What is the geek in all of us going to be drooling over this year? Luofei Deng talks about Steve Jobs' latest masterpiece.
I had planned for my first column of the new term and new year to be a look back at 2007 and a look forward to 2008. But something happened this week that caused me to drop those plans.
On Tuesday Jan. 15, Apple held their annual Mac worship-fest known as the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. There, Steve Jobs made an array of announcements. They included the mundane -- Apple TV Take 2 -- and the merely "meh" -- a networked external hard drive that works with Time Machine called, wait for it, the Time Capsule (those marketing folks are so clever). But one thing made it all worthwhile.
The mind-blowing announcement was the MacBook Air. The name is a little silly, but so is putting the letter "i" in front of a bunch of products. Once you see the device, you can see the logic -- this laptop would almost disappear into thin air. And thin is definitely the right word to use. The MacBook Air is so thin it fits into a manila envelope.
Apple, by the way, is very big on using office supplies to compare the size and weight of its products. The iPod Nano is thinner than a No. 2 pencil; the iPod is lighter than two CD cases. They should do some promotional thing with Staples.
Apple quotes the Air as being 0.19 inches at its thinnest point, making it the Olsen twin of laptops. This laptop is about a quarter of an inch thin at its thickest point -- no matter how you slice it, it's thin. Weighing in at about three pounds light, the Air won't be a strain to carry either. Lucky owners will want to carry it around, if not to increase their own feelings of self-worth, then at least because the five-hour battery life makes it the most practical portable.
The rest of the dimensions of the Air are on par with those of the MacBook. Like its predecessor, the Air has a 13.3-inch widescreen display and a keyboard with individual keys. It takes a page out of the MacBook Pro's repertoire, however, by having an aluminum case and backlit keys. Drawing from its other successful product lines, Apple has given the Air's touchpad iPhone-esque capabilities -- pinch your fingers to zoom, twirl them to rotate and swipe with three fingers to navigate.
To make the Air so small, however, Apple had to make some serious sacrifices. The hard drive is limited to 80GB max, although you can get a 64GB flash drive instead for $999 extra . There is no built-in optical drive, so you can't pop in CDs or DVDs. Apple will gladly sell you a $99 external drive with aesthetics designed to match the Air.
Also, the sides of the MacBook Air are very clean, as in there are very few ports for your multiple Apple-made gadgets. You have the MagSafe power port (the MagSafe connector has been redesigned to work better with the Air), and on a small flip-down panel, you get a headphone jack, a USB port and an adapter to connect to an external monitor. Slim pickings, indeed.
Unlike almost every other notebook before it (but completely like the iPod), the Air's battery is sealed inside the machine, making replacement a costly hassle.
Apple was also unable to find a way to shoehorn the ability to cure AIDS in Africa (for that you will still have to pick up a red iPod Nano or Shuffle).
Though the sacrifices made for the Air are considerable, Apple has created some solutions, the biggest of which is Remote Disc. Remote Disc allows the MacBook Air to use another computer's CD or DVD drive to install a program. The other computer can be a PC or a Mac.
Another solution for missing MacBook Air features is to buy a dongle (if you want Ethernet), rent movies from iTunes (another new feature announced on Tuesday, easing the pain for people who like to watch movies on their computers) and buy a Time Capsule so you can back up your data.
For most people, the "solutions" to these sacrifices will require more computer and other Apple products. I can see the MacBook Air being a great device for corporate road warriors and other niche groups. I also have no doubt that this thing will sell like hotcakes to the large numbers of hypnotized, fanatic Apple lemmings. For the majority of people though, this device simply requires too many sacrifices.
Perhaps the biggest sacrifice of all is the price. The MacBook Air starts at $1799, and climbs very quickly from there. A loaded version will cost around $3500. So yes, the MacBook Air looks gorgeous and the geek in me totally crushes on it. But I will not buy it, because I could get a more useful computer for a lot less.
Luofei is a staff writer for The Mirror. His most prized posession is his pink Nano.
