AirQueue gives your MacBook Air's USB port more reach

Given the fact that most (all?) 3G USB modems won't even fit in the MacBook Air's ultra-cramped USB port, it's practically a foregone conclusion that some of that sex appeal is going to be forfeited when busting out a dongle to keep using your current wares. Enter the AirQueue, which is hailed as the first USB extender designed specifically to work with the MBA -- whatever that means. Truth be told, we can't figure out exactly what makes this any different than other extenders made for helping folks out in a squeeze, but at least it's only $6, right? Oh, and if you're aiming to make things extra unsightly, be sure and pick up the pictured $38 ExpressCard adapter -- your coffee shop style quotient will be tanked in no time.

[Via MacsimumNews, thanks RD]

[Lein @ Mar 7th 2008 9:42PM]

...but it fits in a manila envelope!

[hexoDAT64 @ Mar 7th 2008 9:45PM]

...so does my hand

[SimonRichards @ Mar 7th 2008 9:47PM]

I will give you $2000 for your hand!

[Steve Jobs @ Mar 7th 2008 10:00PM]

The iHand is a registered trademark of Apple inc. Be prepared to get sued.

[Jhongerkong @ Mar 8th 2008 1:35PM]

At least your hand probably has more USB ports.

[Greg @ Mar 8th 2008 4:30PM]

My hand has none -.-

[ace_spades @ Mar 7th 2008 9:45PM]

theoretically, couldn't you get better signal strength with the card being positionable?

[Ellianth @ Mar 7th 2008 10:16PM]

Look how long the card is? you could just as easily have shifted your whole laptop over a bit had the card been internal.

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 8th 2008 12:42PM]

No. The antenna is external, not internal. This ain't any type of extender, its designed to bypass the fucking Air's neutered capabilities pure and simple.

[Flashpoint @ Mar 7th 2008 9:45PM]

This only goes to show you how poorly contrived the Macbook Air is.

Even if I were to overlook the SINGLE USB port, I definately scoff at the absence of an expresscard slot (considering how thin it is).

If I'd been at apple, I'd have made a special connector on the back of the book which would allow you to plug a special "expander bar" to it for 3 USB ports, regular DVI, Ethernet and 56K modem.

For apple to build a computer with a charging connector that doesn't fit right and is ridiculously difficult to expand, only shows how stupid and arrogant their design team is.

Of course, people vote with their dollars. I don't expect the SSD equipped MBA to sell well at its price point. Leave that shit right on the shelf.

[Alex Padilla @ Mar 7th 2008 10:02PM]

I agree: the designers and engineers definitely robbed Apple when they got their paychecks. I don't understand the lack of expandability. No port adapter? A charger underneath the computer? It may be "ultra-portable," but it's also "ultra-inconvenient."

I've used a MBA at my school's computer store and I'm only mildly impressed. It's merely a thin computer with the option for an SSD. Granted, its thinness is pretty sweet, but, as they always say, it's what's inside that counts, right?

[wootman @ Mar 7th 2008 10:16PM]

le sigh, the macbook air is not ultra portable, only ultra thin.
its an ultra portable smushed.

[fischju @ Mar 7th 2008 11:35PM]

That is what you think. What you don't know is that Steve Jobs owns the company that makes these!

[Greg @ Mar 8th 2008 4:08AM]

Yeah, the designers should have put in a disk drive, 4 usb ports, firewire, a dedicated gfx card, and make it 1.5" thick @_@
Or, they could have done what they meant to do, make the thinnest laptop around.

[YoYoYo @ Mar 8th 2008 8:16AM]

Aie - I didn't even have to look down far enough in the specs to find the crappy video card to decide to never buy one of these. One expansion port, and only one? How long till it breaks from overuse?

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 8th 2008 12:44PM]

But its iPhone beeeech! What? this isn't about Apple's iPhone and how its the next best thing to God? Wait...its about the Air and the fanbois thinking its the next best thing to God....close enough.

[JohnTitor @ Mar 7th 2008 9:54PM]

put an apple logo and you can even sell a 3' phone line for $20

[John @ Mar 7th 2008 10:23PM]

Guys, this is Apple. Its a piece of art FIRST. If it happens to work as a computer second, all the better, but not necessary to sell.

