Macworld is always exciting, even when the new product announcements are disappointments. No matter what Apple does, there’s always a disappointment somewhere.
The new and diminutive MacBook Air does not really disappoint. Unless you think about it. It’s another beautiful and expensive toy from Apple. One of many owned by each Macworld attendee.
It’s alright to argue with me about MacBook Air being called ‘expensive.’ Expense is relative, right? At $1,800, Air is less expensive than the ultra light models from Toshiba and Sony, both of which have smaller screens and keyboards.
However, Air is more expensive than a MacBook, and about the only thing really notably better than a MacBook is that the air is half the size. Not half the basic length and width dimensions. But thinner. Really thing. Really elegant. Really lustful.
That’s my point. Apple has come up with another product for which to lust, a beautifully crafted machine that costs more than the utilitarian MacBook line without offering more, but slightly less than the MacBook Pro line which offers much, much more.
Maybe this is the so-called Apple Tax that I hear and read about from time to time. Whatever it is, Apple is Everywhere™ these days, just as Microsoft once wanted Windows Everywhere to be everywhere. Apple’s toys and gadgets and machines are what we want and what we’re willing to pay for to keep up the addiction habit.
What do most PC owners, business or personal users, get from Microsoft? Windows, Microsoft Office, and a few and somewhat obscure utility applications. Most people know about Windows and Office. Those are the standards.
What about Apple? Increasingly, for Apple’s growing number of customers, it’s a Mac on the desktop, a notebook Mac, an iPod of one model or another, now the iPhone. There’s the upgrades to Mac OS X, upgrades to iLife ‘08, upgrades to the pro applications.
That’s not all. With Apple we also have the lustful Apple TV Take 2 which works so smartly with iTunes Store and the new movie rentals. What’s not to like?
Then, to feed my Apple Addiction™ Steve introduces a 21st century Cube in the form of an ultra light notebook to die for. MacBook Air. Yes, everyone here at Macworld wants an Air. I honestly think some Mac users would buy it just to be able to touch it.
Think about it. Air is not quite half the weight of a MacBook but it does less. Mostly. There’s no extra USB port, no FireWire port, no Ethernet port, no hard drive expansion capability, no removable battery, and it costs more. But everyone here wants one. How does Apple do that?
Nobody is twisting my arm, or any arms or other appendages attached to Apple’s more than 100-million customers. It’s a choice, right? But it’s a choice to buy Apple’s growing list of Must Have™ and lustful products following the aura and influence and advertising from the company’s savvy and spiritual leader, Steve Jobs.
Can you say Time Capsule? No wonder wireless backup was dropped from Time Machine when OS X Leopard was launched last year. Apple had another lustful product idea-- marry the slick Airport Extreme with a big hard drive and let Time Machine do the magic.
Apple is Everywhere™ these days. It’s almost to the point where I can no longer afford to be a member of the church, or viewed another way, no longer afford to pay my junkie.
Part of the problem here with this point of view isn’t that Apple created something everyone “Must have”. They created a product that is aimed at a very specific segment of computer users that offers just what they thought this segment would need, and stay light and ultra-portable when doing what they do. Yes, you’ll pay more to do a little less, but if what you don’t have isn’t necessary for what you have to do...is it really a bad thing? You gain on some points, lose on others, but in the end, it’s not really a system designed for a wide market of users. The MacBook and the MacBook Pro are more general products (though it can be argued even the Pro is more segment oriented). General computer users don’t NEED a MacBook Air.
That’s where we get to the second part of the problem...Apple made a computer you don’t exactly need, but they made it so well, and look so good...that you *WANT* it anyways.
So who is to blame?
Apple, the ‘pusher’?
Nope.
That blame falls squarely on our shoulders. If we don’t really need the MacBook Air for what we do, then we really shouldn’t buy it. But if it’s exactly what we need, then that should be our next purchase. If you’ve more money than Avarice and love to collect gadgets, then by all means, get one. But we shouldn’t get all caught up in MacBook Envy just because We love the way it looks/feels/works, and whine how it doesn’t fit our specific needs. There are other models of Apple laptops we can look at, folks. I mean, those Ford GT Supercars are awesome, but if a Sedan or a Mini-Van is what you need, why are you complaining that the GT doesn’t have more seats? Oooh and Ahhh if you want, but then move on.
My reaction is that the MacBook Air was a triumph of style over substance. I think it will have a smallish number of users for whom the utility is perfect, a larger number of buyers who are into accessorizing their tech wardrobe, but overall I’m willing to bet that this particular item ends up like the Cube… neat but modest sales push it out of the line-up fairly soon.
