February 5th, 2008
by Michael Swanberg
It is becoming very obvious to me that Apple is no longer interested in creating viable products, but instead are interested in creating proofs-of-concept for new ideas. Case in point: the Macbook Air.
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If any of you are like me, you are starting to get tired of Apple telling us the way we should be doing things. They are continually reducing the effectiveness and the feature-set of their products and telling us this is the way it should be, that we like to work with our hands in cuffs, and that we will pay dearly to do so. The Macbook Air is an interesting product, indeed, but I am having tons of trouble understanding who would want one. Someone please help me out here.
The first time this happened, it was called the iPhone. I got one because it did enough of what I need a phone to do that the cool new touch-screen interface put it over the top. And as time goes on, they are upgrading the iPhone to do more and more. This is incredibly shrewd, as far as I can tell. The idea seems to be to roll out more and more features so that people have to sync their phones to their computers, which helps Apple control what’s on them. That way, they can reduce jailbreaking and cracking.
In any case, the new Macbook Air is supposed to be this newfound blossom of portability. I say nay nay, and I’ll tell you why.
Oh, this isn’t a review. I love you guys, but I’m not dropping $1800-3100 large just to review this thing. I don’t want one. But I will tell you what I’ve gleaned from playing with it at the Apple Store and also what I’ve read. The ARS Technica review is a very good one, if you want a true hands-on review.
Let’s think about what makes electronics portable. First, it helps to be small. Second, light. And third, complete in functionality.
The Macbook Air satisfies number two (hee hee) very well. It is light. It’s about 3 pounds. But this only really helps when you’re lugging it around for long periods, right? If you’re just going from the car to the office and back to the car, then 3 pounds or 13 pounds doesn’t matter that much. So it is obvious that Apple meant you to take the Air on long trips, right? Scurrying through the, um, Air-port (sorry for the pun) with your Air in your backpack. This idea, that it seems meant to be taken on long adventures, is not backed by the Air’s other features (and in some cases I mean lack of features).
As for small, well, it’s definitely one of the smaller laptops around. The screen is 13.3″, the same size as the Macbook. It’s just much thinner. But let’s get real. Does that really make it smaller? You still can’t clip it to your belt. You still need a full-sized backpack to carry it in. You can’t, say, plop it in a purse like the ultra-portable PCs (OQO, for instance). Essentially, think about it this way. If you had, say, a car. Then you smushed that car down almost flat. It would still need the same-sized parking space.
Let’s look at my third idea of portability: complete in functionality. By this I mean that if you are miles from home, the gadget still needs to do everything that you need it to. It was huge that the iPhone can purchase tracks from the ITMS without needing the computer. But hey, why not videos? Why can’t it update it’s podcasts without a computer? There is this invisible tether between the iPhone and your computer at home which makes the iPhone a non-portable device for those features. Now, it still functions fine as a phone, so if you’re okay without updated podcasts and videos until you can make it home again, then the iPhone is okay. There’s still some warts though.
But back to the Air. It doesn’t have an optical drive. So, say you’re on the road and you buy some new software. You can’t install it. You can’t use it to play a DVD either, for instance. There is an external optical drive ($$$) that can be purchased, but think of being on a plane. Now you have to dig out your Air and the external drive (where can you put that on that tiny seat-back tray? Just dangle it by the USB cord?). Apple will tell you that you should be purchasing your content from iTunes anyway, so you don’t need the drive. I say it’s a reduction in functionality from the average laptop that is specifically designed to garner more ITMS profits. Period.
Here’s another thing. The battery is not user-replaceable. Apple claims 5 hours of battery life, but let’s get real, folks. It’s probably in the 3-hour range in legitimate use. So one would think that having the ability to carry spare batteries would be a boon, right? After all, 3 hours covers the average flight, but not a transcontinental or intercontinental one. I imagine that before long there will be third-party battery packs that plug into the mag-safe power jack. After all, there’s a grand market for similar products for iPods.
So, all in all, this product is nowhere near an increase in portability. In fact, I find it less portable. It’s hopelessly tethered to your home desktop computer in a variety of ways. Not the least of which is the Remote Disc software, which lets you use another computer’s (Mac or PC) optical drive as the Air’s optical drive. This is really clever, but to me it’s a gimmick that makes up for a shortcoming that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Let’s talk about that. This is the premise of this treatise, anyway, that Apple is becoming a design company, not a product company. Remote Disc is a perfect example of this. It’s almost as though Apple said, “hey, here’s a cool idea… use another computer’s optical drive as this computer’s optical drive… but where could we use this?” And bingo, they created the Macbook Air just to expose this new technology.
There’s another cool feature of the Macbook Air that fits the same category. Booting from the network has been possible for some time now. But the Air has no cabled NIC, no LAN jack. it does everything wirelessly. So, they came up with a scheme to be able to boot from a wireless network. This is very clever. They built into the firmware (I am guessing) the ability to connect to a wireless LAN (I am hoping that WPA and WEP are possible too) and boot from that network. So if you need to reinstall your OS, you can set your Remote Disc computer to allow this, and then boot your Air over your wireless LAN to reinstall or do whatever you wish. I would be more inclined to think that a bootable partition on the main drive (or perhaps a separate solid-state drive that’s otherwise not accessible) would be better. I can envision most savvy Air users setting this up anyway for emergencies. But heaven forbid, under the Apple way of doing things, that you should have a catastrophic failure while away from home. Even having your Tiger or Leopard disc with you won’t help.
So, much like the iPhone, I am seeing the Macbook Air as not a product unto itself, but more of a means of displaying some clever things that Apple hopes to make mainstream. These are truly some great ideas that should be incorporated into the norm of portable computing, but I really don’t think that they should in any way become the standard, much less the only way a product can go about it’s routine.
Look at it this way. Laptops have had optical drives for some time now. And the Air still needs to use an optical drive from time to time, particularly in an emergency where the OS needs to be reinstalled. Why would we ever desire a laptop that needs, but doesn’t have, an optical drive? What’s more, why would we pay 3, 4, or 5 times as much for that laptop?
Furthermore, most of us have wireless LANs in their house. But few of us know how to adequately configure and secure those networks. Why should we be forced to go wireless, when every other laptop has a LAN port?
I could go on and on. But the end result is the same. People who want a laptop as a portable computer to take on the road will do themselves well to stay away from the Macbook Air. Unless you just have to have Steve Jobs’ latest Cool-Aid.
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