Loading ...Steve Jobs drives me crazy
Okay, yes, I’m an Apple fanboy. I admit it. How can you not — the Good Ship Apple under the command of Rear Admiral Steve Jobs has done one hell of a good sell job since he stepped back into the company over a decade ago.
We need not go over the history of things that he’s done, but suffice to say Apple has become the darling of the computer industry.
Macworld is the annual drool-fest. What will Apple come up with next?
I’m writing this as the text spool from MacRumorsLive.com spins past on the other monitor. All I know so far is that I want a MacBook Air.
Skip back to the beginning. The format of Macworld is pretty normal: Biz update. How well iTunes is doing. How many iPods (and now iPhones) sold. Fairly ordinary.
And meant to let people know that something big is coming.
Now rumours rifled around the ‘net for months — what would Steve bring to the show this year? I’m still a little miffed that Apple still hasn’t taken me up on the idea to make the iPhone the ultimate universal remote. C’mon guys, you’re mere steps from creating the ultimate media system.
Apple TV 2 is a significant step up from its predecessor, bringing in the features (namely HD) that were missing.
Now for my gripe: Lots of information on movies. Too much, really. Don’t get me wrong — I love movies. But iTunes doesn’t offer them here in Canada. I want to get movies through iTunes, through Apple TV 2, to my home system. Movie rentals? Goodbye, Blockbuster — if I don’t have to leave the house and rent a movie at 2am because my baby’s wide awake and crying, I’m all for that.
But, please, bring movies worldwide soon — “later this year” isn’t fast enough.
Finally, the big news: the MacBook Air.
Rumours had flown around about an SSD Mac. (That’s “Solid State Drive,” in case you’re wondering. It means no moving parts.) So the announcement wasn’t so much of a shock. Rumours had also flown around about a “Mac Mini” that would be much smaller than a regular MacBook.
In typical Apple form, they delivered a 1-2 punch, merging the two rumours:
- Small (fits in an envelope!)
- Fast (ditched the 2 GHz range for need of size and power use on the CPU, a wise move)
- A good-sized SSD (65 GB)
- Multi-touch trackpad (bringing the great experience of the iPhone and iPod Touch to the laptop world)
- Wireless connectivity (802.11n) and forgoes with an optical drive
- 5 hours of battery life
- Starting at under $1,800 (this is pretty significant for Apple)
- More environmentally-friendly (there’s a little checkmark for you, Dave!)
Okay, so what? It’s a nice little laptop. What’s the big deal?
Portability on a whole new level. Finally, this is a computer I can carry with me for photography. It’s light, it’s small (although curiously, they never actually stated the weight, only that 3 lbs was a rough target), and it has all the attachments needed to handle image editing on the fly. This is what I’ve been needing for a long time.
I’ve got to go have a cold shower now, and then start working on my begging pleas to convince my wife to let me get one.
[Update! @14:27 MST]
Augh, I just had my dreams shot down. (And yes, this relates to experience.) The battery in this wee beastie is integrated — meaning you can’t swap it out when it runs down (take a note, business users). Or worse, if it doesn’t retain a charge, you’re sending it back to Apple (or an authorised repair shop) for replacement.
It’s the iPod problem on a larger scale.
Given, at least Apple flipped and now replaces batteries. But it’s a lot harder. And this, for me, is a deal-killer. I’ve had far too many laptop battery issues in my many years to even consider an integrated battery. iPods I’ve no problem with, but they’re a small part of my life. I don’t even want to think about that kind of a problem if I’m far away from a potential repair.
Maybe in version 2…
Really? You want one? I’ll admit, it’s really sexy and quasi-tempting, but it seems to me it’s too weak to by a primary system and it’s too expensive to be a secondary system. I mean, once you swap the 80GB hard drive for the 64GB solid state (and who wouldn’t want to do that?), you’re looking at $3000 CDN. I dunno, for an ultra portable secondary machine, the EEEs and its competitors seem way ahead of this with their $400 price. Still… it is sexy.