The Air has its market, and it will suffice to keep the Air around. However, this is a first generation product with a great deal of potential. Like the first iPod, the first iMac, or indeed the first Mac, the MacBook Air will do something important: it will change the way people look at technology.
The first Mac had no 5.25” drive. It was a while before people realized that 3.5” drives were better, and it even took Apple a couple Macs to get things just right. The original iPod was a bit rough, but people learned to love a new, more intuitive way of organizing music on portable players. The original iMac eschewed even the 3.5” floppy drive, which many critics considered an idiotic move, yet now it is the rare computer that comes with a floppy drive standard.
Now we have the MacBook Air, an itty bitty (that’s not the key thing) notebook with no optical drive. There is no shortage of voices calling this a bad move on Apple’s part, but I am with Jobs on this one. You need a second USB drive? Drop by Frys and spend eight dollars on a portable hub. Yeah, I would have liked to have Firewire, but with Time Capsule as part of a new class of hybrid devices, it won’t be long before we stop caring all that much.
What the Air does is raise a question, and that is something the Cube never did. Now, how many of you really need built-in optical drives?
Let me throw this out there, too. Might this create enough of a demand for solid state drives that production will go up and prices will come down?
I can’t believe all the bitching and moaning on all the other forums about what the MacBook Air doesn’t have. The MacBook has all these things; if you have to have them, buy a MacBook! The only reason you’re buying a MacBook Air is its size; that’s also the reason all these things have been left off. So what all these people are saying is, they want it to be small, but large! If Apple had discontinued the regular MacBook and replaced it with this, they would have a point, but really, people: if this product doesn’t meet your needs, don’t buy it; just quit complaining that it exists at all!
The only need of mine that it doesn’t meet is the need for a lower price. If that ever came along, I would buy one in a minute. This is really the best of both worlds. Think of it as a Mac Mini that you can use with an external display using the DVI port, and a full-size keyboard and mouse using the USB port. The superdrive you can plug into the keyboard when you need it. Of course, you’ve got the Time Capsule serving as a backup and bulk storage drive. So far just like a Mac Mini, except you can pull out three plugs and take it with you anywhere you go, as a fully functional computer. Sure a dock would be more convenient, but really it would only take a few seconds to plug everything back in when you get home. It’s the world’s smallest desktop, it’s the world’s smallest laptop, it’s both!
I think this is the first computer with flash memory in place of a hard drive, and may be the breakthrough that was needed to start bringing the price down. I think that’s what Apple thinks, and the cheaper hard drive model is probably just a stopgap until Flash replaces it completely a year or a year and a half from now, maybe with twice of four times the capacity.
On top of all that, the MacBook Air is just plain cool!
The Air has its market, and it will suffice to keep the Air around. However, this is a first generation product with a great deal of potential. Like the first iPod, the first iMac, or indeed the first Mac, the MacBook Air will do something important: it will change the way people look at technology.
The first Mac had no 5.25” drive. It was a while before people realized that 3.5” drives were better, and it even took Apple a couple Macs to get things just right. The original iPod was a bit rough, but people learned to love a new, more intuitive way of organizing music on portable players. The original iMac eschewed even the 3.5” floppy drive, which many critics considered an idiotic move, yet now it is the rare computer that comes with a floppy drive standard.
Now we have the MacBook Air, an itty bitty (that’s not the key thing) notebook with no optical drive. There is no shortage of voices calling this a bad move on Apple’s part, but I am with Jobs on this one. You need a second USB drive? Drop by Frys and spend eight dollars on a portable hub. Yeah, I would have liked to have Firewire, but with Time Capsule as part of a new class of hybrid devices, it won’t be long before we stop caring all that much.
What the Air does is raise a question, and that is something the Cube never did. Now, how many of you really need built-in optical drives?
Let me throw this out there, too. Might this create enough of a demand for solid state drives that production will go up and prices will come down?
Way way back, is it true that Steve Jobs separated the old school Apple team and did the same with the Mac team and turned them against each other in order to compete learning only that this would destroy the company at all. Ever heard any thing like that? I am surprised it took them this long to get things this small and I think we might be reaching out limits on how small stiff can get with out cutting out to many needed options.
PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ - 19 January 2008 01:43 AM
Way way back, is it true that Steve Jobs separated the old school Apple team and did the same with the Mac team and turned them against each other in order to compete learning only that this would destroy the company at all. Ever heard any thing like that? I am surprised it took them this long to get things this small and I think we might be reaching out limits on how small stiff can get with out cutting out to many needed options.
I can’t say how true this may have been. The film The Pirates of Silicone Valley certainly makes it clear, indicating that Gil Amelio, among others, became concerned by such a schism, leading, in part, to Jobs’ ouster. Consider, though, that Jobs is a crusader, and it is certainly within the scope of the probable.
