MacBook Air

[Nostromo]

Here's Apple's new ultrathin laptop. Pretty cool looking.

[Imran Siddiqui]

No optical drive

Boooo. Yes the using another PC/Mac's optical drive as its own is cool and all, for $1800, I'd rather not have to have another computer around (and I'd imagine one with wireless capabilities) to install stuff on it.

[Nostromo]

Another angle:

[Nostromo]

An another:

[Nostromo]

Well, if you want to make it this thin, you have to take out the optical drive. But the external drive should come with it.

Oh, and the trackpad is multi-touch. It could be useful, if done right.

MacBook Air includes an oversize trackpad with multi-touch technology. You can pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image. This gesture-based input so successful on iPhone and iPod touch now comes to MacBook.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Nostromo
Well, if you want to make it this thin, you have to take out the optical drive. But the external drive should come with it.

It looks pretty.

$1799 is a lot of money for a drive-less, 1.6GHz, integrated graphics laptop but I guess there's a market for this that Sony's dominated for years that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

And the trackpads are already multi-touch. How else do you think the "hold two fingers down and click to right click" bullshit works.

[Nostromo]

I wasn't aware of that. But can you pull off all those iPhone tricks with them?

[Asher]

Not with how Apple has crippled them, no.

But it's the same technology that drives two-finger scrolling, etc. Apple just chooses to limit it by software.

[Jon Miller]

If I was shopping for a laptop right now, I would look at this one. I personally prefre to have at least one of my laptops be sub 4 pounds (and wish that mine was sub 4 pounds, it i s4.5 with optical drive in).

And yeah, you pretty much rarely need to use your optical drive, so it is best if it is external.

JM

[Jon Miller]

For a laptop, my high priorities are:

Light weight
Access to SSH
Full size screen (the better resolution the better)
Plays EVE/Civ4
Tablet Options
Plays Movies/Surfs Web

Only failure for this is the Tablet options.

JM

[Asher]

Other limitation is you need an adapter for just about everything. Ethernet needs a USB adapter, for instance...and there's only 1 USB port.

And JM, I'm not sure how well an X3100 graphics chip will run Eve.

[Jon Miller]

well, remember there is the new graphics and the classic graphics

I run the classic graphics fine on my 950 (which is a 2 year old chipset)

what I need, though, isn't a new laptop but a new desktop

I am considering a MacPro

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Asher
Other limitation is you need an adapter for just about everything. Ethernet needs a USB adapter, for instance...and there's only 1 USB port.

And JM, I'm not sure how well an X3100 graphics chip will run Eve.

One USB port does seem to be a silly limitation.

JM

[Asher]

More limitations: No user-accessible batteries, RAM, harddrive. Sealed like the iPod.

[snoopy369]

Definitely needs two USB ports, otherwise that looks nice... I know a lot of people who would happily sacrifice the optical drive for such a light weight device.

I think the current macbook is not capable of true multitouch, in that it's very different sensing two touches and noticing one direction, as sensing two different directions.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Asher
More limitations: No user-accessible batteries, RAM, harddrive. Sealed like the iPod.

I'd certainly prefer to be able to access the battery (HDD and RAM isn't necessarily unreasonable in this, as they're probably a very tight squeeze anyway)... but if you gain some watertightness or something from being sealed (ie, less likely for a spill to damage the insides) I'd be okay with this for a laptop. That's always the concern with allowing opening of things; it's hard to have as well sealed of a device when you have screws.

Definitely not something i'd want, but I can see the market for it, and they're not generally people who care about opening things up ... they're usually afraid to open things up, like my gf's mother would be, or else they're businesspeople who prefer to upgrade the whole thing anyhow...

[Kuciwalker]

Ooooh, shiny. I'd been planning to buy a MacBook (to put Vista on, my old laptop is a POS), but this looks even better... except for the price. Bleh.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
... except for the price. Bleh.

This is why I speculated that their target groups was superbusy business people and well off less-technologically-inclined women who like light laptops... which one are you, Kuci?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by Asher
More limitations: No user-accessible batteries, RAM, harddrive. Sealed like the iPod.

Wow. That's just bad in so many ways. It's not a machine I'd want anyway (I had more than enough of 13" screens in the 90's) but that's ridiculous.

[snoopy369]

Again - for most of us posting here, I agree. For the target audience ... irrelevant, as they're highly unlikely to want to open it, and perhaps a boon if it gains some spill-protection from being better sealed.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
This is why I speculated that their target groups was superbusy business people and well off less-technologically-inclined women who like light laptops... which one are you, Kuci?

Obviously neither, since the laptop (including price as a consideration) doesn't appeal to me

[Jon Miller]

I wouldn't touch a screen larger then 13 inch for a mobile laptop.

JM

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by snoopy369


This is why I speculated that their target groups was superbusy business people

Businesspeople use Macs since when?

[snoopy369]

Since they became the best platform to run Windows Vista on... and I didn't say they actually use them, just that they're the target market

[LordShiva]

Businesspeople don't even use Office 2007 yet, let alone Vista

@ having to resend PowerPoint and Excel docs in compatibility mode

[snoopy369]

They can just use the MS converter

[LordShiva]

Many do, now, but they still can't use new features like SmartArt, and instead make a mess of it all with their text boxes and ugly shapes and so-4-years-ago colour schemes

[snoopy369]

Losers

[Asher]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Since they became the best platform to run Windows Vista on... and I didn't say they actually use them, just that they're the target market

Actually, there's a huge problem with this. For one, serious business frown on the lack of TPM/biometric security a la ThinkPad. For two, Apple caps Windows at 32GB. For three, businesses prefer fleets of laptops they can identically image and manage.

[snoopy369]

Apple caps windows at 32GB? How's that. You can install it to an NTFS partition, if you want, which handles more than 32GB fine... Mac OS can't touch the partition, but it should work fine (afaik). I don't recall any objections to NTFS or size limitations when we installed bootcamp + XP on my gf's macbook pro, although we did use FAT32 and only a bit under 30GB for the install (80GB HDD total).

Of course they're not meaningfully targetting *large* businesses, that's beyond impossible for Apple. However, I would imagine individuals who buy their own laptops (either businesspeople not of the level who get one from the business, or consultant types) could...