Wasn’t even so much about the sex, really — it was the support. A well-known platform for which it’s easy to get established applications. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of the EEE. It’s just that it’s a little too limiting for me.
Agreed, it’d be a useless primary system. But even the Air doesn’t seem like something I’d use as my main PC. Just doesn’t look like there’s much room to grow, and at that price, I think I expect a bit more. I’d never buy a Windows based machine, but from a hardware perspective, you can get a Dell XPS M1330 with a lot more oomph for about $1000 less. Not the perfect comparison, but still. I’d love to have the Air as my notebook with an iMac or Mac Pro at home, but I’m not paying that much for portability when so many other options are available. I miss the 12″ iBook.
Ah, but I think you’ve hit on the point, Tyler — I don’t believe Apple would be wanting to pin this as a primary system. It’s a portable system. It’s something you use to handle data until you can get to a primary location.
Think creative pitches. The interface is ideal for handling quick shows, on the road, gathering bits and pieces until you get back and work with a larger/more capable system.
Yeah, you pay for the logo. But I put more faith in the premium for Apple’s logo than I do with others (e.g. Sony).
I’m more than willing to pay the Apple premium, but there’s a limit to that, especially on my secondary PC. Think I can convince CM to get me one?
Dunno. I’m already trying, but I’m feeling a bit of resistance on that…
Thus far I think the Ask A Ninja guy has best summed up my view of the Air. http://kentnichols.com/2008/01/15/macbook-air-isnt-worth-it/
Something I just realized (or at least just had pointed out to me) - despite being thinner and lighter, the 2D footprint of this machine is exactly the same as the MacBook.
Same footprint with a smaller screen? Interesting. The specs they gave alluded otherwise.
Another nail in the coffin. Well, for me.
I also found out yesterday that Leopard’s been hacked to run on an EEEPC. Hello, $500 (including cost of Leopard) Mac!
The fact that you can’t replace the battery was the nail in the coffin for me. If you are making a computer that is all about portability why would you seal in the battery. If I am remote, on a long flight, in the middle of no where, anywhere where I can’t plug in, I want the ability to switch to a backup battery. This cannot be done with the air. We all know how hot the Mac Book Pros run, and how much battery juice they suck up when running video or any other processor heavy activity. Heck, even the XO has a hand crank and rip cord
As Tyler mentioned earlier, it really depends on whom the Air is targeted at. Something tells me that it’s not really meant for the MacBook Pro users.
In some ways, I think the Air is meant to be a more professional version of the EeePC and the CloudBook. If it weren’t for the integrated battery, I’d be all over it. Mostly because the EeePC is too limited (yep, Leopard’s been hacked onto it, but even the highest end Eee has only 8 GB of “hard drive”).
The CloudBook’s not even out yet. Though very similar (it has an actual hard drive — a big bonus), it’s also all open source and I’m not sure if the hardware could support Leopard.
Ah, yes - the eeePC Leopard hack. See here for details:
http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/11/12654/
Bear in mind, this violates Apple’s EULA, but that kind of supports my theory about “hackable” versus “unhackable”, doesn’t it?
Dave
I’m a frequent traveler and I find I have too many useless files sitting on my Macbook pro, eating up memory and forcing me to carry around a heavy, ungainly laptop. This air matched with a portable hard drive is perfect- you can open up quickly in the subway, on a flight, en route to a meeting– more importantly, you are forced to separate the important files from your storage files (that you keep on your HD). The limitations of the laptop will force me to be more efficient and to filter my work- something I would never have done otherwise.
Lets all wait till the second generation though, if there is one thing apple is good at, its making sure the first production set of its products are plagued with problems for the duration of their lifetime.
I sat back and thought about this a lot more over the last couple of days, and in a non-Experience Matters post on my own blog, wondered if anyone has actually gotten this right. So far, my thought is: No.