another cube...




I saw the detailed rumor the day before the Macworld keynote about the MacBook Air (MBA---pun intended, perhaps?). The rumor site even got the name correct, and aside from some hinge details, pretty much nailed it except for a few points (like being able to connect to a DVD wirelessly through other computers). Without question it's a gorgeous machine. And if one inhabited a world where high-speed wireless networks were ubiquitous and free, and where one almost never needed to connect to a wired network or use a DVD or CD, then this would be perfect. However...

* While I suspect this is targeted at business users who need something really lightweight, it would have very little application in the companies I've worked in. Wireless networks are still shunned by many companies due to perceived security issues. All too often, I've needed to be able to access a CD or DVD. And then there's the whole backup and file sharing issue. Sometimes it's just more practical to burn a CD or DVD than share it via a network. And in terms of backups, I do like to have things on DVD as well as on a hard drive.

* While it was expected that the hard drive size would be constrained by the size, there's no way I could go with an 80 GB drive I've almost maxed out my 80 GB iBook drive as it is. And the hard drive is not user-upgradable. If they can put a 160 GB drive in an iPod, why not a laptop?

* Battery is not user-replaceable. That's a bummer.

* Ethernet is an extra cost via an adapter, same with a Superdrive. That adds over $100 to the cost.

* Is anyone really going to shell out $1000 extra for a MacBook Air with a smaller drive, albeit one using Flash memory? Really?

* While the CPU is undoubtedly faster than the 1.33 GHz G4 PPC chip I'm using to type this, it's slower than other MacBooks and MacBook Pros out there

* How do you troubleshoot this thing if you need to startup from a DVD or CD on the road? Sure, you can buy the Superdrive and bring it with you, but not everyone will. Why not bundle the Ethernet adapter and Superdrive with the machine in the first place? And without FireWire, how can one use FW Target Mode to transfer data from an old machine to this one? I'd hate to do this wirelessly---if the old machine has 802.11g like my iBook, that's going to be the bottleneck. Sure, I transfer a 10 MB Quicken file to and from our Mac Mini all the time. But that's 10 MB, not 70 GB of data.

Like the original iMac, Apple is making a statement, I think, that optical drives will go the way of the floppy drive. And perhaps they will, eventually. But with the iMac, Apple still included an optical drive, so there was some way to get data in from a disc of some kind. Wireless networking, and fast networking specifically, isn't that widely available. So I think they're a bit too ahead of the curve on this one.

On the other hand, if someone is fine with storing much of their media collection offline and has an 802.11n network available most of the time, then this is probably just fine. But I'd want to have the Superdrive with me until DVDs and CDs go the way of the floppy. It will definitely happen eventually. But not for a while longer, I suspect.

So the MBA reminds me a bit of the G4 Cube. Also a beautiful machine, and smaller than anything else like it at the time. But it was priced too high, and had some design quirks and limitations that kept many people from buying it, and it died a premature death. I hope this is not true of the MBA, but just the lack of a user-replaceable battery and upgradable RAM might be enough to keep many folks away.

Posted: Wed - January 16, 2008 at 09:16 AM          

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