After several generations of netbooks, people are still pining for optical drives for the one or two times a year you wish you had one? I'd much rather the smaller form factor and a USB key for data transfer.
Yeah, absolutely, the optical drive is a waste of space almost all the time.
With regard to slow networking, I wonder if a gigabit ethernet/USB adapter like the Belkin F5D5055 would help. Obviously USB 2.0 maxes out at around 30-35MB/s, but if the adapter can actually attain those speeds it should be fast enough when you need a bit more than Wifi.
Generally, I'm very tempted to go for the maxed-out version of the 13" MBA. I'll probably take a look at the screen at a retail store though, I'm not keen on the glossy finish, and my old 2006 MacBook has terrible angle dependent colour representation. Going to make this the motivator for launching my first product. :)
If you have a quality 802.11n AP then WiFi is actually faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet, making a USB 10/100 Ethernet adapter pointless. That speed isn't theoretical; I'm in a high-rise apartment building and I can see 25 other SSIDs from my couch, but I still have no problems getting >100 Mbps from an AirPort to a MacBook.
Yep, if you manage to connect at a nominal 300Mbit/s on Wifi, you can just about scrape 100Mbit/s in practice. You basically need a 40MHz band of 5GHz Wifi, which is probably what you're using, and which is why it's not interfering much with the other APs, most of which probably only broadcast in the 2.4GHz band. Also, the number of available frequency slots in the 5GHz band is much bigger. Too bad the older iPhones don't support it, and most APs can't use both bands simultaneously (current Airport Extremes do!).
Still, that's 3-4 times slower than USB (in theory).
There is also the protocol overhead associated with each type of communication. USB and ethernet were created with different tradeoffs in mind. On a mildly contested network I believe that ethernet is about 60% efficient due to packet overhead and packet collisions.
When I built my PC, I was having a problem hooking up my optical drive so I thought "I just want this to work now, I'll hook up the optical drive later". It's been over a year later and I still haven't connected it.
I had a very similar experience, although it ended up being that the only reason I didn't reconnect my PC's DVD drive is that I ended up using my macbook pro for ripping DVDs. If you live within the apple world (itunes) this becomes even less of a problem, but I still find having a DVD drive handy. Not to mention it was the only way I found to install the OS X version of diff.
The best thing about an optical drive in a laptop is that in many laptops it is a bay so you can easily rip it out and shove a hard drive in there. This is so much more convenient and fast for doing backups or migrating OSes, or just hedging your bets on disk size (small SSD + huge platter is a great combo). Of course, this wouldn't apply to a Mac ...
Someone needs to create a filesystem optimized for something like two heterogeneous drives, like a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. It would try to put larger files on the HDD (where storage space and sequential read/write speed are useful and random-access less critical) and smaller files on the SSD (which has better random access). This would rock! You'd have a really zippy laptop with scads of space.
Working on a driver for this. Watch this space. :) (been trying to go fulltime on this, financial constraints have been holding me back; I have a partial prototype working on Linux, Mac OS X is the next target)
That said, there are existing solutions for this, they just suck, e.g.:
Brittle. Many apps will delete and replace a file when writing. Now you have 2 copies, 1 out of date. You'd be mildly better off with a union file system, but there aren't any good ones I can find.
Plus, that sort of file-based system doesn't cache file system structure/metadata, which is a major source of disk head movement.
I've found that it's beneficial to embrace the divide between a fast boot drive and a large data drive.
If you only store your OS and programs on the boot drive, space isn't a big concern and you gain a lot of flexibility. It's less hassle to repave the OS, migrating your data to new machines is simple, and it's easier to upgrade the boot drive as faster ones are available. That's especially nice with SSDs because you no longer have to care very much about the write limit. If my SSD boot drive wears out, I have 0 data recovery/restoration to worry about.
I've found that it's beneficial to embrace the divide between a fast boot drive and a large data drive.
I'm thinking of it myself, but I also thought it out further and concluded that it could be completely automated. In my case, if one just kept all files larger than 100MB on the HDD, that would be enough. Better still, I could specify certain directories to be kept on the HDD. I could do all of the above with symlinks, but setting that up once and getting the desired result automatically could be even better.
