∗ Why the MacBook Air won’t Take Flight. Yet.
Steve Jobs drew this year’s MacWorld keynote address to a close by pulling Apple’s latest portable offering out of a standard letter envelope: the MacBook Air. But whispers around the Mac community seem to cast doubt on whether the ultra-portable will be ably to fly at all.
Mac pundits had predicted an ultra-portable would be introduced to fill the gap between the highly popular consumer-level MacBook and the pro-level MacBook Pro. Mac fans had expected, in a pre-keynote atmosphere of hope and excitement, that Apple’s foray into the ultra-portable market would, as is usually the case, be revolutionary.
But seeing what’s come out of the envelope, it seems it’ll be some time before any revolution.
Apple says that the MacBook Air is “the world’s thinnest notebook”, and this, above all, seems to have been the design vision. Measuring 0.76″ in thickness to as low as 0.16″ at the thinnest edges, the Air is an amazing feat of engineering — Intel had to scale down the Core 2 Duo processor to make it fit the thing — and art. It’s fantastically sleek, and brings much innovation in its multi-touch trackpad (and gestures), smart use of 802.11n connectivity and sheer beauty. But that’s where the glitz ends, as the notebook struggles to find a niche market to save it from the fate of the PowerMac G4 Cube, which, also an impressive attempt at miniaturization, failed to appeal to the market it was after.
The MacBook Air is aimed at those who want portability above all - outdoor-adventure types, cyclists, trekkers, travelers. The sort of people who’ll make field documentaries and films, conduct research and write media reports from remote places, where the computer should be the last of their worries. Deliver media from anywhere they go, because as Apple sees it, now that they’ve got the Air, they can take their computer with them.
But technical restrictions make the Air a beautiful but less-than-competent computer for the job. It doesn’t have a FireWire port essential to capturing video from digital tapes, no audio in for recording, doesn’t have a phone modem port to connect from areas where WiFi/WiMax networks don’t exist, comes default with a standard notebook 80GB hard-disk drive with moving parts, omits the optical drive, and — for the first time in the history of Apple portables — has protruding flaps for what little I/O ports it does have.
To be fair, Apple does provide solutions: there’s a single USB 2.0 port for data transfer, an option for a 64GB solid-state hard-disk with no moving parts; even Apple’s omission of the optical drive in favor of saving space is not an absolutely terribly compromise considering that they do indeed provide a portable USB 2.0-compatible external drive to compensate for it, and also a way for the Air to wirelessly “borrow” another computer’s drive.
But it all becomes a little senseless when you put the focus back on portability. Something has to be wrong when an ultra-portable device — even this term makes less sense considering that the cheaper MacBook is virtually the same size in width and breadth as the Air, even slightly smaller, except in thickness — requires additional accessories to be any useful in the very areas it’s meant to serve. So lug around the external optical drive, an external modem, an external audio interface maybe and worry about the flap breaking. And, of course, pay extra.
Some Mac users are asking who exactly Apple is targeting with this device, and it seems increasingly clear that — at a price point of around US $1800, $700 over base MacBook and $300 below the base MacBook Pro — only those who value owning the “thinnest laptop” ever, above everything else, will end up buying one. The technical capabilities are nothing to write home about, and although this notebook a perfect city computer for those who just want a computer for Web, email and documents, the price is prohibitive for that group as well.
With the MacBook and the MacBook Pro already so popular with students, professionals and everyone-else in between — including musicians, video professionals, digital media artists — would it sell enough to keep it afloat? With a huge profit margin, maybe. But with the rise of social networking sites and democratization of digital media, everybody seems to want to dabble with home music recording (sites like iCompositions and MacJams cater to just them), photos and video (YouTube is exploding); how accommodating is MacBook Air to the demands of those it targets?
Beyond the initial sales in the heat and excitement of a new Apple product, and support from loyal Apple fans and technology enthusiasts, it would seem that Apple needs to find new ways to make the MacBook Air more useful in an early revision if it wants to save the universe’s thinnest laptop from starving to death.
Article by Parimal Satyal. Photos by MacSwitching.com
» 10 comments
√ Ralph Butler, on January 23rd, 2008 wrote...
Biggest stopper to me is poor battery life. Just 5 Apple® hours (Apple hours being historically far shorter than clock hours). And no way to swap batteries or extend that? So I have to plug in? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a portable?
Other than that, I would find it useful for working on the road. Meanwhile, I’ll stick with the 10 hour battery life of my heavier, but otherwise elegant Pismo (made by Apple 8 years ago).
√ Zeke Miller, on January 23rd, 2008 wrote...
Ralph: The MBA’s battery life does not appear to have been measured in “Apple® hours”. Those are calculated with everything turned off and the screen one notch above off, whereas the MBA’s quoted time is for “web browsing” with “wireless on”.
Also, how are you getting 10 hours with a Pismo? The one I had couldn’t top 3.5 hours on its best day.
√ Nate, on January 23rd, 2008 wrote...
I think you’ve missed the point. It’s not meant to be a desktop replace or for doing video and audio editing on the road. That’s what the MacBook Pros and to a lesser extent the MacBooks are for. It’s for the road warrior who has to slug it out through airports and train stations day after day. It’s light, fits in your carry on or brief case and connects to a projector with ease. It’s got the power to do the multimedia presentations you need to make with enough disk space for your apps and a few videos. And it exudes style and class. I imagine the road warrior with more than the minimal budget will snap them up.
√ Mr Roberto, on January 23rd, 2008 wrote...
