We're still on waiting for the official 20,000 word review
from John Mayer before we make our final decision, but tech journo heavyweights from USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Newsweek (with Pogue of the New York Times notably absent) have had their
MacBook Airs for about a week now, and true to form are espousing some opinion on the slab of metal. Turns out there are few surprises, and you could probably draw the same conclusions from reading the spec sheets and drooling over the press shots like the rest of us losers. Battery life could be the biggest trouble point, with a couple guys rating it around 3.5 hours with heavy use, and even less when watching a movie on iTunes -- Apple's five hour prediction seems a bit optimistic. Nobody's thrilled about the stuff Apple cut out to get the size down, but it's hard for these guys to poo poo Apple's decisions outright (Levy's comparison to circumcision is downright uncomfortable, to say the least) since there's an undeniable sexiness to holding and using the Air. One nice perk of the underwhelming power is that the laptop doesn't run as hot as Apple's other portables, making it a winner in the "laptop" department. Oh, and 3G? Edward Baig says he asked Jobs about the much-rumored feature, and the idea was apparently tossed around, but eventually dropped due to the desire to give consumers a choice and to keep things slim. 160GB HDD? Again with the slimness. So if you need the sexiest and slimmest thing going, there's no question the MacBook Air fits the bill, but it certainly looks like Apple excluded a lot of potential customers with the compromises made.
Read - Edward Baig "Given the compromises, I don't expect anyone to use Air as their only computer."
Read - Steven Levy "The things that Apple left on were the ingredients for a quality computer."
Read - Walt Mossberg "If you rely on spare batteries, expect the usual array of ports, or like to play DVDs on planes, this isn't the computer to buy."
posted January 24th 2008 12:46AM
My biggest complaint for travelers is the poor battery life for an ultra portable in this price range. The non-replaceable battery is another strike against it. With Apple's battery woes ( every MBP I know has had the battery replaced within the first year ) I don't trust sealed batteries.
I agree with Apple that the ports are generally unnecessary for most people. Hell even now I have 5 cords attached to my MBP ( power, USB, speakers, DVI, ethernet ) and I could, in theory, use a MBA assuming I could get a wireless signal.
Get ready for the "what would you change about the macbook air post and everyone can have their say then.
I think the Air will definitely will fill its niche. I'd love one. I use an iMac at work, but myself and the rest of the IT staff is at a different site from the rest of our users. I had used a 17" MacBook Pro as my only machine for a year and a half, but since I got my iMac I've been using my personal MacBook when I go to other sites and meetings off site. A MacBook Air would be perfect for me, I'm sick of using my personal property for work. The company pays for .Mac and I've got all my pertinent information syncing that way. My development files are checked into Subversion nightly so I could code from either machine without trouble.
travelers cant do shit on the plane with this thing except load a movie they just purchased at the airport on itunes, duh apple set this POS up to require you to buy add ons, accesories mean even more $$$ for Apple, people wake up this company is worse than MS
and almost no company other than apple themselves or some other pretentious company will want to purchase a large amount of these to use at work, too expensive when you can get a bit heavier, more feature packed/similar spec'd machine for $399 from Dell
Totally agree with you. Apple just cuts the corners to make it THIN and claim it is so cool, then sell the corners back to you, and say "see, it is expandable". Air is a joke, totally unbalanced design, trading off too many features to make it thin. I really do not understand why apple guys believe THIN is equal to portable. To me, if you want an ultraportable laptop, go for $299 eeePC, small and reasonably useful. If you want a more powerful machine on the go, grab a macbook, ye it is not that THIN.
As perfect as the MacBook Pro is, two things that pissed me off and I wished they would've improved on their follow up models were
1. Move both USB ports to the same side like on the MacBook. Hell, move all ports to the same side like on the MacBook.
2. The other was to make the Hard Drive user replaceable. And no, it currently isn't user replaceable. It was an absolute pain the arse to replace my measly 80gb HDD to a 250gb HDD. I almost bent the frame above the superdrive while trying to re-attach the top lid to the bottom part of it.
And what does Apple do? They put this thing out in the wild, the MBA. You know, I really don't give a monkey's ass if anybody buys it. Hey, the more power to them. I won't criticize anyone for buying a MacBook Air. It's their money that they're spending not mine. But to use up development time on the MBA when it could've been better spent on an improved MacBook Pro (which is their bread and butter as far as professional laptops go) is inexcusable. Or even, with all the rumors running rampant about a new and improved 12" MBP for the past couple of years you'd think Apple would've gotten a hint that we wanted a 12" or smaller MBP. If you ask me, they missed the boat on this one.
Now, will this make me an Apple hater? No. Not exactly. Allowing an nVidia 8800GT graphics card to be released that's only compatible with the new Mac Pro and not the one from last year? That absolutely pisses me off to no limits. I'm telling you, unless I find a way to get an 8800GT to work on my last year's Mac Pro, then the next computer I buy at the end of this year will be a Windows based PC. I'll have to go back to my old OS X86 ways since at least PCs can be upgraded cheaply and heavily without having to wait for Apple's blessing. I just can't see myself shelling out another $3,000.00 for a Mac Pro that won't allow me to keep up with the latest and greatest graphics cards. For those of you that don't understand, a quick an easy way to upgrade your system is by upgrading the graphics card. That simple. XP and Vista 32 can't handle anymore than 2gb RAM anyway. So why is it that I'm left with two graphics card choices for my $3,000.00 MacPro that is so powerful that it's banned as an export to China -- if that's still true? It makes no sense to me.
So yeah, go ahead Apple and keep making Air Head machines like the MacBook Air your main new product for the year while at the same time letting your Pro equipment people waiting and wishing for enhancements. I don't know why they have a Feedback site if they don't listen to their users requests. And no, I'm not the only one to bitch on their site. Just visit their Discussion forums and do a search on any of the gripes I've listed here. You'll see I'm not the only one.
I think it's silly that spent most of his macbook air sales pitch during his keynote talking about how all the other companies have to compromise this and that in order to get an ultraportable out to market and yet, to me, apple made two huge compromises for this product. One is firewire. It's sad that they have let something they trumpeted and pretty much single handedly brought into the home is being just as quickly thrown to the wayside. The second compromise is the price. It's not expensive for a quality laptop, but it's ridiculously expensive for an average SECONDARY computer. I've saved some money and I had been waiting for this announcement before buying a laptop for taking notes during class and working while on an upcoming internship. I could buy it, but I'd be crazy! $1800 dollars is just too much for a computer that I can't, in good conscious, buy as my primary computer.
i sure hate the idea that if i already own the dvd, and i would like to watch it but i only have my MacBook Air, and my 2 options is to rent it from itunes, or go to an apple store and buy an external dvd drive.
Dude, what about iPhone Air???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-JssvlOtpA
David Pogue did a review last week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue.html
They missed the boat with the "thinness" over "footprint". An ultraportable doesn't need to be thin in terms in height, it needs to be narrow and lack depth so you can open it on a restaurant table or on the narrow tray on an airplane.
They should have sacrificed screen size in the design-if you want a 13" screen then get a full laptop. I don't need an ultaportable to fit into an envelope, I need to be able to open an ultraportable without having to clear a table.
$1800 for a stretched and flattened iPod Touch that won't fit in my pocket? No thank you...
"with Pogue of the New York Times notably absent"
What do you mean? My review appeared a whole week before those guys'!
Here you go...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E4DF133DF934A25752C0A96E9C8B63&scp=1&sq=pogue+macbook&st=nyt
--Pogue