MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Jan 24, 08 - 10:10 am Comment from: Ampar

" . . . a lithe sheath of aluminum so slim that it can slide under my office door . . ."

And the first revision is currently being tested as a stylish and effective method of birth control. Extra battery not included.

I hope he tested it with the door open, I would have hated to have found it didn't fit when someone burst in - and broke my fingers.

Jan 24, 08 - 10:43 am Comment from: TowerTone

I would hate to slide it under a door and then find it is locked...

Jan 24, 08 - 10:44 am Comment from: Spark

Today's common 'front lawn' originated in France as an expression of the Nobles' wealth. The ability to waste good earth on growing something so useless as grass was quite the status symbol centuries ago.

Fast forward to 2008. The MBA will be a status symbol, signaling that the owner most likely has another computer system back at the office, and most likely another laptop as well (for those times a FireWire port is needed). Apple should have named the sub-notebook the MacBook Cartier.

MDN - why keep making excuses for the MBA?
Is Apple recommending all these things you keep harping on - buy more gadgets to hang off your laptop!
If they wanted the computer to have them, they would have included it.
The MBA is for the few that want to carry a thin, nicely designed computer that costs more. It is for going on the road, make a presentation, surf the internet (wirelessly), write some emails. Kind of like a dressy pair of shoes or a real nice suit. You use them only when needed and you don´t load them down with extras.

Jan 24, 08 - 10:54 am Comment from: silverhawk

My front lawn supports a bunch of trees that take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen in return. My trees and I think that's a real good deal! The trees in my back yard also think it's a good idea. Kind of scratching each others back.

Jan 24, 08 - 11:05 am Comment from: MacDailyNews Webmaster

We are not recommending carrying anything other than an iPod with MacBook Air.

Our point in previous articles is that if you are trying to do other things with MacBook Air, there are options available for Ethernet, extended battery life, multiplying USB ports, etc.

Obviously, carrying additional items will add weight and bulk to your carrying case. It's up to users to determine which MacBook model is right for them.

People who see Apple's MacBook or MacBook Pro as preferable to the MacBook Air — or who end up trying to replicate those models' features with add-ons to the Air — are simply not in the MacBook Air's target market.

Jan 24, 08 - 11:05 am Comment from: Ampar

"My trees and I think that's a real good deal!"

Yeah, you wood.

It has no floppy drive! No PS/2 ports! What a piece of crap!

Seriously, this is what mobile computing should have been all along. Leave the optical drive and the biggest portion of your hard drive capacity at home or in the office where it belongs.

Sync the stuff you need for the road trip just like you sync an iPod Touch or Nano. Just have your basic programs, the data you need for the trip and the entertainment files you may want to use.

Syncing your portable like an iPod has to be a future feature.

Jan 24, 08 - 11:09 am Comment from: Ampar

"The gentle curves and the absence of protrusions . . ."

Like Michael Jackson?

Jan 24, 08 - 11:11 am Comment from: Cubert

Can't wait for the anorexia society to get pissed off at all this obsession with "thinness".

Jan 24, 08 - 11:14 am Comment from: TowerTone

"The trees in my back yard also think it's a good idea. Kind of scratching each others back."

When the wind blows just right, there is a bush that covers my stump. And when it blows hard, it thrashes about quite a bit. I think they scratch each others back, too.

Jan 24, 08 - 11:21 am Comment from: DLMeyer

Again ... the MBA will serve its purpose/expense as it brings people in to the Apple Store to gawk - then walk away with a different computer. The various "premium features" will arrive on less expensive - and more powerful - machines "soon", spreading the engineering cost out to a wide variety of products.
* LED screen - coming "soon" to MB, MBP, and monitors
* multi-touch pad - coming "soon" to MBP, then to MB
* backlit keyboard - already here?
* WiFi - already here!
Yes ... it's an object of techno-lust ... and that's a Bad Thing, how? You know of any car dealers that put their sportiest model up front to draw Daddy in so they can sell him the van his wife needs?

