Reality Equation

MacBook Air Appreciation

Sometime 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 about anything remotely related to Macs, I was being too harsh on Apple. They said that all my criticisms weren’t merited. Nate even commented on that article telling me that I might have “missed the point” and misunderstood the target audience for the device.

I thought about this and was rather perplexed by how, even though I still stood firmly by my initial criticisms and maintained that a future revision would be a much better buy, I still really wanted one.

The truth is, and I’ll confess, that there’s a lot more to the MacBook Air than I’ve given it credit for. There are somethings that are simply so very mysteriously desirable that any attempt at relying on just pure reason will prove futile. Especially when it comes to Apple products, where the experience — the subjective, emotive and unquantifiable stuff — is a huge part of the package. (Photo, left, by Keso).

So this is going to be (after this rather elaborate intro) much-awaited MacBook Air appreciation article, where I’ll forget about the machine’s obvious shortcomings for a bit and focus instead on all the good things this new notebook has to offer. Here we go:

It Is Portable

The MacBook Air weighs 3.0 lbs (1.36 kg), versus the MacBook, which comes in at 5.0 lbs (2.27 kg). So, I thought, how much difference really could a 2 lbs reduction in weight really make?

A lot, it turns out.

I remember how my dad’s carrying his 17″ Dell Inspiron 9300 around everywhere eventually started taking toll on his shoulders, which made calling the thing “portable” pretty much a prosecutable offense. Fine, so that was not meant to be lugged around in the first place, anyway; but even his current 14″ HP nx6320 notebook, in a bag with some sheets of paper, isn’t exactly an elegant alternative. You have to think twice before you decide you’re willing to take it with you, because the extra weight can start annoying you very soon.

And as Mark and Nate mentioned in the comments to my other MacBook Air article, for those who do indeed value portability while on the move — in train stations, airport, flights, between presentations and whatnot — 3.0 lbs is very good measure indeed, especially without compromising on standard screen and keyboard sizes.

It’s Beautiful

The MacBook Air is the sexiest machine there is, hands down. It’s ultra-thinness, the smooth, curved bezel, the sheer personality it exudes lends much to its desirability. To put it simply, it’s beautiful, and people like beautiful.

Apple was one of the first computer makers to show us that the operateur — previously meaningful only to a small iconic pack of nerds who, in dark, shallow workstations, delighted in the alien electronic flurry of communication of bits and bytes — could actually be something of beauty, something deserving a place in the Museum of Modern Arts. It blessed the world with the very original candy-flavoured translucent iBooks and iMacs back when computers were, invariably, beige towers or black slabs.

With the MacBookAir, Apple is reminding us again that there’s no reason why the humble computer can’t be a specimen of glamour and high-fashion. And that the question shouldn’t be, “Do I need to take it with me?” but, “Why wouldn’t I take it with me?”

And that’s got to count for something.

(Photo, above, by iFranz)

Optical Media No More

The MacBook Air doesn’t come with an optical drive. (It’s available as an optional external attachment)

Apple’s “hidden agenda” they call it. The demise of the optical drive. Sounds rather odd at a time when Blu-Ray has only just won the tedious battle and crowned itself king of optical HD content delivery.

But as Apple fans rightly point out, the company has been responsible for introducing a lot of very strange, very new things that didn’t turn out to be too odd a few years down the line: the floppy drive, FireWire, the CD-ROM.

And so Apple is sending a powerful message: that CDs and DVDs aren’t the best ways to deliver data (movies are an exception, although it would seem not for too long, with the iTunes Music Store expanding so rapidly with so much new content) and that they’re on their way out of the portable computing world.

Ubiquitous Wireless

The way Apple sees it, the future of connectivity lies in one very important exclusion: that of wires. This is yet another message, yet another “hidden agenda”: to make wireless networks ubiquitous and, well, the norm.

One look at the “Wireless” section of the MacBook Air mini-site at Apple.com will make it clear: “Wireless backup”, “Wireless printing”, “Wireless movie rentals”. In fact, with Remote Disc, even wireless access to CDs and DVDs.

Magic Multi-Touch

Here’s a prediction: in three years, every “ultraportable” will have multi-touch trackpads. Here’s another: none of them will work as nicely as Apple’s will.

The Air incorporates the technology that allows the sort of multi-touch gestures that previously only iPhone users were blessed with, which means proud Air owners can do with their fingers all sorts of things from zooming to moving forward and backwards to rotating pictures to whatnot. If you’re not quite so sure yet why this is such a big deal, head on over to Apple’s website and check out the video demonstration: you’ll want the Air just for this!

The Whole Package

The Air is a bold, brash (but elegant), sexy new player in the ultra-portable world which, it turns out, a lot of people want. As New York Times technology columnist (and author of the famous ‘Missing Manual‘ series of books) David Pogue flatly put it,

“… the Air isn’t for everyone. Bargain hunters, feature counters and people who don’t see the value of elegance — in general, the same people who despised the iPhone before it came out — would be better off with a bigger, less expensive, more complete laptop”.

I think he’s got a point. Not everyone demands bleeding-edge, hardcore, faster-than-thou-by-2-seconds performance from their machines, and nor should they (there, I said it). Especially for the sort of light use (pun intended) most people put their computers through.

Even if the Air isn’t for you for whatever reason — it’s too expensive, it’s underpowered, it won’t run new games, I don’t want to be mugged — there’s still reason to celebrate, and this is why: economics. The Air has raised the bar on what consumers should expect of an ultra-portable, and there’s no doubt that the innovations of the Air will eventually spill on first to the other Macs, then to a few close competitors and finally go on to become something of an industry standard.

Really thin, light enclosures, a minimalist approach to IO ports, focus on wireless: these are signs of the future.

And the MacBook Air is leading the way.