The issue being that by the time such a filesystem became stable enough for people to trust it with their data, SSDs may have already caught up to HDDs in terms of storage capacity.
Very true indeed. I can't remember the last time, if at all, I have used the optical drive on my computer. Over the last few years I've migrated all my music CD, and movie DVD to digital format. I no longer own a DVD player (attached to my TV), nor do I plan on getting a BluRay player. Ah, the age of digital media has arrived.
The big question is whether the next generation of MacBook Pros will also drop the optical drive or whether they will wait another year or so.
The optical drive has been very much neglected by Apple: there is no Blu-ray drive in any Mac they sell. Removing all optical drives in the next year or so certainly wouldn’t surprise me. (I actually hope that they will do just that. I’m going to buy a 15" MBP next year and I sure would like it to be a bit lighter and with a somewhat bigger battery.)
Let me put it this way: Apple doesn’t seem to believe that Blu-ray will be a standard storage medium for computer users in the next decade or so like DVDs and CDs were before. That might be the reason why they are not exactly eager to ship their computers with a Blu-ray drive. That assessment rings true to me. I might buy a Blu-ray player for my TV but I don’t think I really need it for my laptop. (I might want to watch something on a Blu-ray disc but I’m actually kind of tired of all that physical media. I bought my last CD 18 months ago and my last DVD something like two years ago. I don’t really know how true that is for the rest of the world, though.)
My dream MBP is that they drop the optical drive completely, install 128GB of flash for a system drive like the new Airs, and then have an optional 500GB data drive for those who need the additional space. Then they can use all the saved space to either make it lighter or fill it with extra battery (or both!)
It's interesting -- I got an OptiBay mounting kit for my 17" MacBook Pro, and now I've replaced the optical drive with a 1TB extra hard drive, in addition to the 256GB SSD I've already got. It's awesome to be able to carry my entire iTunes library with me wherever I go. The few times I've needed the optical drive, OptiBay includes an enclsoure for you to put the SuperDrive into, so I just plug it in via USB and I'm good to go. Never been happier with my super-fast machine.
* Much higher resolution: 1440x900, up from 1280x800. This brings it from the 13” class to the 15” class. I’ve always wanted a light 13” notebook with a 15”-class screen resolution, and Apple just released one.
* SSDs only. The old Air base-model’s 1.8” hard drives were unbearably slow. SSDs have always been the only sensible option for the Air, and it’s nice that they’re now the only option.
* Two USB ports instead of one. This matters more than you’d think.
* An SD-card reader (13” only). Useful if you often needed that USB port for a card reader, although this isn’t a great photo-management computer.
* Ports that are perpendicular to the desk and aren’t behind a flip-down door. So you can probably use any square-ended MagSafe adapter you already own to charge it without hanging the corner off the desk like with the old MacBook Air.
"""
My Lenovo x200s from like two years ago has a 12.1" 1440x900 screen, an SSD (option when I bought it, I did not, but the option was there), three USB ports (though I tried to plug in a bus-powered external drive today and the two plugs it had did not reach the spread of the ports on the laptop, thankfully it worked fine without the second plugged in), and an SD card reader. Just sayin'.
Not sure how much this matters, but the Lenovo is also using Intel Graphics, how well does it work on external monitors? Can it power a 2560x1600 30 inch monitor?
I'll give you the 12.1 inch screen though, I'm jealous of that. I would like to see it even higher resolution.
I'm just saying on paper hardware specs are not everything. I'd much rather have usability than a faster machine with more ports and options available. That's why I buy what my friends dub as overpriced Apple hardware.
> Not sure how much this matters, but the Lenovo is also using Intel Graphics, how well does it work on external monitors? Can it power a 2560x1600 30 inch monitor?
They 13-inch air and x20[01]s are very similar. Thinkpad advantages might be gig-e, vga port, thinkpad keyboard (if you like it), and possible i5 in the 201, and its built out of normal parts. To match the air's battery though, you have to get the big one, which bumps weight up to about 3.5 pounds, and the thinkpad costs more. The air does have nvidia graphics too.
