Does this mean the price of getting an article on TC just went up ;) ?
Joking aside, it's a very nice little machine, but I could not imagine developing software on it without hooking it up to a full sized keyboard and screen which would defeat most of the purpose of owning one in the first place.
The mac Air series is so thin that when I saw one the first time I couldn't believe it was a real functional computer until they turned it on for me!
Full size to me means separate cursor block, numpad and a key travel of more than a few mm. I am probably more partial to the keyboard I'm using than to any other aspect of my computer.
Then you're not going to get fullsized on anything smaller than a 17". And not even the 17" MBP. Though there was this great deal going on a while back. Back when you got the free iPod Touch with the MBP, you could just get the numpad app for the iPod and use the most expensive external numpad ever!
I have always taken "full-size" in this context to mean that the area of the landing surface on the top of the keys to be the same as on the desktop offerings. That said, there is a bit of cheating in that the height of the top row of keys on the 11" Macbook air is definitely much smaller. Not sure if that's a big deal. The horizontal and vertical distance between key centers seemed comparable to my iMac's keyboard, though.
I remember a number of times being attracted to the ultra-portable Fujitsus and Sonys of the world a few years ago and being totally unable to type effectively on them because the keys were so close together that my fingers kept getting in the way of each other when typing.
That's actually exactly how I use my current, 13" MBP [1]. I spend about half my week on a 21" monitor with keyboard and mouse with the MB in clamshell mode, and the other half in coffee shops. I have no problems developing in either environment. (I'm a vi and command line guy, which might help.)
[1] Since it's a first-gen metallic unibody, it's technically a Macbook, but they now call this machine a Macbook Pro.
All MacBooks have the same size keyboard. From the 11" MacBook Air to the 17" MacBook Pro. Same size keyboard.
The size of the keyboard has never been an issue for me, IMHO it comes down to screen real estate -- which is why my last machine isn't a MacBook at all, but an iMac 27" (my iPad provides most of the portability I need).
I've spent a bit of time with the 11" Air and, lemme tell you guys: this thing runs simple apps really well. Safari's icon bounces once, then Safari is open. iPhoto is pretty quick. Even bloated iTunes doesn't take a million years to back up an iPhone or scroll through iTMS.
Here's the problem, though: Siegler and I can't talk about intense applications. I don't know if it can't handle RAW file editing in Lightroom/PS, Starcraft II on high settings, or developing in Xcode. The benchmarks Siegler quotes show the Air is worse than the 13" Pro at handling these intense apps (Handbrake, PS, VM software). [1]
Someone cracked about how Siegler's activities consist of "blogging and scrolling through Twitter." For anyone who does that (i.e. your average college student), this thing will be great for years.
For more intense apps? I have my doubts. And the Air might be fine right now, but what about upgrading two years from now? What if system or available memory become an issue?
Photo-editing machine? For low end photo editing it's probably fine. For high end - why would you be doing that on a laptop?
Gaming? Why would you be doing that on a laptop?
Development machine? What are you developing? I think it could handle the average web developer's work load just fine. If you're writing something intensive enough that hardware is a real issue - why are you doing that on a laptop?
If you can only afford one machine, what makes you think you can afford a laptop with the specs to handle something like high end photo editing? For the same money you could buy a low end laptop for portability, and a decent mid-end PC for more intensive applications. This objection doesn't make much sense. Laptops have never been intended for high end intensive applications.
Sure, I get jittery easily, don't like sitting in front of a desk either. I'd love a small, really powerful machine as well. I'd also love to sail around hawaii with an entourage of super models, but that's not going to happen. If you want a really powerful laptop - on par with a strong desktop machine - you need to be prepared to drop some serious bank. That's just how it is. Otherwise, leave desktop tasks to desktop machines and use laptops for what they where intended for - non-intensive tasks on the go.
Well I value portability over price and I also don't replace my laptop often (every 4-5 years). So I'm willing to spend a bit more this time.
And if you ever get the chance to sail around Hawaii with those models, well, you couldn't take your desktop with you. That is, if you actually planned on working...
Outside of Apple PCs you can get a far better quality machine, and for my purposes a far better operating system in the form of Ubuntu. Quicksilver/Gnome-do, Safari/Chrome, Flash/Flash, nice fonts/nice fonts it's all even or Ubuntu with a slight edge until you get to apt-get which just slaughters OS X. Then there is freedom to tinker, the price difference and matching deployment/server OS. The reason apt-get is so far ahead of OS X is that OS X only has a tiny community, and for good reason considering how they have often treated it and that many of them are more focused on "striking gold" with an iPhone app. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but it's a sub-standard system with loads of tinkering instead of the "just works" experience of Linux. Good luck finding blogs/documentation/help when something goes wrong with OS X too. Perhaps Textmate/Ruby-on-Rails has first class support as a stack, but in so many other areas it's a wasteland.
I suppose I am saying that yes fair enough it's a good machine, but just because you haven't used an SSD before and/or are attached to OS X for money don't try to imply, as is usually done, that Apple is lightyears ahead. It's behind in many areas and hardly worth the hype that is attached to the release.
The ThinkPad X200 looks like an absolutely marvelous machine and I’m sure that it is built like a tank as are all other ThinkPad laptops. (My first laptop was a ≈2003 15" ThinkPad and I liked it very much.)
I will probably not buy a ThinkPad or a comparable other non-Apple laptop in the next few years, though. Many people seem often puzzled by that. Isn’t the ThinkPad cheaper? Sure! Doesn’t it have comparable or better specs? Of course! Why would you …? Because I like the way a MacBook looks and feels!
While that might be a perfectly valid reason for buying the 300€ more expensive coffee table that doesn’t seem to work with computers and I honestly don’t know why. I would have no second thoughts about buying the otherwise identical but 300€ more expensive laptop just because I like how sleek it is.
This comment is in no way intended to refute anything of what you said. I can understand that some people prefer to only look at the specs and they should probably not buy any computer from Apple. I’m like that with some other things, too. It’s just to provide an additional perspective and to explain why I personally (and maybe other people) buy laptops from Apple even though competitors offer cheaper alternatives with better specs.
Not just the hardware itself, but I prefer the OSX desktop environment. I used a Linux desktop to get work done for four years. Turns out, OSX is what I wanted all along. I develop by sshing into Linux boxes, so what's on my desk doesn't have to be Linux.
