Monday, January 21, 2008

The MacBook Air is the Cube 2.0?

A friend pointed me at The MacBook Air is the Cube 2.0.

While I'm not running out to buy one I can't say I entirely agree. It's specs are actually quite similar to the macbook except for connections and disk size. I have one friend who is going to get one. He's a programmer and walks 2 miles each way to work. For him, saving 2 lbs is a big deal. It will be his primary, but not only machine. Conversations with him have made me rethink my usage. After ripping all my CDs, I've rarely used my optical drive. I've never had more than one thing plugged into the USB port. I use the firewire 800 port for my external backup drive, but Time Capsule solves that better. I'm using 75GB now so I think 80GB is a little small, but moving my 35GB of music to a server would solve that and for traveling I'd bring an iPod anyway.

The best complaints I've heard about it are that it's clearly made for travel and since the footprint is the same as the macbook it isn't easier to open on an airplane tray. Then again, I haven't heard that the macbook doesn't fit. Second, since there isn't cellular access builtin, the lack of an expresscard port means you need to use a clunky USB dongle to a data card; not a sleek solution worthy of Apple. Of course you could use the bluetooth to connect to a cell phone with a data plan, but not if you have an iPhone, that feature is disabled (probably because of AT&T).

Still I'm waiting to see the update to the macbook pro. To me, I want a 15" screen and more real estate on my primary machine.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Corinna and I watched (most, due to the short flight) of the Doctor Who Christmas Special on our flight from Detroit on New Year's Eve on my work MacBook... It seemed to fit on the tray fine, and we were sitting in coach...

Anonymous said...

Addressing the "Cube 2.0" accusation, The problem with the cube was that it didn't really offer anything besides style. Sure, it was small, but it was a desktop, so other than style it didn't really matter all that much that it was small and sexy. There was no functional advantage to being small.

The Air, on the other hand, is a portable machine, and therefore the size and weight of the machine offer tangible benefits over it's siblings.

As the aforementioned "walking programmer", a few pounds makes a big difference for me. I suspect, however, that there is a broader demographic interested in smaller, lighter machines. Having lugged a laptop through air travel on more than one occasion, my shoulder and back start to suffer after more than an hour.

I doubt the Air is going to be an Apple all-star much past the initial shipments feeding people like me. But I think it will be a strong enough seller in the long run to justify it's existence. If I am wrong about this, and the Air continues to be a super-star, I would count the traditional MacBook's days as numbered.

Howard said...

The differences between the macbook and pro are pretty slight, basically screen size, graphics card, expresscard and materials. I wonder if they might combine them into a single line?

Anonymous said...

Although I am not rushing out to buy a Macbook Air, it will be on my list for my next notebook upgrade. I think they nailed the spec not only for a traveling portable but for a more generally "mobile" computer. My Macbook is too large and bulky for me to take it with me wherever I go, but the Air is thin enough I would put in a portfolio and walk to a meeting without a second thought.