I'd be tempted by the air if I hadn't bought the thinkpad a year ago, which to me, is the ultimate advantage it has.
The new Airs are nice but I still don't fully get the appeal. I still have to rave about my Sony Vaio VGN-TZ390 for the ultimate portable workhorse.
Core 2 Duo U7700 @ 1.33Ghz, 1366x768 11.1" WXGA LCD, 128 Gig SSD, 2 Gig RAM, 2 USB, a/b/g/n WiFi, Sprint Mobile Broadband, BlueTooth, DVD±RW DL, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Firewire, V.90 Modem, VGA out, ExpressCard, Memory Stick, and SD slots, 1.3Mp Camera, Fingerprint reader, 10+ hours actual use on medium size battery, carbon fiber body, less than 1 inch thick and 2.7 pounds. Also has 'instant on' to watch DVDs, music, or photos without booting the OS.
It may be 2 years old but is still only 0.4 pounds heavier than the Mini-Air and 0.13 inches thicker. And it offers a LOT more features wise.
For what it's worth, the current Sony Z model uses an i7 (and dual SSDs in RAID 0). It's significantly more powerful than anything Apple has in the 13" form factor, coming in at about the same weight as the new 13" Air (3.04 lbs). Actually, its i7 is the same speed as the 17" MBP's top option.
That sounds cool. Still not a Mac though. Maybe very very few people will hack it and run Mac OS X on it, but many people who buy Macs just want something that works out of the box.
In the more general market of consumers that want a ~3 pound 13" device, the ones that see Win7 vs. OS X as an important differentiating factor are a small minority. For the market served by the underpowered Air, a Win 7 laptop will "just work" every bit as well as a Macbook.
I disagree with his opinion of the MacBook Pro glass screen. I think it looks great, it's very easy to clean, and it simply doesn't scratch. It's one of the main reasons I went with a MacBook Pro.
Between the all-aluminum enclosure and the glass screen, you'll have a laptop that will always look almost as good as the day you bought it, and that means great things for resale value.
On the other hand, my original plastic MacBook looked very aged after two years of heavy use.
Man you must treat your MBP pretty delicately. My MPB looks like it got in a fight with a baseball bat and an angle grinder, and I carried it around in a padded laptop backpack for only a year.
Thank goodness I almost never put disks in the drive the case around the opening is so bent I don't think I can anything in or out of there.
(The screen still looks pretty good even if I can't ever seem to get the brightness to where I want it).
I put mine in a panier on the way to San Diego, and a loose screw drilled a hole in the aluminum lid. I put a github sticker over the hole, and things still work great.
I wish I knew. I do know when the drive got wrecked, it was after sitting in my carry on after a 16 hour plane ride overseas. I don't even take it out anymore I'm so scared about the fragility of it. I have to say this, overall it looks better after a year of hard use than most of my Dells.
My other notebooks look terrible too, but I attribute that to cheap plastic. Little pieces broken off on the corners, battery that won't stay in place, etc.
Before my MBP I had a black MacBook. It was nice but much closer in durability to a PC. The matte surface got shined up in the corners a lot worse than the Thinkpad T before it.
At this point, I doubt I'd buy another laptop without the all metal unibody construction.
My MacBook Pro (non-unibody) has taken a couple of tumbles, one of the corners is bent inwards, on the side the metal is all crumbled because it hit a corner while in my backpack.
It gives it character, and so far every time that I have been at the Apple Store they have looked at it, I've had to tell them that no that was there a long time before the issue I am there to fix appeared and they should replace the hardware that is failing (I've had bad luck with the Nvidia graphics card in it).
Still works perfectly and looks a hell of a lot better than the Dell laptops and HP laptops my friends have. It also has stood the test of time MUCH better than any other laptops I've owned, including various IBM ThinkPads, Toshiba's and whatnot. I love my MacBook Pro to death. People keep telling me to buy a new Windows based laptop but I refuse :P
I bought the first generation macbook air (with SSD) when it first hit the stores and it was almost worth it just for the "wow" factor at conferences. I put it on the table at a meeting and an EA exec yelled "hey, why don't you just slam your huge elephant dick on the table?". That was worth $10 right there.
