive , and probably very disappointed today.
I like the idea of the MacBook Air, just not the delivery of it.
In a few years when more of Apple is devoted toward this "in the air" idea and it's for a lower price - or the insides and outside services meet the price -, then I might just get when for when I'm on the road.
Of course, the next MacBook Pro might just steal the "air" qualities and I'll get that update instead.
I hoped MB would get an aluminum case :(
This is a total consumer product, you don't buy just to upgrade, it looks awesome.
But the hard drive and the CPU disappoint. I don't care much about the ethernet port, I don't remember the last time I used it. One USB port is not a big deal (you like wires, huh?).
... and unlike iMac, this one is too expensive :|
UK Price £300 more than the USA starting price. $600 dollars more !!! WTF
@ joseph
WHAAAAT???
I would say Apple missed the mark with this one. Had they instead used a 12" screen, added WLAN-support (HSDPA/EVDO) and cut a few hundred off the price it would have made a lot more sense. And what's wrong with Apple when it comes to docking stations?
Nothing against ultraportables, and I understand why they left out the optical drive. It's just that this time way to many features was left behind.
Yep. Big shame about the price of SSD and no Penryn yet. But thats Mac giving themselves upgrade space for the future and the price of ssd has a lot of room to drop.
Lets hope the mac book pro follows suit with slimmer screen, keyboard change, magnetic catch, penryn and ssd options soon.
No mention of ssd actually providing extra battery time either?
My biggest complaint is that it's too big... We already have the macbook. Same size screen. I was hoping for 11.1" or maybe something like 9 inch screen. Not to mention the price on this is way too much.
One good thing has come from this...Dell have just lowered the prices of their sexy XPS M1330 if you buy a pre-built (rather than custom built) model. Looks like you can save up to $624!!! YAY!
OK, don't want to harp on about it, but just checking out what I could get on a sexy Dell M1330 instead of a sexy Apple Air for the same money...
I'd get 2.4GHz processor instead of 1.8GHz
4Gig Ram instead of 2Gig
1680x1050 screen instead of 1280x800
250GB 5400RPM hard drive rather than 80GB 4200RPM
An 8600 256MB dedicated memory graphics card instead of an Intel X3100 with shared 144MB memory
A DVD +/- RW drive
A USER CHANGABLE BATTERY
Plus multi card reader, more USB ports etc. etc.
Sorry Apple, Dell's getting my money - no competition!
Hi gregr I'm comparing the £1200 MBA with a custom configured £1200 Dell M1330...if you want the SSD it'll cost you another £800...and for £800 you can also get the same capacity SSD for the Dell, so Dell still outperforms it point for point.
eh? SSD drives seek in nanoseconds (HDD are thousands of times slower), can perform anywhere from 10k io/sec to 70k io/sec (HDD are hundreds of times slower) and have throughputs at the limit of the buses they're attached to depending on the technology used. The weaknesses of SSDs are capacity and price. They do, however, address 100% of your performance concerns over the 1.8" HDD.
this product has clearly been designed for the classes, and not the masses; The sort of of people who can't afford to be seen with a pudgy-looking computer. The same lot who buy Vertu cellphones and Bang&Olufsen products. The design and appearance has been given priority over everything else. it's thin, but it's so thin and sexy apple could not afford to tarnish the sexiness by adding a fugly-looking ethernet port or another USB port, or even appple's own pet Firewire.
Yes, there's lots to complain about in the MacBook Air, But let's look on the brighter side. The exclusion of the Optical drive is a sign of times to come. i'd rather have a 8/16 Gb flash drive with me rather than several disks. The design is also a bit too good for it's time, as we need more advanced technologies to fit some decent performance into this machine
Didn't Windows for Workgroups (back in like 1993, the win 3.11 days) allow for easy access of a cd-rom drive from a remote computer...i could swear...oh wait...ya..ya it did because Cd-Roms were expensive back then...this isn't an innovative feature at all, just a way of them covering up for the lack of a cd-rom drive. Oh wait, i forgot, "Mac makes it Easy"...right...this thing is a over priced hunk of junk.