Jan 24, 08 - 11:21 am Comment from: Haiku

Hey MDN Folks
Take a Gander at your Take
S'got a few Typos

Jan 24, 08 - 11:26 am Comment from: Ampar

" . . . there is a bush that covers my stump."

Sounds like some nice action. But don't be so hard on yourself!
Didn't Cheney say that after his hunting accident?

Jan 24, 08 - 12:07 pm Comment from: HotinPlaya

Will not be long before we see a 3 port USB snap on

made of the same material, contoured to the MBA,

If left on, would not look to out of place

Jan 24, 08 - 12:14 pm Comment from: alansky

Must every new computer be priced for starving students and tricked out with every option known to man? Jeez Louise! Personally, I think the new Time Capsule would be the perfect companion for the MacBook Air—one partition for the music, photos and videos that make the Air's internal drive seem inadequate; and the other partition for backup of the primary drive. Of course, this setup would require a second external drive to back up Time Capsule's media partition, but this isn't rocket science and the result would be a highly functional, superbly portable computer system.

Jan 24, 08 - 12:40 pm Comment from: treestman

There's so much stuff written about the MBA that reasonable comparisons are hard to come by. Macworld published a good one yesterday that I commented on:

Macworld Looks at the MacBook Air vs. Sony Vaio

Jan 24, 08 - 02:15 pm Comment from: KingMel

It seems to me that the Macbook Air offers a lot in comparison to other subnotebooks on the market. Even Apple can't work miracles - you have to delete some functions/features to save weight. All the ones that I have seen involved external optical drives and other gadgets to enable them to shrink dimensions and weight. Apple does have experience with subnotebooks from back in the early 1990's - the Duo - and I imagine that they weighed the design compromises in the MBA very carefully.

You may question the design breakpoints that Apple chose. For instance, should Apple have compromised on their thinness objective by a bit in order to accommodate a 160GB HDD? Would it have been possible to include an ethernet jack and an ExpressCard slot without unreasonable design impacts? But, in the end, Apple sets those design requirements and undoubtedly followed a complex process to mature them and arrive at an end product.

You either buy it or you don't.

Since most people coming to a new laptop will be coming from an old one, it's very likely that 80Gigs is as large if not larger than what they already have. I mean, I've got two laptops here, a 12" AluPB with a 120Gig drive and a 15" TiPB with a 100Gig. Both of those drives, I added this year. Before that, they had 60Gig and a 40Gig drive. I already offload my photo album to a 500Gig harddrive and my iTunes library as well. My laptops only carry a portion of what's recent. While it would be nice to carry everything on my laptop, I don't, because I've never wanted to overtax my laptop drive. And, if my laptop got stolen, my music and photos were on another drive at home. Of course, with Time Machine, that makes my system a bit redundant, but Leopard only just came out, and I'm still getting a new system setup. I doubt many people will miss the Gigs in the MBA. Just carry a portable USB drive. I carry a portable Firewire drive with my old 60Gig in it, for backup, when going on business trips, already.

"People who see Apple's MacBook or MacBook Pro as preferable to the MacBook Air — or who end up trying to replicate those models' features with add-ons to the Air — are simply not in the MacBook Air's target market."

OR

-People who see Apple's iPod as preferable to the Microsoft Zune . . are simply not in the Microsoft Zune's target market.

I do understand the concept, but when taken to an extreme MDN loses credibility. The MacBook Air may have a market, time will tell. I am not in that target market and I think a few of their design choices may have shrunk the potential target market to small than it should be. 80Gb is NOT enough. I can handle the RAM, it's plenty for both OS X and virtualization. The processor is more than adequate for anything except high end gaming or media creation. There are many other features that are adequate as well, but I can't get over the 80Gb drive. That is way too small and limits the Air's potential uses to a very thin demographic.

hey, just use the ipod to charge the macbookair battery! omigod ima genius! hard drive AND spare battery in one