Anyhow I always found it to be unbearably slow - particularly when browsing to a new web server in a session. As if the dns lookup was.... thrashing somehow. I figured I was too dimwitted to figure out the problem after doing a bit of research, so it's rotting on the shelf.
Also, Marco is right - it's way too big to use in coach when the person in front leans back. Thankfully.... Ipad for air travel. Be curious to see what the 11" is like.
You know how Apple has been gobbling up share in the the university market over the last few years? I have a feeling the Air is going accelerate that growth and become the notebook of choice on college campuses.
It's not just about the money, it's about capability. The $999 MacBook has a 2.4GHz CPU and a 250GB hard drive, and the same GPU.
I work in a medical school neuroscience lab with a bunch of grad students and postdocs. Everyone has a Mac laptop, paid for by the lab. Two postdocs have MacBooks. Everyone else has a MacBook Pro. Except the PI who runs the lab, who has an MBA. The only one in the lab. He values small size and weight more than anyone else. He also travels more than anyone else.
Agreed. Students are also likely to have it as their only machine - and IMHO the MBA is a very enticing supplementary computer, but I'd be loathe to have it as my only.
I thought about this this past week when I had to go to the local uni's CS department for something. I peeked into a half dozen classrooms, lots of laptops, mostly dells, a handful of Toshibas, less than 10 MacBooks...the most I saw in one class was 3.
Likewise when I went to the student union to grab some dinner. Hundreds of students all with laptops open, a handful of Macs. I'd say at rates about at the same as market penetration...~10%.
It may be a geographic thing. Certain regions may make MBPs more appealing, or certain schools may subsidize the purchase more. I've noticed similar rates at other schools in the area.
"Jobs mistakenly said that the new 13” Air had more pixels than the 15”. That’s wrong: the 15” is the same by default, at 1440x900, and has a $100 option to raise it to 1680x1050. For reference, 1680x1050 is similar to many standalone 20” LCDs. ↩"
I think here that Jobs was referring to pixel density.
The new MBA does look fantastic, but I'm still pretty happy with my MBPro and iPad combination. I reserve the Pro for development work and intentionally keep all distracting applications and sites off of it (I block sites so I'm not tempted). I then use the iPad for travel and for most of my computing needs in the evenings or weekends such as browsing, reading, videos, games, etc. The MBA could fill the role well, but since I already have an iPad, I don't see myself switching or having both.
Why did they remove the keyboard light? That is an essential feature for me. I guess I'm gonna cling to my current MBA until it dies instead of upgrading for better hardware :(
That's funny, I was having a conversation with a friend last week about how neither of us ever use the keyboard backlight. Cool to see that someone actually does!
It's not too likely. It was a feature of the previous Airs, so I'm guessing they removed it for some reason going forward (features removed rarely return).
Obvious 'features' such as cameras often disappear from Apple products for first iterations only to reappear later (even when the tech-goss blogs reveal the chassis has engineered space from the outset)... iPod Touch, iPad etc...
For one of the primary usecases (frequent traveler) the backlit keyboard is pretty important--try typing on a dark plane with the backlight off. Fine most of the time, but when you have to hunt for which symbol is which, or you're not a great touch typer, then you're going to have a much harder time.
That said, my guess is that it's a major battery-suck, and that's why they took it out. White LEDs require non-trivial amounts of power.
I think the logical next step is to replace the physical keyboard part of the Macbook with an iPad, which is okay to type on, and the keyboard can go away and become one big touch surface on demand, with graphics.
This also introduces a new class of touch-input aware Mac apps, which Apple can channel through its new App store.
Ideally I’d weigh a glass 15” on my scale to compare more fairly, but I don’t have one, and I don’t yet have the balls to walk into an Apple store with my kitchen scale.
I've walked into the Houston Galleria Apple Store with a hand truck. Sure, some smarmy guy made some comment like, "What is, this, Walmart?" but who cares? I have a bad back, FFS. Anyone who'd make a comment like that is most assuredly lamer than an empiricist who does whatever it takes.
The iPad and the Macbook Air need to basically become the same product.