Unfortunately, being "ahead of it's time" in the computing world is essentially f'ing pointless. Having a 64GB SSD might sound great, but for the people needing the extra performance, 64GB isn't going to cut it. Adobe CS3 and Leopard alone will leave you with less than 30GB for everything else. Plus the fact that this thing is ultra-slim is pretty much negated by having to carry around a 2 inch thick battery powered usb hub to plug in more than one power hungry device.
it says that its using the 80gb hard drive out of the ipod classic.. so basically, if you could open a macbook air, and get to the hard drive (which will break within a year no doubt) you could replace the 80gb with a 160gb out of the higher capacity ipod ?
I'm sure Apple has some DMI proprietary lock out to prevent you from doing something so clever ;)
Its looks damn good. I love hearing you guys trying kid yourself that its bad, when in reality its the smallest consumer laptop out there and still backs the power if not more than laptops you find at its price.
Hmm good point .. im not gna buy a macbook air, due to the price outweighs the features, im gna upgrade my macbook for a macbook pro probably .. :)
unless the 160gb is coming to the macbook air anytime soon!
No firewire & only 1 USB.
typical steve jobs he's a scientologist
I know some of the features are lacking. But after seeing the new MacBook commercial, I just want it. I want it now.
http://www.zadzadz.com/Apple-MacBook-Air-Envelope-commercial
And I'm a PC user. It's scary how easily I was converted.
64gb ssd is not enough (neither 80gb non-solid hdd), but here are now the128gb ssd, so it would be perfect to have a MacBook Air with 128gb solid-state drive, instead of only 64gb.
I like how it looks, but it needs to have a user replaceable battery, longer battery life, atleast 3 USB ports, and a lower price. And 128GB SSD would be cool (When it's available)
Then it would be a sweeeet laptop
The MacbookAir - as useless as air
what was steve smoking when he invented the 'air'.
Where is the mac tablet steve???????? we all want a mac tablet......who else besides paris hilton is going to buy this piece of sh*t laptop?
I bought this already, it should be here in a few weeks at which point I well send off my 17 inch macbook pro via ebay for about the same price as I got the air. It ended up being 1900 dollars with the 1.8 ghz processor upgrade and I'm very happy with my choice. As far as people saying "oh you can get a dell this or a Sony that" the air is the best for the money at what it does. Its absolutely tiny at 3 pounds and under an inch thick which makes it very good for someone like me who walks around a lot with my laptop any given day. It's not designed for people looking at bargin basement dells (like those in the M series that are significantly larger and heavier I'd like to point out, they're NOT ultraportables at 4+ pounds and over an inch thick).
The general idea is this computer is for someone when they're not home or at work to travel with. When you aren't home you really don't need super high power, portability is better. If you need to use CS3 or final cut pro its to do on the go touch ups, who has to do their entire production on a laptop alone? I'm trading in my 17 inch macbook pro for this and upgrading my imac to a new mac pro. I see it as the best of both worlds. I'll have all the space I need on the countless GBs of memory the pro can hold and put only what I need to take with me on the air. I'll do the heavy processing on the pro, and have a laptop that I can carry in a tiny bad that my shoulder will barely notice. Why so many people here are annoyed by the idea of an ultrathin, ultralight laptop with pretty solid performance (the Sony laptops in this category have 11 inch screens, 1Ghz processors and cost hundreds to thousands more same with everyone else who tries ultra-portable). This just isn't designed for people stressing over a few hundred dollars, its designed for people who are going to have this as a supplementary laptop. I'd like to point out though that a quality imac plus the air is around 3000 dollars, the same 3000 dollars you'd pay for a mac pro with a 256MB graphics card in the midrange so its not like the air is a rip off by any means if your bag being light is at all important to you.
The study of 7,500 respondents, also revealed that people who buy Macs are " less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large." Quelle surprise!
I bought a VAIO with comparable specs, although larger and not ultraportable, on black friday for 400$ about two months ago, and added a 2GB Ram Chip for 50$:
15.4 inch widescreen
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 1.54 GHz
2.5 GB Ram (expandable)
80GB HD
4 USB-Ports
DVD-RW drive
Ethernet Port
Some memory Card readers
Talk about form way way way over function. This is very disappointing.