With the current Ubuntu & your Air-like better quality machine (what's that by the way?), is it possible to have:
1) Sleep/suspend/resume
2) Hardware-accelerated OpenGL
3) Compiz/fusion or whatever it's called nowadays
4) Support for external monitor
5) No random crashes once per week with 1-4 enabled
6) Hardware-multiplexed sound output in all programs
7) No two months of tinkering to get 1-6 working
I'm honestly asking this. Between 1998 and 2006, when I used various Linux laptops as my primary machine, I never had all the above issues solved. Maybe things have changed?
I have 10.10 installed on my MacBook Pro, and I can confirm the 1-5 are no longer an issue :) (resuming from sleep takes at least 2-3 times longer for me than on OS X though). I don't know enough to confirm 6, but if that is also covered then 7 should be as well.
Does Linux still consumes more battery power than MacOSX?
I had this issue in the past on my MacBook. It was very notable: on Linux the total battery time was about 60-70% of what I had with MacOSX.
I did some debugging and while the kernel itself also consumed slightly more than MacOSX, the biggest problem where the applications, esp. the window manager (tested both Gnome and KDE). They do a lot of stuff and mostly prevent the CPU from going into low-power mode or wake it up all the time.
Not so sure about that. I recently put Ubuntu on a low end Acer laptop - the kind that's been around for years - and still had problems with a lot of things.
My Vaio TZ has all those things working out of the box with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, along with microphone and camera, memory card readers, and Sprint EVDO card.
I agree with you that getting Linux to work on laptops can often be frustrating, but if you check compatibility prior to purchase (Ubuntu forums are great for this), then you'll get a good idea of what to expect before you buy.
To be fair Windows isn't that much better. My reason for moving to OS X was the continual drip drip drip of reinstallation, update, tweak. It all works on day one but keeping it working and performant is work.
Better now that it was a couple of years back (I still use Windows at work) but still some way to go.
Strangely, this is one of the things I don't really like about OS X. There's nothing to do to it. It just works and doesn't require any real tweaking or customization to be sleek and effective.
It's a point of pride to me that my Win7 box at work is so slick and well-tuned, compared to other peoples' Windows machines. But for the life of me I can't make my MacBook look any better than my Mom's. Nothing makes me happier than being able to be brutally effective on my cool-looking Ubuntu box at home that uses customized window managers and a dozen productivity hacks. But you don't even have to be nerdy to use a Mac well. Where's the fun in that?
I used to be the same and I think a lot of self respecting geeks see the configuration as a challenge rather than a chore. I used to have pride in being able to make my PC spin on it's head and knowing it was safe and secure (or at least as safe as XP could be).
But as I got older and my free time shrank it just felt like an overhead and time I'd rather spend doing other stuff.
Same here, configuring my KDE desktop used to be a hobby for me. With OS X, besides setting the desktop background, the only customization I do is hiding the dock and mapping caps lock to control.
I also prefer built-in software to 3rd-party alternatives – Safari over Chrome/FF, Terminal over iTerm, Spotlight over Quicksilver, etc. It took a while to adopt Apple's way of thinking, but it has made my life easier in the long run and saved tons of time to do more important things (eg. spend time with my kid^H^H^H^H^H^HHacker News).
I've been carrying around laptop machines since just after the Osborne 1 and in more modern times I've had a succession of Thinkpads running DOS/Windows etc., other laptops running Linux (starting with SuSE and later using Ubuntu) and now I have a variety of MacBooks.
The overall experience on laptops with Linux was horrid. Constant problems with drivers, upgrades and miscellaneous crap. The only truly good experience has been on the Mac with OS X.
I have no trouble using all my familiar unixy tools and installing packages, but I do not spend my time with time wasting activities (oh, why doesn't the network driver work right now?(1)) and spend more on development.
Overall, the Macs have been the most efficient machines I've used.
Here's the thing: I'm not an Apple fan boy, I'm an effectiveness fan boy. The Macs win. Just last night I was programming a GSM/GPS module connected to my MacBook Pro via USB emulating a serial port. Module had to be programmed in Python and communicated with using AT commands. No problem at all using EMACS, Python, Tcl/Expect, make, etc. to get things working.
(1) The usual response to that criticism is that its the hardware manufacturer's fault if there aren't open drivers for their device. As a user who needs to get stuff done, I simply don't care. The machine needs to work. Macs do.
Can you put a date on your Thinkpads? Have you used one with Linux in the last 5 or even 10 years? I am comparing my last OS X experience 10.4/2007 macbook to a X200 Thinkpad with Ubuntu 10.10 (along with the Ubuntu desktop versions for the last 5 or so years... pretty simple to just pick a motherboard with supported chipsets), it's like night and day on the software side and the hardware specs are amazing compared to what you can buy with the same cash in Apple's walled garden.
edit: You don't say anything about a thinkpad in your reply, so I guess you haven't used Linux on a quality laptop in some time. Even at 5 years, that's still quite a way out. I am open to criticism that things have changed since my 2007 experience too, please point anything out.
I installed fedora on a W510 a few weeks ago. It wouldn't suspend, because the kernel USB3 driver has no support for suspending. Having blacklisted the driver, I find that I can now suspend, but USB doesn't move back to the USB2 driver, it just doesn't work. Still working on that one. Fortunately, when attached to a base station the USB2 only ports on that work fine.
Your other point that I take issue with is that you can get substantially better hardware outside of apple for the same price. In my experience, a laptop with similar power, battery life, weight, size, and build quality is not a great deal cheaper.
Please note that I say this as a lover of linux in many ways. It's a fantastic desktop/server OS, and I think apple's desktop offerings are poor value in comparison, but I can't say I've ever had a good experience with linux on a laptop.
The last laptop I installed Ubuntu on was in 2005. I still have that machine and use it occasionally.
edit: The machine I installed it on was a Fujitsu Lifebook. I don't recall the actual model number but it was absolute top of the line machine when I bought it. In recent years (2009, 2010) I've used Linux on a couple of Acer machines which we have in the office. The user experience does not appear to have improved when it comes to dealing with annoying problems.
Couldn't agree with you more. A few months back when my previous macbook had an unfortunate meeting with some stray beer, I was in the market for a new laptop, and I couldn't even bring myself to consider anything else - it just felt painful to even think about it. There are some very nice PC laptops out there - the Dell Adamo series, the HP Envy, and the IdeaPad immediately come to mind - but they're all more expensive than a comparable Apple laptop - and they don't run my OS of choice! Sure, you can try that shady hackintosh noise, but for the most part, that puts you right back in the endless tinkering camp with the Linux on laptops crowd. Apple makes great laptops that just work, they deserve the praise they get for them.