Kind of like the tablet laptops Toshiba was shipping about 7 years ago. You open the laptop and it's a Macbook with touchscreen display and keyboard. You swivel the screen flat onto the keyboard and it's an iPad. Maybe some apps work in only one mode or the other, but your files will be available to both kinds of apps, X and iOS.
Perhaps, but nobody wants to carry around (and charge, and sync) two devices when they could carry around just one.
If I had a device that worked like a MacBook and an iPad, so I could use it like a laptop at a cafe and like a pad on the train, that would be a pretty damn neat device to have. And eventually, I probably will.
Something like this: http://aidacase.com/keycase-folio-deluxe-with-built-in-keybo... might work for you eventually, though it may seem silly. I think the difference in this is that you can just open the front flap for quick, instant-on tablet access, and unfold it further for keyboard usage vs. having to set up / maintain two different systems or use a tilt/swivel joint to access the touchscreen.
I could really see them converging in the not too distant future when Lion is released, bringing more touch friendly concepts like the Launchpad to OS X.
I don't seem to understand Apple's move with the huge price drop in the Air. I feel like the Air is a much better alternative to the iPad, and this causes Apple to compete with its own product.
People make a big deal about tablets. Personally, I don't see them as the next big thing. Do you think Apple is straying away from them, given their somewhat underwhelming sales?
I think MPAirs are the slowest selling laptop. They compete with other Apple products more directly than Ipads. On the the hand, Ipads, are outselling all macs (in units) already and it's still very early days. Even if sales stay put (seems unlikely), they have an incredible new product line. They are a big thing in that sense, at least.
These might be a replacement for macbooks. At the moment 13' macbook is just a cheap alternative to the superior 13' macbook pro, it isn't best for anything but your wallet. That seems to make it unique among Apple products. A 13' MBAir is more lighter, quicker and looks different. You can imagine people preferring it regardless of price.
Do you think that maybe your desire for tablets to not be "the next big thing" is shading your assessment of iPad sales? The iPad outsold ALL Macs this quarter, so no, Apple is not likely cooling its heels on the tablet thing.
Clarification: Even if other companies can figure out how to make a decent tablet, still a pretty big if, who knows if tablets will be a "big thing" for the computer industry as a whole. The iPad is clearly already the next big thing for Apple. The ruling concern among Mac users -- a large enough concern that Apple made a point of addressing today -- is that Apple is focusing too much on iOS devices and "straying" from the Mac.
who knows if tablets will be a "big thing" for the computer industry as a whole
The hardware configuration inside of an iPad is destined to become commodity. Eventually, those things will be like displays and mice. The value for Apple will be in the software and software-ecosystem running on the iDevices of the future. (Also in the cloud.)
More comfortable and natural input and display naturally sell. Such tablets are both!
If these had ethernet, I think it would be the most perfect laptop for me, ever. I'm still tempted though, but can't help think that the next Macbook Pro revision will be even more exciting.
Steve specifically said he saw these as the future Macbook. They have higher resolution screens than the 13 inch Macbook Pro and have flash drives standard. Also, mentioning the no optical drive as the future if I remember correctly. It makes me super excited about the next Macbook Pro, especially the 13 inch (the 15 inch and 17 inch are way to big in my opinion).
Hopefully they will further expand the new Air lineup with a 15" model boasting 1680x1050 screen (as available for the current 15" MBP). That would be the ultimate all-around Mac workstation for me.
I'd recently discovered 5Ghz wireless, which gives OK speeds to my Time Capsule, no need for ethernet - which I've been using for transferring big files, 720/1080p video.
The camera is now called a "FaceTime camera" unlike all the other Apple laptops which have "iSight camera." I wonder if there is a significance to the name change.
Congratulations Apple! You've finally put a netbook on the market and figured out how to charge 3x for it by removing all of the USB ports and putting a better screen in it!
I mean really, didn't Jobs explicitly say that they would not release a device in this form factor? If this isn't Apple's take on a netbook I don't know what is.
At least do something cool with it like let me flip the screen around and use it as a tablet or put a micro projector on it or something for that money.