[ScooterDe @ Mar 9th 2008 5:40PM]

quite the reason why Apple continues to only attract a niche audience in the computer sector. It has not truly learned anything from its iPod success which reached mass penetration.

[MBA man @ Mar 7th 2008 10:33PM]

MBA bashers, ur jealousy of my prowess in the cafe is stunning!

[melloncollie @ Mar 7th 2008 10:52PM]

Yeah, that's right.

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 8th 2008 12:47PM]

Yah because dumbshit MBA's, who are cranked out at aprox the same rate as lawyers in this country now, are pretty much the only ones who will buy this shit because they know NOTHING of tech and will buy it for the wow factor.

[Zach @ Mar 8th 2008 2:33PM]

jealousy, That must be what this feeling is. And here I thought it was pity.

[fourthletter @ Mar 9th 2008 9:56PM]

So you use your highly expensive MBA in the cafe ? which cafe is that exactly ? we could meet up I'll be the one with the knife and the balaclava ;)

[MBA man @ Mar 9th 2008 10:55PM]

wow, this is kinda fun...

Methinks some of u protest too much. And, did I really get a death threat?

Lolz

Do oversized mail order build ur own blacklighted computers make people over-jealous?

[tha-don @ Mar 10th 2008 2:57AM]

wow...yeah, that's kinda messed up. i'm hopin he meant he wanted the knife to ruin your MBA er somethin less lethal.

[Z Monster @ Mar 7th 2008 10:34PM]

its as ugly as the macbook air is thin

[eggothewaffle @ Mar 8th 2008 5:05AM]

(And/or the MacBook Air is functional) :D

[Z Monster @ Mar 8th 2008 8:04AM]

also true

[Sam @ Mar 7th 2008 10:56PM]

"ONLY" $6? How is that extender different from the $1 generic cables sold anywhere?

[snitch @ Mar 7th 2008 11:02PM]

Sure the Macbook air lacks a lot of ports but don't mac users do almost 90% of their stuff wireless anyway???? A ethernet would have been nice to have on it but it feels Kind of awkward too connecting a ultra portable to a ethernet too. ethernet is more like for desktop i think sometimes

[torqueo @ Mar 7th 2008 11:19PM]

I hook my ThinkPad X61s (which weighs just a little more than the MBA) up to 1000BaseT often, at my primary workstation, almost every day. When processing large files over a net share, even 801.11n isn't really sufficient for my needs.

[torqueo @ Mar 7th 2008 11:23PM]

Just to add to that - it occurs to me that a lot of Mac users are artists/working with some kind of media production. That means large video files, large RAW files for photographers, etc..

Not that they'd want to use a MBA anyway, 2GB RAM is so 2006..

[snitch @ Mar 8th 2008 12:19AM]

@torqueo a simple answer for that is, OS X does not eat up your system resources so although almost all Macs can upgrade there memory, not everyone goes for it cause theres no needs for that, you can do it but it will be like throwing your money in the trash. I do admit if the macbook air was a windows machine i would not pay $100 for it, but since it runs OS X its worth every penny. you can put 4GB of ram on a windows machine and thats still lame cause the system is just goin to eat throw it

[torqueo @ Mar 8th 2008 3:20AM]

@snitch: I'm no stranger to OS X, or most OS's in general, for that matter. I don't honestly see a significant difference (for memory usage) between it and Vista, XP, Linux (with a desktop environment running), etc. Most memory usage actually comes from applications we run on top of the OS (Firefox, for example.. which uses more memory than Safari or IE). For my every-day, the most memory intensive apps are Firefox and Photoshop - not anything that comes with Windows XP or Vista.

I think the amount of RAM Vista *actually* uses remains a mystery to most people, because they don't understand memory caching. The UN*X "free" command even subtracts cache below the first line of numbers to show us the "true" memory available, like this:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1036236 1022728 13508 0 4248 242904
-/+ buffers/cache: 775576 260660

Vista caching a lot of RAM is a *feature*, not something to complain about (at least if you understand what it's doing)! Hell, if all you're going to do is run what apps came with the OS... Vista, XP, OSX, etc all can run with like 512MB~1GB of RAM... but who actually does that?