(1) Couldn't agree more here. This "manufacturers need to make open drivers" is just a bunch of whiny noise. Grownups who have things to do don't have time to worry about that crap.
Maybe they could target a few specific machines, making sure those work perfectly, and then use those as reference machines that people can buy if they want a no-hassle experience.
No one is questioning the community's dedication in this regard. It's just that, if the manufacturer nixes the idea, for whatever reason - from the users standpoint it just doesn't matter, the software doesn't work with their hardware. When it comes to devices working there's no such thing as an A for effort.
Indemnify them against lawsuits? I understand that a large part of the reason hardware manufacturers don't want open or third-party drivers is that they could be used as an excuse to troll through their product looking for potential IP violations that could fuel a patent infringement lawsuit.
I used to have problems in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but then I did what Apple does with OS X and paid a little attention to the hardware and all the problems went away. Most Linux problems are people fighting against hardware, if you just pick your chipsets sensibly it all works out of the box. Beyond hardware I was simply staggered at how quickly I was up and running with a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10. Everything was in the repository, Flash, Chrome, Gnome-do, codecs... I'd have been running around for an hour or two extra trying to get the same stuff for OS X. And then on the server-side you go to just about any software project and they have the recommended ways to install "sudo apt-get install oursoftware" there, as are copious post-install setup guides. Can't say I found the same experience on OS X (10.4) when I used it for a year and a bit, it was always a clunky struggle to get things installed.
Most Linux problems are people fighting against hardware, if you just pick your chipsets sensibly it all works out of the box
You see, right there is the problem. I don't have to think about that when using a Mac. The drivers are always there, and they always work.
Despite your claims, Ubuntu and the other linuxes out there do not "just work". I have not yet met a linux laptop that didn't do weird things when I close then reopen the lid. I have yet to meet a linux laptop that deals with finding itself on different networks in an elegant manner.
To put my comments into perspective, for my day job I write userland applications for a Gentoo-derived system, and I do my dev work on a Fedora laptop. At home, I develop for my own company on a Mac, targeting Mac applications. I like to think that I have a reasonable handle on the pros and cons of the two environments. About the only time I find linux compelling is when I want to use an open source package that isn't available on MacPorts. But then, I usually just go and grab a gentoo ebuild for configuring the package in question, create a ruby script to replicate the ebuild, and then install from tarball... It's not a big enough pain to justify sacrificing all of those yummy Apple APIs. If you're an app writer, Cocoa blows GTK out of the water.
It seems to be a bit disingenuous to contend that a small amount of research before making a 1400-1500$ investment is too much to think about.
I had a problem with sound with Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop (It came with Vista which was slowing it down). When 8.04 came out, the problem vanished. I haven't had any hardware issues since then. Ubuntu has also worked flawlessly on the 3 or 4 machines I've installed it on since then.
I can come up with 3 or 4 reasons why Ubuntu is irritating to use, but "headache with drivers" really comes near the bottom of the pile nowadays. Certainly, the ability to install it on any piece of hardware and put in nearly any peripherals and see it work is a huge bonus.
Your second point (about building software on Mac) seems to be from an entirely Ruby-based perspective. I work with a mac server at work, and it was an insane adventure to get Django functional for a web project; as opposed to the 5 minutes (apt-get + config apache) it took to get it functioning on Ubuntu.
(The problem was mostly around installing python-mysql on a Mac Server; the solution was on Apple's site and involved downloading an additional set of header files, in case you ever run into that)
I'm glad that you enjoy the Mac platform; but I don't think the cost-benefit ratio is quite there for me. (It won't be until I'm making 3 or 4 times my current salary.)
It seems to be a bit disingenuous to contend that a small amount of research before making a 1400-1500$ investment is too much to think about.
It is when I have no way of testing what I've researched, and no guarantee that I made the correct choices. I'm willing to pay a little more for such a guarantee.
How much work is it to compare a feature list to the HCL on your distro of choice? Hardware either works or it doesn't, and problems are rarely unique to a given unit in a line of hardware.
My chipset is fully supported, until it comes time to switch modes using the nouveau driver for my Nvidia graphics card causing Ubuntu 10.10 to throw a black screen instead of showing me X11.
I then had to add an extra parameter to my kernel boot line according to some forum posts to make sure it would let me get the installer (nomodeset or some shit like that), after that it installed correctly but Ubuntu 10.10 does away with Grub in any way shape or form so the next time it booted after install I couldn't change that line so I had to boot into a live CD.
Then changing /mnt/etc/default/grub.cfg doesn't let me write that out to disk since update-grub tries to look for the currently mounted partition you want to modify in mount and won't find one with a LiveCD it can modify and as such that goes out of the window. You have to modify /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg and they have made an ungodly mess out of that file.
After I finally figured that out the system still didn't work correctly, so I install the proprietary nvidia driver using their tool, and yet at boot it still does the wrong thing because the nouveau driver is still installed. Finally remove that and Pulseaudio causes my kernel to crash randomly, especially when watching Flash video content. At least I assume it is Pulseaudio, it is the last thing mentioned in /var/log/messages EACH and EVERY time.
Since I needed an OS that could run Boxee (it really is too bad it doesn't work on FreeBSD) and didn't cost me any money I finally just grabbed Arch, installed X11 with the nvidia driver, installed Boxee and it works. It hasn't crashed at all since install.
Linux doesn't just work, and ultimately I was getting really frustrated with the whole thing. I own multiple Windows machines (two Lenovo's, absolutely fantastic), I run FreeBSD as a gateway machine (and have used it for years as a Desktop machine), OpenSolaris as a server and xVM machine, and own one MacBook Pro. I can clearly say that Linux still has a long WAY to go before it is as easy as Mac OS X, and has the same "just works" features. I've had less issues using PC-BSD on the same hardware as Linux, and FreeBSD the underlying OS generally doesn't have the support from vendors for hardware drivers as Linux does.
> Most Linux problems are people fighting against hardware, if you just pick your chipsets sensibly it all works out of the box.
True, but easier said than done.
First you have to find out what chipset a given laptop has. The salescritter won't know, the advert doesn't say. The manufacturer's website might have the info, but it won't be easy to find.
Now you have to figure out if the chipset is supported. That's non-trivial because the "supported" lists don't necessarily use the same chipset names as the manufacturer. Sometimes minor variations don't matter but sometimes they do.