Looking at how I just burned 8 points of karma (and probably now more with this post), I guess I should have just done like everybody else and parroted the new marketing talking points and pretended to debate the merit of 11 inches or 13 inches.
Indeed. I actually think that paying 3 times as much for something not so different (a nice netbook vs a mba) is hard to justify purely by the differences in quality (in software and hardware).
In other words, it's because of the apple fanboys that are willing to write blank checks just to get their newest white gizmo =) And those fanboys are the same that downvoted both you and elblanco.
PS: Maybe it's just me, but this fanboyism seems more proper over reddit than here.
A nice netbook with even passably decent hardware (ie not single core atom processors and really low resolution screens) does not cost $333. Realistically the cheapest laptops that even begin to compare (for example an Acer timelineX 1830) are 'only' about 30-40% cheaper, and then you're giving up on Nvidia graphics and an SSD.
I'm not an Apple fanboy, quite indifferent to the supposed merits of OS X and haven't owned a Mac in years. However I am in the market for a small, lightweight laptop and the 11" mba is very competitively priced compared to similar laptops from people like Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba. I'm going to reserve judgement until some more reviews come out and I get chance to see it in the flesh, but as it stands the new mba is probably going to be my first new Mac in years.
I go into any discussions about Apple products here knowing that I'll burn a bunch of karma -- but I do so anyway because I like to fantasize that I'm bringing some kind of interesting discussion to the table anyway.
The fundamentalism of the Apple fanboyism here on HN is quite intense and rabid compared to most places. At least that's my observation. It's pretty much impossible to have a constructively critical discussion about pretty much anything Apple does on HN. If you also notice, there's very rarely any dissenting comments either. No engagement in discussion, no debate, no back-and-forth like we'd have here on pretty much any topic.
I personally think it's a disservice (and disrespectful) to Apple and to HN considering what kind of site this is. If you can't critically comment on things that a company does right and wrong, and learn from that discussion and analysis, you may as well not even participate here.
It's just the worst kind of fundamentalism in action.
Yes, it was sarcastic snark pointing out that all their selling now is a high priced netbook -- even after Jobs shat all over the form factor for the last year. It was the first comment here noticing that at the time.
BTW, even though it shows only -4 on my posts, I've lost far more than 12 points of karma. PG appears to actually be counting the downvotes these days even if he's only showing -4. I think I just bled away about 25 points last night because people can't accept that an 11" notebook with an SSD and no optical drive is a netbook.
Oh no, I lost that karma way before I whined about it. I knew as soon as I posted that it's just a karma burning exercise. Any contrary (or slightly contrary) post in a discussion about Apple is pretty much treated like leprosy. I know that going in. I was just observing that the algorithm appears to have changed and now downvotes are all counted regardless of what the displayed score is.
You didn't lose all of it before you whined. I know that because I downvoted your whine about being downvoted, and didn't downvote your bah-it's-just-a-netbook comments.
(I have a policy of always downvoting whines about being downvoted and "I know I'll be downvoted for this ..." comments and so forth, because (1) they're boring and (2) I have a nasty suspicion that they produce net-positive results for their authors and want to make them not do so.)
Netbook generally isn't about form factor, it's about use factor. A netbook is made for lightweight browsing, emailing, IM'ing, etc. You know, stuff on the 'net.
The new MBA falls into the class of devices known as ultraportables. It's a full powered machine in a very small form factor/weight factor.
This is an interesting point. I actually use my netbook for lots more than stuff on the net. I pretty much use it as an ultra portable laptop. I don't expect awesome performance for it, but hey, it was $270 so I get what I pay for. It can run some old games on it, I play Sim City 4k on it all the time and it does ok. I can run all of Office on it, do some light photo editing on it, etc.
I've used it in a pinch to replace my desktop when my 5 year old power supply bit the dust. It did "ok".
If you compare it to other ultra-portables, the MBA seems to be competitively priced compared some of the ultra high end stuff.
But you can still get ultraportables for about 1/2 of the MBA with competitive specs.
Show me something "not so different" for 3x less.
Full size keyboard is a must. I my give up on trackpad there, but only because no other company has something comparable, so it would be unfair to ask for it. Even on my first gen MBA trackpad is so good that I never connect a mouse to it.
