Bohemia Bunny

Hot air over the Macbook Air

January 16th, 2008 by lynnylchan under Comments

I read the liveblogging of the Macworld keynote last night, and have stayed off my usual blogs and tech sites since in order to form my own opinion about the latest product. It’s a ridiculously thin ultra-portable 13.3inch notebook called the Macbook Air. The fact that it’s an ultraportable refers to the weight and size, not to be confused with the current crop of UMPCs.

First I’ll get the admission out of the way: Yes, I have Apple envy. The company has some brilliant designers on its team, and were somehow able to convince Intel to custom-shrink their processors so that they could fit inside the skinny aluminium chassis of the Macbook Air. Why can’t other laptop manufacturers do that? *turns green*

But don’t you dare tell me to resolve my Apple envy by simply buying one. Both on principle and for practical purposes, I am sticking to Windows laptops. To make it easier, I’ve compiled a little Q&A.

Why won’t you buy a Mac?

Because I like Windows. I could, of course, buy a Mac and put Windows on it instead. The segment of users who do this are, in my book, the 3rd sector of laptop users and are reviled by both camps for selling out on both sides. But that’s just my opinion. Honestly, I need Windows for some of my applications to run - they’re not Mac-friendly.

That’s for Macs in general. What about the Macbook Air?

It comes without certain features that I deem essential to my computing experience. Steve Jobs already offered some solutions for whatever’s missing on the Macbook Air. Instead of backing up to DVDs, you back up wirelessly to their other new product. Instead of ripping CDs, you buy your songs from the iTunes store. Remote Disk lets you leech off another computer’s optical disk drive. So far so good. But all this means your lovely new Macbook Air isn’t completely independent - you’ll need other peripherals to complete your experience - and not to forget, iTunes isn’t operational in Asia yet. And one more thing: there’s no card reader, which is important to me as an owner of 3 devices using 3 different formats.

If you wanted to refute me, you could just point out that ordinary laptops are just as dependent on other peripherals. True, but my card reader and optical drive are built-in, so I’m independent on those counts. And I do use these 2 features quite a bit. I still buy CDs, which may be a staggeringly old-school idea to those of you on the bleeding edge. My laptop also works as my DVD player.

You’re so poor you can’t afford a separate TV and DVD player?

Yes.

You’re bluffing, you just bought new shoes and books when you went shopping on Orchard!

I just had a look at Apple Singapore’s online store. The Solid State Drive (SSD) costs an extra S$1647.80. Increasing the processor speed from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz will cost you S$452.20. That’s a larger jump than you’d see for the usual processor upgrades, because of the new-and-improved tiny chips Intel made, which naturally cost more. I love me some SSD, but paying that much just to be an early adopter is, to me, stupid. I’m sorry, early adopters, but either you’re all very rich or very, very cutting-edge, because that’s the kind of premium pricing up with which I shall not put. *snicker*

I can’t bear to spend my money that way. At least my shoes only cost $16.90 for 2 pairs. And my books will never go out of style.

Don’t you have anything nice to say about the Macbook Air?!

I already said it up there, but I’ll elaborate here. It’s a feat of engineering and a very pretty product. But it is not the future of computing. It’s what computers should be, in this day and age. LED backlit screens should be standard. Batteries should last 5 hours. SSDs should be available on more machines, but I’ll compromise on that because of price barriers. Sony’s VAIO range already offers this. Steve Jobs said as much when he stated that Apple looked at the VAIOs to see how they could be improved.

The Macbook Air, in the end, is primarily a proof of concept. Intel has proven that their chips can be made tinier. Now Sony, ASUS, Fujitsu, Toshiba and the rest need to get on Intel’s case and demand that these chips be made available to them. Or is Intel so giddy at being allowed in on the Mac party that it would abandon the companies that have been its loyal customers all this time?

So yes, that will be the impact of the Macbook Air on the computing world. It will galvanise the other companies into producing something that will match it. When Sony or ASUS makes something similar, you can bet I’ll be very interested.

It just better have a card reader and optical drive.