[CB17 @ Mar 8th 2008 5:40AM]

@torqueo

Oh yeah? Well tell that to Windows Mobile. It's not JUST about the applications. If you'd think for more than a half a second and quit being so biased, you'd remember that when people switched to Vista, it ALONE required more RAM. OS X is a lot more efficient and it's memory management is WAY BETTER.

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 8th 2008 12:55PM]

Everyone loves to throw in Mac users do a lot of media processing and the Air sucks for them. The thing is the Air isn't designed for them. Realistically the air is really designed around users who just want e-mail\web\word processing, and some other basic functionality. I'd be a HELL of a lot less harsh on the Air if its price reflected this in a $1000 price point to go head to head with the plain MacBook. Instead this thing's price fits in the higher end MBP niche which is asinine. And before the fanbois come onboard with OMG recoup the R&D costs...please bitches. Apple has over 15 billion in cash asset in the bank. Its not like they are this poor company who can't afford R&D without being hit hard. Bullshit. This is Apple knowing the dumbass fanbois and the general American consumer will buy the iPhon...oops sorry the Air at an outrageously marked up price because its Macbook Air beeeeeech!

[craig @ Mar 8th 2008 4:26PM]

CB17,

OS X's memory management sucks. I own several macs, all with adequate memory, and I still have massive paging slowdowns. My main system has 7GB or memory, never more than half allocated, and yet the system swaps constantly. Same with my 4GB MBP. The MBA reviews show huge slowdowns whenever the system has any load. That's because the machine has a lousy hard drive and the system pages in spite of its generous memory. Sorry, just because it's Apple doesn't mean it's better.

Filling a mac up with memory is standard advice for anyone wanting to maximize performance. There's a reason for that and it isn't because OS X memory management is "WAY BETTER" than Vista. Quite the opposite.

[Richard @ Mar 7th 2008 11:25PM]

Welcome to dongle hell, mwahahahaaah

[Anthony @ Mar 8th 2008 12:13AM]

Is that like Robot Hell?

[Anon E. Muss @ Mar 8th 2008 3:52AM]

Dongle Hell is a real place, where you will be sent at the first sign of disobedience.

[Richard @ Mar 8th 2008 6:00AM]

Dongle hell is a hotel room with free pr0n and a LAN port with no WiFi that exists on the other side of the planet to your top drawer at work were the correct dongle resides.

[carmen @ Mar 8th 2008 12:19AM]

i can see it now...anything that has apples name or their products associated with it will sell like hot cakes.

Shit stained toilet paper made by Steve Jobs-199.99 SOLD!
iWastebasketfullofvomit-99.99 SOLD!

won't the madness end?

[roole @ Mar 8th 2008 11:29PM]

You need a therapist. And, quick.

[carmen @ Mar 9th 2008 1:12AM]

or maybe you should get a sense of humor? If you don't find it funny then keep to yourself mister.

[BigD145 @ Mar 8th 2008 12:29AM]

The Air got slicked down so much it lost its e-penis. Now it gets it back and boy is it fugly.

[agroupofletters @ Mar 8th 2008 1:00AM]

It should be illegal for companies to pull shit like this

[Carl @ Mar 8th 2008 1:30AM]

You guys are all completely missing the elephant in the next room. The MacBook Air was designed *from the beginning* to tether to the 3G iPhone over Bluetooth. When you're mobile, you don't need a separate air card, Ethernet dongle or Wifi connection when you simply flip your MacBook open and it automatically initiates a connection to the Internet over your iPhone.

You can call me an apologist, blah, blah, blah, but the Air was clearly designed this way. Once you sync it to the iPhone 3G the first time, it's going to be *easier* to connect to the Internet via Bluetooth tethering than any other method. It's all about ease of use, and both devices will sell like crazy on just this one feature.

[torqueo @ Mar 8th 2008 3:23AM]

@Carl: have you actually *used* 3G via tethering over bluetooth? It sounds nice, in theory, but when you actually depend on it I think you'll see the advantage of USB/Cardbus II.

[CB17 @ Mar 8th 2008 5:41AM]

@Torqueo

Only because no phones use Bluetooth 2.0 w/ EDR like the iPhone does.