I might consider replacing it with the new 11" — it would be an improvement nonetheless.
The funny thing is, if I spent time running around finding something with comparable features at a lower price (which you're perfectly capable of doing yourself through a wide variety of search engines we have these days), somebody would probably just respond back, "well, Apple isn't about point for point features, it's about the user experience".
But if I had said, "an 11in. MBA has about the same user experience as a netbook", somebody would bring out a point for point feature comparison, and tout the processor or something.
Let's face it, despite unrelenting FUD from Apple regarding this exact type of ultra-portable form factor since netbooks first hit the market, there is fantastic utility in having something in your bag about the size of a hard-cover book that you can do general purpose computing on even if it doesn't offer the "full" experience that the larger products do. It's light, it fits pretty much anywhere, you can do real work on it, the battery life tends to be pretty good.
In typical fashion, Apple's taken a look at the segment, and consumer demand (don't kid yourself that people haven't been pining away for a Mac in this form factor since netbooks first came out), taken their own spin on it (let's make it small and thin, with a better screen, only SSD drives, and a beefier processor!) and put out a credible, nice looking product with the typical Apple tax associated with it -- nothing terribly surprising. But now, because of the relentless slamming of the form factor called "netbooks" (they've poisoned that well), so they call it a "notebook", but it's not just a notebook, it's a special line of notebooks designed to be super-thin with a subset of the normal ports you'd find on their larger cousins.
But seriously, the 11" MBA is Apple's spin on making a nice netbook.
Is there something wrong with that? I'm tempted to buy one because that's precisely what it is. I almost couldn't imagine running around without my netbook these days. Having a credible Apple made option is fantastic.
So here's my computing needs in this form factor. I'm an amateur travel photographer and a musician, I take lots and lots of photos and write lots and lots of music. Having something small that's a real computer with decent storage is very important to me. I don't want to drag along a bunch of external peripherals like hard drives or the like because I'm already dragging around a camera bag full of a heavy camera body and some lenses. This form factor works for me because I can actually open and use the machine in incredibly tight spaces, like coach seating on a plane and I pretty much don't even notice it in my bag when I'm running around. Plus I offload my day's shots to the computer every day and review and do some light editing back in my hotel room or on the plane (or ship or whatever). After a week or two of shooting, I easy take 50-80 GB of photos. Plus software and other junk (I like to play back a collection of old jazz 45s I have on the machine as mp3s while I edit my photos), I pretty regularly fill out the 160GB drive on my current machine.
I'm pretty happy with the form factor of my 9" 2 and a half year old netbook. But I wish I had a bit more ram, a bit more resolution on the screen and a 250GB drive.
Or are you purely down to just pure fundamentalism, "I'll ignore the stuff that's better about everything you've shown me and call it immaterial and nitpick on the lack of some other feature that's only important in the marketing blurbs put out by Apple (type of screen, SSD, trackpad, material selection of the hinge)".
Tell you what, why don't you go do some research on your own. It's not like it's hard to find better spec'd devices for cheaper than pretty much anything in Apple's lineup. That's a silly debate to have.
The question is, does what Apple offer suit the needs of its users? I'm describing my own personal needs. But I'm not doing anything particularly weird. Just shooting photos. I've also since notice it doesn't even have an SD card slot so I have to rely on the slower USB connection from my camera (and carry around yet another cable). And yet the 11" completely doesn't fulfill my rather modest requirements, even at 3x as much as something that minimally does.
So taking pictures is right out.
What can I do with it? Apple's own marketing copy pretty much describes hauling it around for writing stuff (blogs, slides, etc.). I suppose one can use a web browser with it. So there you go...the description of a netbook. That's Apple's expected use case for the 11" MBA. Welcome to $1200 netbook land.
But at least it's thin! Because it was always so hard to find space in my backpack for my 1.14" thick netbook. Man, the number of times I've lamented, "if only I could get half of that thickness back! I could jam another dozen sheets of paper in there!"
Seriously, this isn't religion, it's a computer. Come off it and drop the fundamentalism.