If you just want to browse the internet on the go, which is about the only thing this thing is capable of doing, there are much better options out there.
I'm underwhelmed! It would have been much better to re-introduce a
12in. MBP... This should have been an ultra portable 10in., I would
still buy a Macbook over the Macbook Air. I don't think this fills
any nitch, external drive too, sooo 1999!!! This machine should be
one or two steps above an iPod touch! Disappointing Apple....
"Air" is slang for "Penis" in Lebanon, I wonder how Apple is gonna market the "MacBook Air" there?!
The MacBook Air is a stealthy approach to the enterprise.
I work in a very large media corporation. I'm in sales using a 12 inch Toshiba Portege with a rarely used DVD drive (hard media are too hard to keep track of and easily lost and damaged).
We have very high security requirements and use a VPN over 3G for up to 5 or 6 hours a day. The thing has to have a second battery permanently attached to the underside of the case to make it through a single day of work.
This year we are migrating all our sales systems from proprietory (Siebel) PC based client server systems to an all web based system. The MacBook Pro is the perfect system for our sales force - post Siebel.
All of our national art department already runs on PowerMac G5s (to keep Classic compatibility). If our IT people woke up to the potential of the MacBook Air for the sales force the guys on the street would be so much happier - and lighter! I can imagine wowing clients with ad graphics/presentations manipulated with the Multitouch Trackpad.
There are millions of corporate sales and service people on the road who would be an ideal market for the MBA. (And the price is feature competitive at this point in time).
If IT people see the performance, light weight, lack of viruses and high security of the MacBook Air (meaning fewer open vectors for Malware - no CD/DVD, no floppy, no Ethernet exept as an option etc.) they will realise that if they can make some small server changes to enable corporate VPN and Email for Macs they have the solution to many daily IT headaches - but probably fewer support positions required in the long term.
The other huge market for the the MacBook Air is the Professional Services sector - Doctors, Lawyers, Consultants, Accountants etc. - plus their wives/partners - these people will be the early adopters of this stylish lightweight machine. (Think of Excel/Bento users).
Many of the critical comments I have seen in discussions so far have come from college students, gamers, or people who can only afford one computer and so require a desktop "replacement", plus video/graphics/music pros etc. This is NOT the machine for them.
This is NOT your father's Macintosh. This is a new direction with a new target market who will be, in my estimate MORE than 70% Switchers/Adders from Windows. This is a strategic market share play, NOT a play for the traditional Mac user base. Sorry to the Mac faithful but there's nothing to see here, move along. I can see Steve Jobs extending the MacBook Air into a distinct line of portables to go together with new iPhones into the Enterprise, finally.
Optical drives will go the way of the floppy some day, I use a sharp mm20 that has been converted over to ssd, no moving parts. No Drive platters, no fan, and no Cd drive. I dont use it for my primary work true, but for carrying around with me everywhere, works great. I don't own a mac, (or even an ipod, never liked them) but I have been looking for a replacement for the MM20 and I think this is it.
straypoetry.com
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html
*no (!) cd/dvd drive
*one USB port
*no firewire
*no Cardbus or ExpressCard slot
*multi-touch trackpad (pretty cool)
*13.3 inch screen
*no user-swappable battery
*no user-swappable memory
*thin
A fine product for $600. Wha..? It's selling in the thousands?
1) No ability to back anything up on a cheap CD/DVD.
2)No ability to watch standard DVDs, nor to receive any from friends to run or install apps, except with Apple's "Remote Disc" (to be installed to a wi-fi enabled computer) or an optional (!) USB dvd drive, to attach to the only USB port you have.
3) no ability to even hook up a scanner or printer (or USB stick) at the same time without addditional appendages allowing you to do so
I think this laptop is too thin to hide the frustration that occurs when you want to get anything useful done on it.
I would muchhh rather use any low-end laptop (and bring a spare battery to exceed Apple's 5 hours battery life on this thing. Again, you can't even bring a spare battery with you on this thing. It's all embedded, not to be touched by you. Ridiculous.
The MacBook Air deserves to fail.