Some of the bundling of stuff with Linux is nice as a time saver on initial install. Having recently spent two days rebuilding a Windows machine (of which a large chunk was just tedious fetching and installing chrome, flash, shockwave, air, acrobat type stuff) this sort of thing is significant. I've never found OS X to be problematic for installs but the basic act of gathering stuff up to put on the machine is basically dead time.
But the comment "if you pick your chipsets sensibly" - frankly most people don't want to have to do that sort of research. There are enough variables in the basic specification / vendor decisions without having to drop down to this level.
The chipset is just one variable when choosing a laptop. If a laptop has a great chipset for Linux but looks like a pile of ass and weighs five pounds, who cares what the chipset is? What about usability? For the average (non Linux zealot) user, they'll pick their laptop on the basis of portability and yes, to some degree, aesthetics. If Linux doesn't work on that laptop - and quite often, it won't - then as far as they're concerned, it doesn't work well on laptops, and they're right.
Disclaimer: I am a big fan of FreeBSD - if you think linux is bad on laptops.....
Apple hardware isn't as diverse I'd wager, and as such it's more likely that an Apple OS will be more tailored to work with Apple hardware. That and the quality build, make up the premium.
Some laptops are stamped with Linux support - something like Suse professional and they are more likely to work.
It's a bit of a gamble at the end of the day, and I'd say the same for Windows running on a laptop. If every thing just works, praise the lamas - keep it. A bit of homework certainly helps before going out and buying something.
I have OSX Tiger on an old power book. Free quality apps are few and far between. Though I like the OS. Loads of apps on Windows, but I don't like the UI.
OSX and W7 users can always just place Linux in a VM if they wanted to and have the best of both worlds. Ideology and small touches in Gnome keep me wedded to Linux.
You're quite correct, it's a known fact that Apple hardware is not nearly as diverse. This is a valid point in the carping about Windows stability in many cases - Windows has to deal with orders of magnitude more hardware than Apple does, and the difference is one of the big reasons for OS X's stability (along with the Unix underpinnings). As for the hardware vendors, it may well be their "fault" but the average user won't care - as far as they're concerned it either works or it doesn't, and at the end of the day, they're right.
I was installing Ubuntu Linux on a older machine but with a new Nvidia graphics card and Ubuntu because of the new nouveau driver showed me a black screen while installing. I had to find a forum post on the issue only to find out that I had to edit the kernel boot parameters by adding something to the end of the boot line.
That pretty much ended that little escapade into trying to get that working... I don't want to tinker with my machines. I want to set them up and have them go for months if not years. Just set up Boxee on ArchLinux, don't plan on touching that for a long time. It does what it is supposed to do (play movies and tv shows) and that is that.
I disagree. I've been (and still am) a hard core Linux user for over 10 years, installing it on almost every piece of hardware that's come my way. When it comes to laptops, Apple's offerings in the last few years have been well ahead of the pack and a joy to use. They're worth it for the hardware alone. The Air pushes the envelope further.
As for OS X, it also "just works" and has a strong community, with plenty of high-quality documentation available from multiple sources. Apt-get is brilliant, but Apple's Software Update is also outstanding, and MacPorts can rival apt-get when it comes to managing FLOSS packages.
The ThinkPad X series. The X201 is similar in size, weight, and price, but can hold a modern CPU and gets an extra several hours of battery life. You can also get mobile internet access, although I'm not sure of what type.
ThinkPad construction stands up to a whole lot, and the keyboard is fantastic. I have a five-year-old X40 that is still chugging along wonderfully - I'd like to get a new laptop, but I just can't justify it.
I have only had one issue running Linux on it: because I use Debian, the non-free wireless firmware must be downloaded separately. I have never had a problem with Ubuntu, even the early versions I tried, because they include it. Intel has put a lot of work into getting all of their stuff supported in Linux, and it shows.
I hear the Sony Z series has a similar story: similar size/weight/price, better hardware and battery life.
If people are questioning the Air's price, they'll absolutely hate the Z's price. The cheapest Z has an i7, an optical drive, and a $500 premium over the base 13" Air.
I had a Sony TX3 back in the day -- the predecessor to the Z -- and yes, it ran Ubuntu rather nicely (unlike many Sony laptops it had a sensible enough chipset that the only device that I couldn't get working was the fingerprint reader). Alas: the price was comparable to a high-end Powerbook, it was relatively gutless (especially when the Core Solo was ramped down for power saving), murderously hard to upgrade the internals (upgrading the hard drive ... I looked up the engineering FM, turned white, and cancelled the whole idea), and had Sony's inimitable approach to warranty repairs if anything went wrong (i.e. six to eight weeks and a fat bill if you want your laptop back).
(Oh, and the keycaps rubbed off the keyboard inside 18 months. Not just the letters, but the silver finish, all the way through to grey plastic. They did not build it for the long haul.)
If Sony were to focus on quality of after-sales service for the high-end laptops, and maybe ditch the bloatware installs, they could probably compete with Apple. Their design aesthetic is there. But they fall down on the whole experience thing once you get it home (or in the office).
Core i7-640LM @ 2.13ghz, 2*2GB DDR3, Intel GMA 5700MHD
12.1" WXGA+ (1440 x 900) LED Backlit Widescreen
320GB HDD (that will be replaced with an SSD)
3 Year International Warranty
A machine that will last years, that works well with Linux, and that I can plug in a nice Docking Station.
*: I cannot understand why there is no Lenovo store for french private customers. Instead of creating a web app, I should open Thinkpad store! A thinkpad costs 2k€+ in Europa... Luckily, I found a cheaper deal on eBay. The actual EUR/USD conversion rate also helps. Plus, it comes with an international warranty, so no headaches here: http://lenovoblogs.com/connections/?p=14 .
Wow, that's nice looking specs. The higher resolution display and i7 I'm truly jealous of. I hope it works well for you. You should ping me and let me know how it works out for you or blog about it, especially your Linux experience. I'm very interested to know. Always looking to move back. The only thing I'm not too happy about is the Intel Graphics, looks good otherwise.
The article actually mentions that his MacBook Pro (which he's comparing it to) does have an SSD so this isn't really a valid criticism of the article.
You gave an example that cost's more 1150 vs 999, and weighs more. Clearly the air is not the best of all possible worlds but if your going to knock a product you might want to consider you are not the target audience. After all cost and weight are at the top of many peoples lists when it comes to laptops.
Apple lists the 11" as having 5 hours and the 13" as having 7 hours. I have 8 hours on mine usually (for the price I paid I got a 9 cell battery, included in the 1.6kg weight).