O.K I will come clean about what I think about this topic once and for all. No I can not afford the majority off what Apple throws at me but some how I find myself srapping up the cash for the new hardware/software.
It’s a “Can’t live without my Mac upgrade, Can’t afford to pay for it either but I am going to find that cash somehow and I always do. LOL/ Apple has me down for three Apple Care Plans/ A mac pro desktop, mac/book, 23 cinema , .Mac yearly fee’s , But it is all worth it in the end. I was just doing some work on my fiancee’s p.c. yesterday. I built it and I no longer use it so I gave it to her. The p.c has a very high performance hard drive in it called a raptor witch spins at 10 k (rpm). Yes it’s noisy and fast but somehow got more bad boot sectors. Actually not the computers fault, it’s windows. Yes Mac is worth the extra buck.
PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ - 20 January 2008 01:30 AM
DakRoland - 18 January 2008 10:04 PM
You always have a choice.
O.K I will come clean about what I think about this topic once and for all. No I can not afford the majority off what Apple throws at me but some how I find myself srapping up the cash for the new hardware/software.
It’s a “Can’t live without my Mac upgrade, Can’t afford to pay for it either but I am going to find that cash somehow and I always do. LOL/ Apple has me down for three Apple Care Plans/ A mac pro desktop, mac/book, 23 cinema , .Mac yearly fee’s , But it is all worth it in the end. I was just doing some work on my fiancee’s p.c. yesterday. I built it and I no longer use it so I gave it to her. The p.c has a very high performance hard drive in it called a raptor witch spins at 10 k (rpm). Yes it’s noisy and fast but somehow got more bad boot sectors. Actually not the computers fault, it’s windows. Yes Mac is worth the extra buck.
A hard drive with bad boot sectors isn’t Window’s fault. It’s either caused by boot sector corruption caused by a power outage while being modified, a virus infection (Which shouldn’t even happen now-a-days since it’s an extremely easy thing to catch and prevent), or a bad hard drive with dying sectors which happened to be located in the boot sector area of the hard drive.
Check that drive, and check the file system. The file system might have errors caused by inconsistencies, or it could be the symptoms of a dying hard drive. It’s a 10,000 RPM hard drive, (Unless it’s a server class model) I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on it’s way out.
I have to say this when everyone blames Windows for something that’s obviously not provoked by Windows: Check your hardware.
Now back to the topic at hand:
You should never feel obligated to buy something just because it’s new. Quite the opposite, you should use the hardware you have as long as possible. Now a days, since the advancement to faster parts is slowing down a bit, considering the limitations that companies like Intel, AMD, NVidia, and the rest have to tackle, it’s giving consumers some breathing room. Sometime to enjoy the systems and products they currently have. So right now, Software like iLife, and the countless of other products out there being made by 3rd parties, should be what’s important.
I mean, do you really need that extra .3 GHz on that Core 2 Yorkfield/Wolfdale? There’s more to the new revisions than just speed, I know, but that’s already handled by Apple during the manufacturing process. Only people like me really gun for the latest die revision, and the latest stepping on specific processor models, but that’s because I build my own machines. I have to worry about the details.
People with the White iMac didn’t need to buy the new revision of the iMac. And the same thing should apply with people who own the current iMac when Apple revises the iMac line-up. It’s OK to have the “old and busted” model (ie The 1 year old iMac).
You only spend as much money as you let yourself. Always think about that when watching the next Apple Keynote.
Andrew Purvis - 19 January 2008 12:23 AM
Let me throw this out there, too. Might this create enough of a demand for solid state drives that production will go up and prices will come down?
Well, not Apple alone. We still need the demand and support of all the other OEMs out there as well. There are only two groups that can lower the price on emerging hardware like SSDs. Consumers, and the people actually investing in and developing said emerging hardware.
And in order to get SSDs in the hands of consumers, you need multiple companies supporting the standard.
Gatesbasher - 19 January 2008 01:31 AM
I think this is the first computer with flash memory in place of a hard drive, and may be the breakthrough that was needed to start bringing the price down. I think that’s what Apple thinks, and the cheaper hard drive model is probably just a stopgap until Flash replaces it completely a year or a year and a half from now, maybe with twice of four times the capacity.
On top of all that, the MacBook Air is just plain cool!
HP and Toshiba are offering laptops with SSD drives, with Dell since Spring of 07. Apple wasn’t the first, but they will help support SSD, the more companies supporting SSD the better.
