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I have seen just about every kind of complaint possible about the Macbook air...but the circles in which I "travel" (by travel, I mean navigate the flood of RSS-based news in the airtight bubble that is a newsreader) are decidedly slanted toward the high end of the geek spectrum. The complains I have seen are varied, but they basically boil down to the following single statement:
This device does not have enough of the 'stuff' that I need to make me and my laptop feel powerful.
That's pretty much the crux of it right there. What it seems like most people are missing is the essential difference in design philosophy between traditional PC manufacturers (though MS designs this way too) and Apple. With traditional PC manufacturers, it is blatantly obvious that they have designed some kind of device that packs as much power into the approved form factor as you can manage without blowing it up (and sometimes it blows up anyway). They build to price points and technical specifications. Geeks who want "laptop X" can go online and amp up all of the configurable options to get the "super laptop X" and regular shmoes can get "regular laptop X" by leaving the default configuration alone. It's a single device that is designed to make everyone happy and usually only makes a handful of people happy and everyone else just gets a "meh." type reaction at best.
Apple doesn't design that way. While not as many people buy Apple products as they buy Dellss or Lenovos, those who do own Apple laptops and Apple products are absolutely overjoyed (with exceptions, of course) with their device. Why? Because Apple didn't build "box A" to suit "customer types A-L". Apple does extensive research when designing their products, and they figure out exactly what people want to do with a device, and then they make their device not only do what people want it to do, but they make their device do it better (or at least with more style) than their competitors.
I am as guilty as any other geek of taking one look at the specs for the Macbook Air and getting disappointed. I remember quite clearly saying , "WTF?!? A slow 80GB hard drive? Only 2GB Ram?? And WTF is up with that lame video card!? Why isn't there a 2x read-write Blu-Ray burner in there!?"
Here's the thing: If you want all of those power features, Apple already makes products for you: The Macbook and the Macbook Pro. If, on the other hand, you are craving a really lightweight, ultra-thin device you can slip into your messenger bag or backpack so that you can have OS X with you on the go, then the Macbook Air is the device for you. If you are doing video transcoding on your laptop, this isn't your device. If you are pissed off that you won't be able to play Battlefield 2142 on the Macbook Air - don't get the Air.
For me, I don't own a desktop computer. I have a 17" Macbook Pro that I tote with me to and from work everyday. I whip it out on the train and code and watch movies, listen to music, do some writing, etc. While I am on the go, I do not use my optical drive, I do not use anywhere near the max of my 3GB RAM, and I definitely don't use all 17" of my screen. That said, I use every last freaking inch of screenspace and every last byte of RAM when I'm at home doing "serious" stuff, when I've got my Bluetooth mighty mouse out and a spare coffee nearby.
The MBP is nearly 7 pounds. Add to that it's power adapter and the other stuff in my backpack, and I'm lugging around a lot of crap. It's also a pain to bring into conference rooms to present stuff. What I want is essentially a really thin portable Mac laptop that I can code on, watch movies on, listen to music on, write with, and have the ability to plug it into a monitor or TV so I can leave the 17" MBP at home. The Macbook Air fits all of those requirements for me.
It's just really hard not to resist the incredible geek-need to "power up" any device I own with the biggest, fastest hard drive, the most memory, the most kick-ass video card. If I want the most powered-up laptop available, I'd buy the 17" alienware with twin-SLI 512MB video cards and a 2-drive RAID array. Now that is an alpha-geek laptop.
Think about this: If I wait a couple weeks until I can lay hands on one in a store before ordering, a shiny new Macbook Air might arrive just in time for the iPhone SDK, giving me the perfect iPhone development machine since the iPhone GUI doesn't require the same amount of screen real estate that Interface Builder 3 requires.
My usual rule of thumb is to wait 2 weeks after a Steve Jobs keynote before purchasing anything. That way I can be sure that any residual RDF effects have worn off. We'll see how well I'm holding up two weeks from now :)
I think you're right, I think you've hit the nail right on the head with
this post.
The one issue I have with the MBA is the price. For an ultraportable it's a
very nice price. The issue is that it's so close to the base MBP, which is
the best all round laptop in Apple's line up. For £100 more I can get a
whole lot more, even though I may not need it all. If they could bring the
price down another £100-200 (which hopefully they can with future versions)
to make the gap between the MBA and MBP bigger then it becomes more
appealing as you get rid of the "for a little bit more I can get much more"
issue.
That's what I'm thinking, I am looking to using it as a second computer for
me. The problem with the "nearly the same price" MBP, is that the MBP
weighs 2 more pounds.
I also use a MacBook Pro as my primary development machine. One (easy) way
to carry less crap around (except when traveling) is to get an extra power
adaptor, mouse, whatever extra USB accessories you have for each desk you
regularly work at (home / work, etc.), so you only need to lug around the
MBP itself on a normal basis (and make sure that you keep a spare power
adaptor / battery, set of cables in your suitcase so you don't forget to
pack them when you travel).
The MBA I think will be a great second computer or even second laptop but
as your only computer I think it would fall short.
BTW, I forgot to mention that my wife really wants one of these just
because of the light weight alone. I think many women will be attracted to
that as well and most women don't have that guy/nerd power thing of if I
don't have the biggest baddest then I'm somehow missing out.
So I'm pretty convinced I want an MBA... the hard part is convincing myself
that I don't need the solid-state drive ;)
this thing is miniaturized and customized all the day down to the
microprocessor. how can any one expect it to be cheap?
Right... Intel had to make a specially shaped and twisted proc just to get
it into the ridiculously small form factor. Bottom line is its a trade-off.
You want ridiculously slim? Cough up the price premium for Apple. You want
"kinda slim", get a Macbook. You want a PC, get a Macbook and Bootcamp ;)
I agree with Kevin. Whilst there is a danger that the MBA will suffer the
same fate as the Cube, a sub notebook has to be about compromise. Some
feel that there was too much performance sacrificed for smaller size.
However similar complaints went out about the original iPod - smaller hard
drive, shorter battery life & fewer features than its competitors. Apple
had realised that in a Portable Music Player the key things are portability
and playing music. Everything else was extraneous. For people in the
market for a sub notebook, they know they are not getting the fastest
available computer out there. They want it to be portable and want it to
be useable. Hence the full size keyboard, the 13.3" screen and the other
aspects that Apple did not compromise on. They compromised on the aspects
that were not so important for users in this category. As for the 4200RPM
drive being "slow", my TiBook had one and it always felt faster than my
current MBP. There's way too many other performance factors to pin point
specific issues like that. And just as the iPhone's EDGE performance can
beat out other phone's 3G performance, I suspect that the faster processors
will balance out the slower drive.
Kevin, I agree completely with you. Most people don't plug their laptop
into an Ethernet network at home any more, and use the company wireless
instead of the hardwire at the office if it's available.