You should go for more conciseness. Your comment reads like a rambling rant to me. It's very hard to get your point, which seems to be "I prefer Ubuntu". :)
That said, you're right about the X200. It's an excellent machine. I had one for a while before this MBP, and after Mac OS X jumps the shark, I plan on heading back to Lenovo in the unlikely event their quality still matches the X200. I definitely prefer that hardware over the MBP.
The only thing stopping me is my current preference for Mac OS X, and I'm too busy to be screwing around with hackintoshing a Thinkpad. Great, great machines, though.
Absolutely agree with you. After spending time with both my Macbook Pro and my Lenovo T400s (running Ubuntu), it's the Lenovo I couldn't live without. Ubuntu is simply more developer-friendly. The only thing that OS X ever beats Ubuntu in is plugin support, and one could argue that's really not the fault of Ubuntu/Linux.
I have been using Ubuntu in a standard VM, VirtualBox and I have to strongly disagree with the simply works statement. At first I attempted to install Ubuntu on VirtualPC and it failed thanks to a keyboard driver issue, that had been first reported 6 months before and still wasn't fixed.
I switched to VirtualBox and ever since, I have been struggling to maintain a resolution of 1650x1080 on Ubuntu, fighting with xrandr, cvt and xorg.conf all the time. Applying any kind of upgrade implies a strong possibility that my screen resolution will be set back to 800x600.
I will admit that with the latest set of patches this month, I was able to fix my resolution back from 800x600 to 1650X1080 relatively painlessly , cvt, xrandr new, xrandr add, unlike previous occasions. However, the mouse integration with th host OS broke for some reason. I might need to re-install the drivers.
A VirtualBox VM is fairly standard piece of virtual hardware and if Ubuntu can't deliver a decent experience on such a standard piece of hardware, it is hard to take statements like "it just works" seriously.
Having said that the hassle free upgrade from version to version and the ease of use of apt-get is certainly unmatched on any other platform.
The fighting and tinkering is your problem. You are fighting the wrong enemy.
Virtual machines have their own ideas about graphic hardware, and by default they show generic VESA to guest.
In the VMWare world, there is a "VMWare Guest Daemon", that combined with vmware driver adjusts the guest resolution according to VMWare settings (fit to window, etc).
In VirtualBox world, there should be something similar. Quick googling shows, that VBoxLinuxAdditions provides custom display driver.
Also note, that if a) you install guest tools without package manager and b) these guest tools do not support dkms (though VirtualBox should support it), then you will have rebuild kernel modules after each kernel upgrade! This may be your "integration broke for some reason, I need to re-install". Just use dkms and let the operating system worry about reinstalling drivers.
Regarding VirtualPC, it is broken in it's own, special ways. Sometimes I wonder that it works at all. Microsoft does not support other guest systems than Windows.
> The fighting and tinkering is your problem. You are fighting the wrong enemy.
Yes of course, it is my fault that the software I installed did not "just work" and reported the issues when someone claimed "it just works". Using one of the most popular open source VMs is just wrong!
> Quick googling shows, that VBoxLinuxAdditions provides custom display driver.
The first thing I do is install the custom drivers. It still does not update the available set of resolutions. And using xrandr etc too has been a hit or miss until recent updates. Infact the last set of helpful information about dealing with this issue is a Ubuntu forum discussion from 2006.
> these guest tools do not support dkms
So, it cannot be disputed that "Linux just works". Linux does not have built-in drivers for widespread hardware such as Virtualbox. And why do we need to rebuild kernel modules after every incremental monthly kernel revison. Certainly does not sound like "it just works".
>Regarding VirtualPC, it is broken in it's own, special ways.
The keyboard driver error was reported by users on real hardware. Not just VirtualPC. I just happened to run into the error on VirtualPC. Ubuntu did not pick up a fix for this for 6 months, when the Linux kernel mainline already had the fix 6 months ago.
> Sometimes I wonder that it works at all. Microsoft does not support other guest systems than Windows.
You are wrong. You seemed to have missed the entire fiasco around the Novell-Microsoft "partnership" around Virtualization.
Saying that Ubuntu/Linux just works and if it doesn't it is the users fault, is plain misleading and completely misses the point of "it just works". Every piece of software "just works" if all non-working situations can be conveniently blamed on the user. I don't get the defensiveness around some particular piece of software.
> Yes of course, it is my fault that the software I installed did not "just work" and reported the issues when someone claimed "it just works". Using one of the most popular open source VMs is just wrong!
Despite this, VirtualBox is not "supported hardware". Did you see any claim about Ubuntu support on VirtualBox site (no, only "Linux 2.6") or VirtualBox support in Ubuntu materials? Exactly.
VirtualBox is not one of most popular open source VM. It is a popular VM among desktop users that want it for free. That's different.
Even VMWare is not supported by Ubuntu (but Ubuntu is supported by VMWare).
Supported systems work out of the box. For example, when installing Ubuntu on Intel based system, the experience is smooth as a butter. On unsupported systems, it is matter of luck - when 10.10 came out, I've installed it on Toshiba Tecra M7. Everything except fingerprint reader worked out of the box - Nvidia graphics, Intel Wifi, Bluetooth, SD card reader, even the softmodem and Wacom digitizer (it is a tablet).
> So, it cannot be disputed that "Linux just works". Linux does not have built-in drivers for widespread hardware such as Virtualbox. And why do we need to rebuild kernel modules after every incremental monthly kernel revison. Certainly does not sound like "it just works".
Nice omission of "if". I'm not expert on VirtualBox (and I don't want to be). It is on the vendor/maintainer of the modules to make it. Nvidia binary modules for example do support it, so normal user is not aware of the rebuilding when booting with new kernel.
And again, VirtualBox is not widespread hardware.
> You are wrong. You seemed to have missed the entire fiasco around the Novell-Microsoft "partnership" around Virtualization.
That's Virtual Server. Different product, that still does not support Ubuntu (only SLES).
I never said that problems with VirtualBox is a users fault. I said that making two products work that in the way that their vendors do not support is not for the faint of heart. Have you ever tried to run OSX client under any VM? Thought so.
Nor does it insist on any particular hardware configuration.
But instead, what we have here are fanboy comments on how Ubuntu just works and if it doesn't work, how the hardware is not up to a certain spec unavailable on Ubuntu's website, how it is so awesome for you and silly challenges to install OSX on a VM.
> Have you ever tried to run OSX client under any VM? Thought so.