It’s a “Can’t live without my Mac upgrade, Can’t afford to pay for it either but I am going to find that cash somehow and I always do. LOL/ Apple has me down for three Apple Care Plans/ A mac pro desktop, mac/book, 23 cinema , .Mac yearly fee’s , But it is all worth it in the end. I was just doing some work on my fiancee’s p.c. yesterday. I built it and I no longer use it so I gave it to her. The p.c has a very high performance hard drive in it called a raptor witch spins at 10 k (rpm). Yes it’s noisy and fast but somehow got more bad boot sectors. Actually not the computers fault, it’s windows. Yes Mac is worth the extra buck.
A hard drive with bad boot sectors isn’t Window’s fault. It’s either caused by boot sector corruption caused by a power outage while being modified, a virus infection (Which shouldn’t even happen now-a-days since it’s an extremely easy thing to catch and prevent), or a bad hard drive with dying sectors which happened to be located in the boot sector area of the hard drive.
Check that drive, and check the file system. The file system might have errors caused by inconsistencies, or it could be the symptoms of a dying hard drive. It’s a 10,000 RPM hard drive, (Unless it’s a server class model) I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on it’s way out.
I have to say this when everyone blames Windows for something that’s obviously not provoked by Windows: Check your hardware.
Now back to the topic at hand:
You should never feel obligated to buy something just because it’s new. Quite the opposite, you should use the hardware you have as long as possible. Now a days, since the advancement to faster parts is slowing down a bit, considering the limitations that companies like Intel, AMD, NVidia, and the rest have to tackle, it’s giving consumers some breathing room. Sometime to enjoy the systems and products they currently have. So right now, Software like iLife, and the countless of other products out there being made by 3rd parties, should be what’s important.
I mean, do you really need that extra .3 GHz on that Core 2 Yorkfield/Wolfdale? There’s more to the new revisions than just speed, I know, but that’s already handled by Apple during the manufacturing process. Only people like me really gun for the latest die revision, and the latest stepping on specific processor models, but that’s because I build my own machines. I have to worry about the details.
People with the White iMac didn’t need to buy the new revision of the iMac. And the same thing should apply with people who own the current iMac when Apple revises the iMac line-up. It’s OK to have the “old and busted” model (ie The 1 year old iMac).
You only spend as much money as you let yourself. Always think about that when watching the next Apple Keynote.
Andrew Purvis - 19 January 2008 12:23 AM
Let me throw this out there, too. Might this create enough of a demand for solid state drives that production will go up and prices will come down?
Well, not Apple alone. We still need the demand and support of all the other OEMs out there as well. There are only two groups that can lower the price on emerging hardware like SSDs. Consumers, and the people actually investing in and developing said emerging hardware.
And in order to get SSDs in the hands of consumers, you need multiple companies supporting the standard.
It was a custom built state of the art P.C last december. I dropped almost five grand in the tower alone. I live five minutes from tiger direct. I built this computer before I turned to Mac forever. Everything and I mean everything is top of the line material in it. I personally don’t care about it. It has had this problem before and I know what caused it and your very close, power failures on boot in windows is fatal, but this was not the cause. I was using a program called “perfect disk” to defragment. This program has done this to me before and I don’t know why I just don’t learn my lesson. “perfect disk works just fine but if you defragment the hard drive back on this certain machine from perfect disk back to letting windows defragment, then I get bad sectors. I am not really worried about them, I don’t care because I hate windows personally, I gave up on this computer a week after I built it and went and spent ten grand a Mac Pro. I gave the “tsunami dream p.c.” to my fiancee.
If I put in wipe drive and wipe that drive to all zero’s and reinstall it’s fine until the next windows nightmere. I would like to sell it but shipping it on e-bay would be to risky and I don’t want to be responsible for the computer getting messed up. Allot of the parts are ending up in my Mac pro, like the 2 500 gig sata hard drives that where in the p.c. on top of the 80 gig raptor OS hard drive are now in my Mac Pro. I want the 512 nvida g force extreme card out of it and the 24 inch monitor. Then I would have a kick ass Mac Pro desk top but I don’t think the old lady will go for that. Hell all she does is check her bank accounts and e-mail. I should go buy her a e-machines for $400.00 and take back the p.c. and salvage what parts are compatible with the Mac and go for it. I spent almost $17 thousand on two computers last December, one a p.c. that turned out to be a piece of junk and two are Mac’s one a Mac book and one a Mac Pro. Windows vs Mac, Mac is the benz of computers and windows maybe a ford escort. You can go to my profile and look on my site at the computer if you can find it. When I gut the p.c. it’s gonna have a sound blaster xfi card to kill for, that a Mac can not use.
