Jan

15

One More Thing?

Tue, 15/01/2008 - 23:27

As is traditional this time of year, Apple use the MacWorld Exhibition in San Francisco as an opportunity to show off and demo their new products. This year is no exception, and Apple have just launched their newest member of the Mac family - the "MacBook Air".

Apple fans, myself included, have long been speculating about the void left in Apple's product line-up ever since they axed the 12" Powerbook following the launch of the Intel-based MacBook Pro in 2006. The 12" Powerbook struck the perfect balance between true portability and, at the time, power. With the launch of the MacBook Air, I think Apple have shot themselves in the foot, somewhat.

The 'Air' certainly looks the part - following the familiar lines of the iconic aluminium Powerbook/MacBook Pro whilst being razor-blade thin - 0.76" at its fattest point! It's also got some cred in its display, being LED-backlit and likely to be very clear and bright. However there's a few clanging shortcomings.

No one expected an optical drive to be fitted, so I don't believe that this is a major suprise - fitting one in a case so thin would likely be physically impossible. It's the omission of a few basics that make it a deal-breaker for me.

1. The battery is not replaceable/swappable. It's held inside, it isn't removable, and, when it eventually runs out of puff - like all batteries will - you'll have to send it back to Apple for (presumably, expensive) replacement.

2. External physical connectivity is somewhat limited! 1 USB port, 1 micro-DVI and a headphone socket! Would it really have been too tricky to pop a couple more USB ports on? No ExpressCard slot? And, where's the RJ45 socket - I can't live without en0!

3. The hyped Solid State storage has arrived - but only if you have exceptionally deep pockets. Adding the 64GB SSD drive in place of the standard 80GB disk adds a positively preposterous £639 to the base model's price. That's enough money to buy a regular MacBook from the refurb store!

4. The standard 80GB drive is a comparatively ancient and slow parallel ATA drive - so old that Apple don't actually sell any other computers with this type of drive. Even the bargain-basement Mac Mini ships with a SATA drive inside.

I'm hoping these omissions are part of the reason that the machine isn't called the 'MacBook Pro Air', and that this is a laptop for the style-over-substance Mac users that rushed out and bought an iPhone on launch day. Perhaps one day Apple will give us the powerful ultra-portable that we've wanted, but that day isn't today.

Apple. Steve. Please listen. See that 12" Powerbook that you made a few years back? We want a new one. No bells, no whistles, that's all - well, the backlit keyboard'd be nice.


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  1. james on Wed, 16/01/2008 - 21:41

    Come on now James, I know you own an iPod. It too has a built in battery...

    I do indeed own an iPod. An in-built battery on a £200 iPod is some way off from an (at least) £1200 laptop. It's not at all inconceivable for the average laptop user to want to carry a spare battery around. Why can't we? What happens when the battery becomes out of condition and doesn't hold a charge?

    On batteries that aren't cycled properly (eg. used in dribs and drabs rather than run right down and charged up fully) this deterioration in battery quality can happen fairly quickly - and it'll be a visit to the Apple Store for a new one, where you're probably likely to be told that replacement of such a critical part is not economical, and pointed in the direction of the latest Apple notebooks.

    Call me a cynic if you like! :)

    The omission of an RJ45 port seems exceptionally odd. You may call it brave, but I think it's a bit daft. Wired ethernet is evolving - Gig-E is commonplace and 10GE is popping up all over the place. It wasn't that long ago when people thought 100BaseT was 'too expensive' and 'overkill' for average use - and when people like Apple themselves start hyping up the realtime streaming of High Definition content from place to place, sooner or later 802.11[a|g|n] just isn't going to cut it. Ethernet is the de facto networking standard - it's cheap, fast and reliable. Omitting it feels, well, terrible.

    Sure, serial and parallel are going (have gone?) the way of the dinosaur - which is great! - new technology has come along and made them obsolete. Wireless networks aren't going to make wired networks obsolete. Not ever. You can stake your mortgage on it.

    Don't get me wrong - Apple's presentation, and design of the MacBook Air is excellent, and it looks the absolute mutts' nuts - but this is a £1200 machine which comes pre-hobbled from the factory, and is going to be out-performed by its older, cheaper (admittedly heavier!) brother - the regular MacBook.

    Is the £500+ premium on having a 'thin' notebook, which is slower (Air: 1.6Ghz standard; MacBook: 2Ghz standard), is less expandable (Air: 1x USB, 1xMicro-DVI, No user-accessible memory or battery; MacBook: 1x Firewire, 2x USB, 1x Mini-DVI, upgradeable memory and replaceable battery) and less convenient (Air: no ethernet port, no optical drive) really worth it? I say no.

    I hope we do see more fancy tiny laptops from Apple - everything else in their product range is fantastic, I just don't see where the 'Air' is going to take them.

    Thanks for the feedback.

  2. sprockers on Wed, 16/01/2008 - 11:36

    1. The battery is not replaceable/swappable. It's held inside, it isn't removable, and, when it eventually runs out of puff - like all batteries will - you'll have to send it back to Apple for (presumably, expensive) replacement.

    Come on now James, I know you own an iPod. It too has a built in battery...

    I think the Air is a typically brave move from Apple - the lack of RJ45 jack for instance is very unusual right now, but if Apple have guessed right (and they often do), expect no-one to bother including one on their laptops within two years.

    Anyone remember their laptop having a serial port on it? Or a parallel one, for that matter? PS2 ports? Bet your current laptop doesn't have any of those.

    I can't remember the last time I needed to plug in more than one USB device directly into my laptop. I'm currently typing this on an external keyboard plugged into my MacBook Pro. My Mighty Mouse plugs into the keyboard. It works for me.

    I'm sure that given another couple of years we'll see much more fancy tiny laptops from Apple, and from the competition too. I get the distinct impression, however, that this is as far as they could resonably push the envelope at this time. It is still ludicrously thin, after all.