I just don't understand why "OSX under VM" line is being trotted out all the time. I have never used OS X. I am merely disputing the statement "Linux/Ubuntu just works"
Installing Ubuntu server or desktop on Virtualbox/Windows was a 2-day nightmare the first time I did it (3 months ago), and reminds me of why I moved to Macs. Clearly this configuration is not being tested.
If I can't install Ubuntu on Virtualbox, there is no way in hell I am going to buy a Thinkpad for Linux instead of a Mac and hope everything will 'simply work'.
I can't believe it, I just booted my VM and the mouse driver fixed itself, but the resolution fell back to 800x600 yet again! And I hadn't even applied any patches!
I think before I get an Air, I definitely need to improve my social life and/or my coffee intake. Right now, I don't have a personal need for an ultraportable. I switch desks (home, office, abroad), but for that scenario, my current MBP 17" is a pretty ideal solution. Considering that I have (or could have) external monitors at each desk, the Mac Mini probably sounds like a better solution than the MB Air.
If I ever have to attend a lot of meetings/conferences/presentations or finally find the time and money to travel the world, this looks pretty neat. Gives the Thinkpad X Series a run for its money.
I actually don't travel that much but the weight of lugging my current MacBook around on the occasions I do is what has sold the new MacBook Air to me.
I'm not a frequent traveller - maybe once a month - but by the time I add a laptop to all the other stuff I tend to have in a shoulder bag (not to mention the fact that I'd possibly be carrying my 16 month old daughter) and it's pushing what's practical to carry it for any sort of extended period.
When I was looking at the possibility of replacing my current 4 year old MacBook I asked myself what had irritated me about the current machine that I would change. The performance is still basically fine (I code a bit, edit a bit of video and the odd photo but nothing where the performance is really getting to me) and I came to the conclusion it was weight and start up time which means that the MacBook Air rather than a new MacBook or MacBook Pro was the logical choice.
I love the new Air but fall into this spot as well. I have an original Uni 17 (replaced optical drive)...what Jan 09 and I adore the heft, and weight of it. Then again, I am young and if I don't need anything of power I tote along the iPad.
I love the Air but need a better reason, than current to pick one up, which is quite difficult every time I find myself playing with them in the Apple store.
I hate the fact that tech companies and observers gloss over the technical details of products. On Apple's site, even in the sections labeled "Tech Specs" you cannot find the model of CPU, chipset or hard drive that goes into any of their product (except for Mac Pro, and there you don't have much choice even though I guess it should be expected with the desktop computer of such class). And the reviewers often times make no effort to find that out too! What kind of "technical" is this?
It seems to me they use Core 2 Duo SL9400 (1.87 GHz, 1066 FSB)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microproce...). Not exactly record-setting for low power, judging by 17W TDP, but when everyone is measuring battery life at mostly idle CPU, and with process enhancements over the years (I heard that later Core 2's of the same model consume less power than rated) I think they might show close to their rated battery life. I think Apple must have worked hard squeezing the unnecessary volume and weight with the new design to give place for more battery too.
I hate the fact that tech companies and observers gloss over the technical details of products.
It's hard to expect much of tech journalism when so little of it is actually journalism. We've collectively ceded the territory formerly occupied by professional journalists to fanboys and bloggers, many of us celebrating the fact along the way.
Having said that, it's only right that Apple's marketing downplays specs, part numbers, and benchmarks (with some notable exceptions). Macs are great computers for the people who like them because of a combination of clever industrial design, polished software, and good hardware. Specs and benchmarks don't begin to tell you what it's like to use a Mac. Think qualia, not quantity.
Right now this device's lack of RAM is a killer (I regularly run out of 8GB on my MBP). Buuuut... when OSX 10.7 comes out with app resume functionality, opening and closing apps will be fast (thanks to the OS and the rapid drive these things carry)... so more than 4GB will not be needed for me.
So I'm thinking that iOS's desktop legacy might be a bit bigger than just weird scroll bars and a cool app launcher.
You should try popping in a recent Ubuntu disk. Older (circa 2008) distributions had trouble with the hardware, but I have a 2006 MacBook Pro that "just works" with 32-bit Ubuntu 10.04. I even Bootcamped the hard disk and dual boot Snow Leopard and Lucid.
My laptop (macbook uni 13") has 2 GB of RAM; my desktop (slackware 13.1) 768 MB... but it's showing its age, 5 years :) I mostly use the macbook as an X terminal to the desktop, actually :)
A guy who's clearly into the latest and greatest hardware, and can give a good comparison against the fastest other machines out there is a waste of your time when reading a laptop review? That makes no sense. Hopefully this isn't a "he's rich so I don't care what he says" thing?
i have a newer 17mbp. can't say i've used the optical, but i like having it there. i would probably move towards a 15" mba if it had their 1680x1050 screen and more battery life. the 8GB ram thing doesn't really get to me tho. i do all my dev work in vim.
the thing i can't stand is how people are perceiving the dump of the optical drive as something revolutionary. a) the old macbook air didn't have one (a gripe for many) and b) neither do netbooks.
a little off-topic but one thing that really kills me about apple is how they're seemingly refusing to add a blu-ray option even though the standard is well-established. i would really like to have one in my mbp17. not just because i have a res (1920x1200) on the lappy that supports it, but because i also have a 27" panel that i hook my laptop into.
and this move towards "no optical drives" (likely so they can sell more HD content) is only going to solidify that among their lines in my assessment.
I thoroughly dislike optical drives, regardless of the platform, and see their demise as a good thing. In laptops, they add weight and draw excessive power. Elsewhere, only commercial manufacturing provides reliable storage, but even this is extremely vulnerable to wear and tear from heavy use. At the consumer level, I've had better luck archiving data on floppy disks than any optical media (I've yet to see a CD-RW allow reuse without data corruption). As far as I'm concerned, USB ports make built-in optical drives obsolete.
the problem is that some movies can't be easily [legally] downloaded/distributed. take "tears of the black tiger" for example. one of the best films ever made, but nearly impossible to get from blockbuster, netflix (only recently could one watch online), or apple movie store in any other medium than DVD. how many more movies are there like this? my wife and i pick up japanese films from tokyo all the time that we can't get elsewhere.
i would wager there are plenty more films available on DVD than on downloadable format. sure the reasons for this may be stupid ... but they're reasons nonetheless [for now].
The no Blu-ray is supposedly because they see Blu-ray as the mini-disc of video - that essentially most people will happily go from DVD to download without the interim step.
this may or may not be true. it depends on the level of quality that all these folks spending thousands of dollars on high end panels/plasmas are willing to tolerate. i watch most of my films on a 27" computer display, and mostly over netflix streaming. but if i had a higher end system, no doubt i'd want to have the best quality i could get. and even on a 30Mb/s internet connection, i still can't top the quality of blu-ray.
but your analogy is well-founded. convenience usually wins. and after all, laserdiscs looked much better than their competitors and still didn't survive.