The Air has its market, and it will suffice to keep the Air around. However, this is a first generation product with a great deal of potential. Like the first iPod, the first iMac, or indeed the first Mac, the MacBook Air will do something important: it will change the way people look at technology.
The first Mac had no 5.25” drive. It was a while before people realized that 3.5” drives were better, and it even took Apple a couple Macs to get things just right. The original iPod was a bit rough, but people learned to love a new, more intuitive way of organizing music on portable players. The original iMac eschewed even the 3.5” floppy drive, which many critics considered an idiotic move, yet now it is the rare computer that comes with a floppy drive standard.
Now we have the MacBook Air, an itty bitty (that’s not the key thing) notebook with no optical drive. There is no shortage of voices calling this a bad move on Apple’s part, but I am with Jobs on this one. You need a second USB drive? Drop by Frys and spend eight dollars on a portable hub. Yeah, I would have liked to have Firewire, but with Time Capsule as part of a new class of hybrid devices, it won’t be long before we stop caring all that much.
What the Air does is raise a question, and that is something the Cube never did. Now, how many of you really need built-in optical drives?
Let me throw this out there, too. Might this create enough of a demand for solid state drives that production will go up and prices will come down?
About the boot sectors. I am asking you because from the little forum talking we have done, I sense that you are on a much higher intelligance level when it comes to computers.
I have had this hard drive do this to me allot in one year. I am perfectionist and if something is not perfect then I have to fix it whether it’s working fine or not. I caused the 8 sectors to go bad with that defragment program. I used “perfect disk on it for months and one day decided to use windows to defragment the drive back to the way windows would defragment not the way a third party defragmenting software would do. Anyway the damage is done again, the computer works fine and I don’t want to reinstall windows again and office! it’s a never ending nightmare, I wish I could just convince my old lady to get a Imac, my god I swear I would take out a title loan on my 2007 ride that I have the title for. I want to get away from windows forever GRRRR. What I am getting at is, I have seen the bad sectors stay that way before for months and windows will continue to work just fine. Should I reformat yet again or leave it alone? My old lady is a R.N and makes a easy 90k a year where we live, every time her p.c. crashes she looses allot and you would think she is getting sick of it BECAUSE I AM! She has seen my Mac for over a year now and not one crash. A little bumpy going into Leopard and a video card failure but other wise my Macs are dependable. Can’t say that about any p.c.
I had to get that out of my system. Now it’s time to do a fast proof read for errors.
I am told I am not allowed to touch p.c.’s or I should say hers to be exact even though I break em, I fix them. I break them to learn. Now a Mac you don’t have to break them or should I say over a year and my Mac’s have not broke down dealing with me. Now p.c. leaves far to many open places to get into where I really don’t belong where Mac closed all that important OS stuff off to the average user. Make any sense?
Yeah, never mind the PM I sent you, it sounds like your hard drive has Offline Uncorrecteable Sectors with Bad Sectors starting to affect the file system.
Go to HD Tune (http://www.hdtune.com), install it, and run it. See what the SMART flags tell you in the Health tab. If you got several Bad sectors and bad read and write flags, your HD is on it’s way out (Might have been bad to begin with). Also try the Error Scan utility on it (Read only scan, so it’s safe to use).
The funny thing about all these forums that are popping up about my P.C that are going to end is, it’s a p.c that is messing up once again in my house. I used to get so mad because it’s a sign I am going to have to reinstall soon again. Now that I am done, if any of my old lady’s p.c.’s puke again including her dell laptop that has been going solid for a couple of years but needs a reinstall also due to being sunk down with spyware and who knows what viruses, a computer that was once fast but is now sluggish as this has happened to all my p.c’s through out my life sooner or later. She can get in the car and go with me and we can go bring more Mac’s into the family. I want this to be a p.c free house by the end of this year and if that means throwing all my p.c. trash in a box of junk into the street then so be it.
O.K I will come clean about what I think about this topic once and for all. No I can not afford the majority off what Apple throws at me but some how I find myself srapping up the cash for the new hardware/software.
The funny thing about all these forums that are popping up about my P.C that are going to end is, it’s a p.c that is messing up once again in my house. I used to get so mad because it’s a sign I am going to have to reinstall soon again. Now that I am done, if any of my old lady’s p.c.’s puke again including her dell laptop that has been going solid for a couple of years but needs a reinstall also due to being sunk down with spyware and who knows what viruses, a computer that was once fast but is now sluggish as this has happened to all my p.c’s through out my life sooner or later. She can get in the car and go with me and we can go bring more Mac’s into the family. I want this to be a p.c free house by the end of this year and if that means throwing all my p.c. trash in a box of junk into the street then so be it.