I think the purpose of this machine is quite simple: to herd the masses to the Internet where Big Brother Google will rule them all. As a pincher movement, I think it’s quite brilliant. It will only be the first of many, designed to ease people into a Trust The Wifi mentality. Once the converts are convinced, this product will expand into a whole range.
Mark my words: Steve Jobs will turn out to be the Lenin of our time, and Google is not the benevolent entity it tries to portray itself to be.
√ Parimal Satyal, on January 23rd, 2008 wrote...
I think there’s a lot of good points raised in these comments (and another article is due). I’ll admit, I’d love to have a MacBook Air for myself, even better as a secondary machine — write from a WiFi-enabled cafe, record songs on-the-go with an iMic connected to the one USB 2.0 port, carry it around with no worries of extra weight — but it all comes down to perceived utility.
I agree the Air is simply the most beautiful notebook ever, and if I were spend fortunes on hiring a great designer to do my home/office, the best web designers to do my website, I wouldn’t mind spending some to have a computer that exudes personality.
Apple is, once again, betting on its vision of the future. I wrote in my post about the Organic Web Revolution the iPhone will bring, and I believe it’s happening. The Air will push the industry to rethink just how exactly “mobile” mobile-computing should be, and it’s doing it beautiful. Again, it’s ahead of it’s time; is the world ready?
The Air is competitive with other ultra-portables, but it’s the same with the others as well - give up features, pay more for style (except the Air outdoes them in that department).
What I’d love is either:
a) Air revision: Up the processor to the 45nm mobile Penryn we’ve been hearing about, increase clock speed to at least a tad over the MacBook.
b) Use the same Penryn chips on the usual MacBook and MacBook Pro to make those slightly thinner (obviously not as much). I’d imagine the Air design, in a year or so, will spill over to the other computers, and ultraportables have to be competitive (performance-wise) with the regular computers. The Air should be competitive with the other MacBooks so it does really sit in between those.
But yes, this is one beautiful computer.
Thanks for your comments, and like I said, another article is indeed due.
√ Mr Roberto, on January 29th, 2008 wrote...
“So lug around the external optical drive, an external modem, an external audio interface maybe and worry about the flap breaking.”
Don’t forget the handy little screwdriver, which you’ll need everytime you have to swap batteries while out on location. Most mobile travellers — like me — tend to drain our batteries in the course of a day. With the Powerbook/MacBook battery all you need is a coin and 30 seconds. No such luck with the Air.
√ Parimal Satyal, on January 30th, 2008 wrote...
Well, yes. While it’s true that the Mac is not really a platform to judge by feature count alone — it’s the elegance, the experience, the very reason that a lot of us so passionately defend it — and Apple’s known for being on the cutting edge of killing old and making way for newer, better, even untested ones (802.11n, early FireWire) - but in case of the Air, I really do think it falls short, in this revision at least (although, aesthetically, there’s so much going for it).
I didn’t know about the battery situation (I’m, at least for now, a desktop person) but I’m thinking the difficulty in getting to the battery might annoy some travelers, as it has yourself.
We’ll have to see how the market responds.
√ Saral Shrestha, on February 2nd, 2008 wrote...
My biggest concern is also the lack of an internal optical drive, a fire-wire port, audio in port and the short battery life…it does seem like a long list of cons but the design of the Air and the size of it makes it different from other ultra portables…
I’m sure that apple put a huge amount of time in developing the Air and Steve Jobs sure has something in his mind which made him not include an internal optical drive…kill the CD maybe…and encourage itunes downloads…lol…now with movie rentals in itunes…its just the software that needs to come to itunes… anyway, a bleak possibility which I wouldnt prefer…
However, I’m pretty much sure that the Air is as beautiful as the iPhone and even more prettier in real…like the iPhone…
√ Reality Equation of Infinite Variables, on March 27th, 2008 wrote...
[…] back, I wrote why Apple’s newest portable machine MacBook Air won’t quite take flight yet. A lot of people told me that, especially for someone who is usually ridiculously enthusiastic […]
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Published on
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
Authored by
Parimal Satyal
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» Macs and Apple, Inc.
⌘ Technology & the Digital Crave
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√ mark, on January 23rd, 2008 wrote...
Buying any Apple laptop requires making choices. For most people, MacBook or MacBook Pro is best. But for plenty who travel (or even move around for meetings within the workplace), MacBook Air is more than adequate.
A device either goes in my pocket or in my standard-sized briefcase/backpack. There is really nothing in between. For pocket or briefcase/ backpack, how light it is and how thin it is are the biggest drivers. Go pack your briefcase/backpack and see where you’d put your computer and what makes the biggest difference.
I have a ThinkPad X60 for work: it’s optical drive is in the cradle - the cradle sits in a drawer at home; it has an Ethernet port but I use wifi at work, home, hotels, airports, etc; it only has a 12″ screen - I’d really like a bigger one; and I’ve never swapped batteries even on long flights. With an MBA, the only adapter I’d carry around is the one for VGA as I’d need it to plug into projectors.
Recognize that there are a couple of hidden agendas here like they did by dropping the floppy drive and parallel/serial ports:
1. Apple is trying to make wifi more ubiquitous, and the lack of an Ethernet port is a push in that direction. But I’d agree Apple needs to do a bit more to make wifi even more ubiquitous.
2. Apple is trying to move people to digital media for content and software, and the lack of an optical drive is a push in that direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple starts offering all its software for sale via download.