I would hardly call BluRay a well established standard. It's the lone HD physical media for consumers at this point but most people are still using DVD.
i meant standard in the sense that it's fully specified as a technology, and is the only large capacity optical disk in the mainstream consumer market. yes, DVD is much more prevalent.
Unless you actually want to, y'know, buy movies or something.
In theory I could buy movies on iTunes, but I frankly don't trust anything I buy on iTunes to still work in ten years, whereas I'm pretty sure I'll still be able to get my Blu-Rays to play.
I would imagine it's just as cumbersome a process as playing a dvd, laserdisc, betamax, vhs is today.
I agree that the state of marketplaces is not there yet but I also think that it won't stay this way for too much longer.
I'm over physical media. Discs are messy, damage prone, and usually they just sit collecting dust.
Don't get me wrong -- I had a great time collecting a massive amount of movies and I still spend at least 3 hours in a quality bookstore when I have the chance.
BluRay adoption is very much why the format is doomed a laserdisc/betamax death. You're somewhat lucky though -- because the encryption is compromised fully so you'll be able to extract your data to a better format down the road.
I would imagine it's just as cumbersome a process as playing a dvd, laserdisc, betamax, vhs is today.
You included DVD in that list? One of these things is not like the other... I think I have six devices in this room right now which can play a DVD.
Piracy aside, what's the alternative to Blu-Ray? It's Apple or Apple, and an opportunity to have a file which plays only by the grace of Apple. No thanks.
To play things I have stored digitally it's just a matter of using the remote to access thousands of movies/tv shows stored on my network
How long did it take you to set all that up? Do you think a less technically inclined person is going to be able to set up something like that?
Also, were all these thousands of movies and TV shows acquired legally? If not, it's hardly a solution for the average law-abiding person. If so... wow, that sounds really expensive!
It depends on where you live. Some people can pay a few bucks a month for netflix and put an AppleTV in every room giving them access to a tremendous amount of content without having to deal with physical media.
You mostly only pay for what you use and the clients (AppleTV's or other media players) are rarely much over $100 each.
Storage is incredibly cheap for the things you have yourself.
It's much like the movie Gran Torino where Walt has a garage filled with tools. He aquired them over time. That is the way I have aquired media that now resides on my server.
> Optical media is growing more irrelevant every day for most of us.
The vast majority of people have neither the inclination nor the technical wherewithal to rip DVDs to disk.
Until every DVD that Netflix stocks has a "Play" button next to it, DVDs are going to continue to be very relevant. And even then Netflix is very US-centric, only very recently expanding into Canada, not to mention the rest of the world.
but netflix doesn't ship me a two terabyte drive full of movies when i click a button on their website. and their so-called "HD" is only so-so. i'm guessing 480p.
I'm surprised he cares about startup and shutdown times.
One of the lovely things about the Mac laptops is that you never have to turn them off. Close them and they go to sleep in a few seconds. Open them up and you're ready to work immediately.
The uptime on my laptops tends to be a few months.
Business frequent flyers would tend to care about this metric - imagine yourself going through multiple iterations of "please turn off all electronics at this time" could easily get annoyed in a hurry by an overly long boot sequence.
As opposed to what, rotating particle accelerator dumps through N-space to correlate them against standard model predictions?
What, exactly, do you think people use laptops for? If you're doing something remarkably intensive like encoding video or writing massively scalable ETL code, and you're doing it on a laptop, you have failed at computers.
I actually do video and After Effects on my Macbook Pro, as well as all of my Photoshop work with huge multi-layered files, and it flies. I have a more powerful Quad-Core tower at work, but it's only a slight improvement in speed, and being mobile with my Macbook far outweights that. In fact, there are tons of people that do video editing on the fly with Macbooks. I wouldn't dare try it with a Macbook Air.
it is not a fair review of the performance diff between a pro and an air
for somebody who runs a traditional dev stack (eclipse/netbeans + 2+ browsers + compiler/vm + httpd + photoshop + database +++), or a gamer, or a student, a 10 or even 5% performance delta makes a big diff.
I'm not particularly an Apple guy (if anything a bit against them), but these Airs are exactly what I think a laptop should be.
I want my laptop to be small, lightweight and have a long (3-4 hour) battery life, with performance as a low priority. Netbooks are a good compromise but their limited screen size/smaller keyboard are a bit of a hassle.
They're still too pricey for my blood though. The previous Air I saw was listed at ~$1800 (USD), and even though $999 is significantly better, I can't see myself spending that much on (what would be for me) a secondary machine.
That being said - tax season is coming up. =) Is it a pain to get linux running on these things?
I'd like to know what application he is running. Yes, I'd imagine that Chrome would be faster on a fresh out of the box mac, but let's see him try to process RAW photos.
I personally want an optical drive. Am I old fashioned? I don't trust these movie and music download stuff and prefer hardware in my drawer.
For my last business trip, I quickly copied my iTunes library to my business Macbook (in a hurry, the evening before). On the remote site I switched on the audio book that I recently started and got the message: this computer is not authorized ...
Right, but are you carrying the media with you all the time? If not then a small external drive is a decent compromise - if you think you’ll need it you can chuck it in the bag as well and you can at least not take it if you think you won‘t.
Well, in terms of movies: you break the law, if you extract them to the harddrive.
For the rest, you are right, it is possible to carry a drive. But then we are back to the clutter on the desk that we had in the 80s and 90s and just got rid of. This is progress?
Without an optical drive works only properly, if you download the data or get them on non optical media.
I would be fine though, if I could download movies and music to an external storage and the DRM would be on that storage, not on a computer. A storage with at least the same possibilities that we have with CDs and DVDs today (import to iTunes without DRM!).
As long as that is not possible, the Macbook Air remains a pretty good second computer IMHO.
They should measure temperature and noise when testing new laptops. In addition to disk speed and processing power, it's the most important features for me.
My 2 year old MacBookPro gets boiling hot after an hour.
Just to follow up on the noise, if anyone's interested (or happen to notice this followup comment at all), noise is not an issue. I received my 13" about 24 hours ago, and only heard the fan briefly while it was syncing my entire Dropbox. Otherwise, it has been absolutely silent (and not even warm).
