Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Thursday 17 January 2008, 12:59 AM
MacBook Air conditioning may not be so cool
Instead, I turned up with nothing, recorded a light TV interview with News 24 beforehand, a breathless straight-from-the-event drivetime update with Radio 5live afterwards, and spent the intervening time sitting quietly in the audience and listening while all around me my fellow hacks tapped, clicked, snapped and swore.
It's all about style, baby. That and knowing that I was up against some serious monster bloggers...
24 hours for reflection later, how has Apple started 2008? The iPhone/iTouch stuff - meh. Time Capsule wireless-attached backup device? Nice idea. It'll sell in barely detectable amounts.
Video rental system with revamped AppleTV? If it works, it'll change the rules. Any product that relies on broadband networks not under its direct control delivering time-critical bandwidth en masse is a hostage to fortune, but would you want to disappoint Mr Jobs? And isn't Apple's bestie Google busy building out a throbbing arterial network of pipeage? (Prediction: this year, we'll hear some rumours about Apple/Google buying/merging with/strongly befriending some infrastructure/wireless operators. They wont come to pass: if they do, they won't work).
Enough of that. The big question. MacBook Air: can it has the pretty? Yes. ma'am, it can has the pretty. But it's a bit fur coat and no knickers.
I wowed with the rest of them as the keynote screen displayed the statistics, the shape and the complete image of the Air - and then I filed back to the aftershow press demo area. (OK, I got trampled in the rush to clear the studio as Jobs played his cleverest trick - putting celebrity defrost Randy Newman on stage. It worked far better than Aphex Twin's end-of-set trick of slapping a sandpaper disc on the decks).
There was a large table with lots of MacBook Airs and even more lots of keen young Apple people keeping the sharpest of eyes on large hacks with capacious pockets.
In the aluminium-clad flesh, the Air is yes, very nice and very thin. But it's not _that_ light - I've had my wonder glands for that calibrated by the Toshiba Portege R200 - and it's all a bit too dull in every other respect. Half the storage of a fat iPod Classic? Video out, a single USB port, a headphone socket and nothing else? Oh, there's the 802.11n - but I'll hold off on the excitement there until the standard's finished, and I can test my doubts about how well it'll work inside an all-metal shell. As for expandability: we're right back at the original Macintosh 128K user-proof box. Thou Shalt Not.
The backlit keyboard - now that, I like a lot. Everyone, steal this at once please.
Yet while the various multi-finger tricks on the touchpad are initially impressive, they really don't matter very much on a machine that also has a full-sized keyboard and a full-sized display. Don't write them off - many such interface ideas seem gimmicky at first, but prove themselves over time - yet their logic is nowhere near as clear as on pocket devices.
Add to that the sealed-in battery, the lack of optical drive ("It doesn't matter", said Steve, and promptly showed off two work-arounds that meant that yes, it does matter.) and the really rather air-raising pricetag, and we have an Apple product that looks good at first but proves a poor fit to the real world. It wouldn't be the first now, would it?
(Oh, and the special super-small packaging that Intel put around the Core 2 Duo chip inside the Air? Jobs made a big thing about how closely the two companies had worked together on this, and wheeled on Intel top dog Otellini who chortled about how challenging it had been, but the Apple people I asked afterwards didn't think that this joyful event conferred any sort of exclusivity on the chip to Apple itself. I don't think so either, and expect to see it inside all manner of competing products real soon now).
Tellingly, the conversation among the hacks at the reception afterwards confirmed another suspicion: that big price tag postively invites value for money comparisons with that goddarn Asus Eee. To see how that works, try a thought experiment where Apple, not Asus, launched a £220 computer with roughly the same spec as the Eee - and Asus launched a MacBook Air-alike. Where would the buzz be then?
PreviousComments on this post
Well said. If Apple had launched the Eee it wouold have been the greatest invention ever and there would be queues outside the Mac shops for it except the price would be double or triple.
Saying that the Eee has done well for itself even without a silver apple logo slapped on it.
I'm afraid the Air doesn't appeal to me - not just because I don't like Apple products very much but because of the arogance that Apple have in releasing a product like this. Rather than look at user needs they've decided smaller is sexier and that's all that matters (3lbs). 1 USB port are they kidding - by the time you tie that up with the optical drive how are you going to connect anything else. Just suppose you want to connect to your office network and use a real mouse at the same time - oh no the USB port is busy. I guess in my super light Macbook air bag I'll also need a bunch of accessories - a optical drive, a network adapter, a usb hub, powered usb hub power supply, macbook power supply and if macbook pros are anything to go by a cooling tray). So with my hub attached and hooked up to my cooling pad, mouse, network adapter and optical driver I'm ready to go with my superlight notebook?? what's wrong with this picture? The price is a shocker too. I never imagined I'd see a 1.8 GHz processor based laptop go for over $3,098.00 with my optical drive and ethernet port sold seperately (extra $180 for optical drive, ethernet and modem).
And after all that it's less than 1lb lighter than the Dell XPS m1330 (3.9lbs) which is much cheaper and has more features.
well, it costs to be stylish!
Traditionally Apple products are not meant for your every day working environment, bar a few exeptions, they're usually targeted at the high-end luxury market where style and uniquety are far more important.
Likewise, the Apple Air is your Gucci as opposed to the M&S'esque Asus Eee!
Ah, so "computing for the rest of us" has been laid to rest...
I do like your word, uniquety. We badly need it as an antonym to ubiquity - so perhaps it should be spelled uniquity. Or, if we're talking about Apple's pricing, iniquity!
R
lol, thanks Rupert!
Actually i think Apple does the rest of us a favour by setting the standard: we all admire Apple's aesthetics and innovation, thus LG, SamSung, HTC, etc are pushed to come up with similar features (emulate as much as possible); look how many products the iPhone has inspired in the short while its been around, look at the number of MP3 players with a variant of iPod's Clickwheel, even the mighty Zune couldn't resist!
It doesn't matter that we can't afford Apple's slick products becuase soon enough, someone copies them!
The difference is, the iPod was innovative - especially if you think of it as the iPod/iTunes pairing.
The Macbook Air isn't innovative at all. It's just thin and expensive.
What's really interesting is if you think about margins. Assuming that Asus is making a decent whack out of the Eee - say thirty percent on RRP, which I think is conservative - then Apple could have applied its trademark Ivian design touches, thrown in a bit more oomph, sold it for £400 and still be looking at over a hundred percent markup on retail (you can mess with those figures as much as you like, but it's still a very decent business). And who wouldn't want such a cute Apple for that sort of dosh?
One of the things about the Eee is how conservative the design is. No custom chips, no arcane design tricks, no down-to-the-last-millimetre massive efforts in layout. What could Apple do with the concept if it brought in the clever?