I briefly considered selling my 13" MBP for an air, but quickly realized I could upgrade my machine to 8GB of RAM and swap in an SSD for cheap, on top of the processor being much faster than any of the Airs'. Also, I have an iPad and an 11" Air would be a bit redundant for me.
For all this talk of SSDs, it's worth pointing out that you can pick up the 2.5" 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid SSD/platter drive for $130 on Amazon. Best upgrade I made to my Thinkpad, and one that is not available for the Air...
What sort of performance do people see on the macbook air solid state storage? What sort of hardware interface does it use? I'm not seeing any non-puff reviews of this thing anywhere.
MG might or might not run into trouble once his SSD drive burns in / fills up, as it no doubt has on the other laptops he talks about. His comparison might be somewhat apples to oranges..
"Thanks largely to Apple themselves, we live in a world where we have digital music, photos, movies, and TV shows that take up dozens, if not hundreds of gigabytes of storage."
Ah nope. Fawning, not trolling.
He forgot to add indoor plumbing, the internal combustion engine, modern medicine, etc, to the list.
Jesus, that article was ridiculous. I grew suspicious when he talked about speed being partly due to the processor, when we've all known since we got SSDs that the processor has nothing to do with UI latency (when was the last time you saw CPU usage spiking to 100% just by launching programs)?
The disk has always been the bottleneck, Apple was smart enough to put a fast disk in the Air, and now this guy praises it.
This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy. Format the MacBook Pro and it will be just as fast... Sure, the Air might be a great little computer, but for a $999 pricetag, I could get 3 netbooks instead.
Add to the fact that no one is actually buying the $999 version. Every positive review I have read goes like this:
"The new MacBook Air is amazing. It starts at $999 and I have been using the top-of-the-line 13" for a week! (of course not mentioning that it costs $1,599)"
I would love to see a tech person use the $999 version and see their review. The price-point, when actually comparing the usable one, is ridiculous!
The vast majority of the hands-on actual-usage reviews I've read (nearly all of which have been extremely positive) have been of the 11" with more people running the 2GB than the 4GB.
That is good to know. All I read was MacBook Air and never a discosure as to what type. It felt like they were talking about a great Android phone and never told me if it was the Droid or the G1. Oh well...
> This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy.
Is this some sort of specific SSD fragmentation issue you're referring to? There are SSD issues of that type but I'd be surprised to see them in six months unless you're absolutely caning the drive.
General fragmentation wouldn't cause that sort of problem inside six months though. I've spent four years loading my MacBook with stuff (and uninstalling stuff, reinstalling stuff and so on) with no significant performance degradation. In that time I've never reinstalled the OS, never defragged or done any sort of significant maintenance other than keeping it patched and it's still basically as fast as it was on day one.
I ask because in four years with my MacBook using it for a whole range of stuff (including development, multimedia, general admin,, and installing whole loads of software I've bought in bundle sales) I've honestly never seen this problem.
I'm not saying it can't happen but from my experience you'd really have to be going for it to build up that sort of accumulation of stuff in just six months.
Not now, but I used OS X for a few months. Various programs installed some daemons, including VMWare (I see no reason why) Little Snitch (okay, that one's justified) and various other things I can't remember right now...
I'd say this is a characteristic that's fairly common among Windows applications (especially less-reputable software) but uncommon among Mac applications.
My anecdotal evidence from helping friends and family is that Macs don't suffer from "Windows rot" [1] the same way that PCs do. My hypothesis: due to differences in the developer communities for each platform.
The Air has a faster SSD than his older Macbook Pro. It isn't magically faster just because it's different. We aren't in fantasy land.
If you have a faster CPU, more (of the same speed) RAM and a faster SSD then it doesn't make any sense for it to be slower. Given that both are in a 64bit environment.
There is nothing magical happening! Get a new 900MB/s SSD and it'll be faster again, then I guess you'll move back.
He is so fixated and focused on Apple that off course they are responsible for everything. No other tech company exists, or is worthy, in his mind.
He demonstrates ignorance in that article, by first mistaking his personal experience with technology for the experience of everybody else in the world.
And second by mistaking his own ability to pay $200 more for an Air over a Macbook for the ability of everybody else in the world to afford the extra money.
(It reminds me of the Reagan "If I listen to Dukakis long enough" quote - except it is "If I read MG long enough, I would be convinced that Apple..")
People had multi gigabyte music and movie and TV show collections long before iTunes made it 'popular' or 'easy'. And I wager that most multi gigabyte movie and TV show collections still have nothing to do with iTunes.
Though yes, Apple did do a huge part for boosting people's music collections. But let's not even pretend for movies and TV shows. That "honour" goes to some completely different groups... cough.
The "People" you're talking about are the very small tech minority who were in the "scene", dcc-ing or on usenet, or torrenting (when that came about).
What Apple did, is they boosted the average person's music/tv/movie collection. People like my mom and sister. There's 1,000 of them, for every DCCing/Torrenting one of us.
That's simply not true. In my high school, for example, Napster got installed on all computers in the computer lab and a full class was dedicated to teaching everyone how to use it. For reference, another full class was dedicated to learning how to use "Search Engines". Frankly, I did not know a single person under the age of 30 who did not have a massive collection of MP3s and divx movies by the time iTunes came out.
Those "People" would actually be called teenagers, and I never met one who didn't know how to use Napster or Kazaa back when I was one of them.
I guess that is why the music industry got all up in arms about. that tiny minority who used Napster and limewire and such. According to some counts the number of this tech minority was about 80 million on napster alone, not including your mom and sister of course.
Agreed. To say otherwise is to be drinking the Koolaid that Apple fed to record labels 10 years ago. "We'll boost your sales like you've never seen. We'll even protect your stuff with DRM, no one will mind!"
The iPod makes no sense before people had multi-GB collections of music.
Why did I buy a larger clunky gen 1 iPod from Apple when I had a Windows machine? Because I had a pile of music on my computer and the flash player I had before then (a Rio?) fit about 16 songs.
And lets be honest, people have multi-GB collections of music becasue of Napster, Kazaa, and bittorrent, not because of iTunes.
Apple have a damned good track record on their portable strategy; very few boneheaded moves have been made. If the new Air is THAT good, you can bet your b-hind that the new MB Pro incarnation will be THAT THAT good.
Joking aside, it's a very nice little machine, but I could not imagine developing software on it without hooking it up to a full sized keyboard and screen which would defeat most of the purpose of owning one in the first place.
The mac Air series is so thin that when I saw one the first time I couldn't believe it was a real functional computer until they turned it on for me!