Sigh . . . solid state. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?
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I know I shouldn't feel this way, but . . .
15 Mar 2008 11:02 am
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Get an Asus Eee. $400, 2 lb, works beautifully and is incredibly tiny.
People come up to me on the street and say, Lisa, how can you have such a tiny computer?
Megan is exactly the target market for the Air: writers.
The Air gets two things right that all other ultra-portables get wrong, IMHO. It has a full size screen and keyboard, which are exactly the two things I don't want to sacrifice in an ultra. Everything else is secondary. What they sacrificed was raw processing power and graphics capability.
This is a machine for someone who lives and works in a pervasive wireless environment, who's going to use it for word processing, web, and email. It's an executive machine for people who won't tax their laptop anyway and can afford to pay for style.
Also, it's like sex. $5,500 an hour high end hooker sex, meaning not only will this machine do to you all those things that cheaper hookers won't, but it's got a graduate degree in finance, and there's a cleaned up street urchin standing next to the bed with a tray of hot towels.
Also, it's like sex. $5,500 an hour high end hooker sex, meaning not only will this machine do to you all those things that cheaper hookers won't,
I thought the higher-end hookers were actually less likely to do the, uh, more unusual things than the cheaper hookers. Desperation, and all that.
I thought the higher-end hookers were actually less likely to do the, uh, more unusual things than the cheaper hookers.
I believe you're right, but that just reinforces my simile, because the Air won't do those things either, like watching DVDs.
3000 bucks for a laptop.
Good god.
In fairness, the non-solid-state version is only $1,800. You're basically paying an $1,100 premium for a smaller, cooler, quieter, less power consuming drive.
What does that $1100 actually get you? Not that much:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-ssd-review.ars
Seriously, I'd wait a few revisions. Once solid state drives go up in capacity and speed and come down in price, the Air will be one sweet machine.
I think the people complaining about the price are overlooking the $5 discount Amazon is offering off list.
Just wait until you hold one in your hands. I was at a party last night and a woman produced hers from her purse (!). The whole party stopped as everyone passed it around the room in awe. It's like a piece of art.
It's the Barack Obama of laptops!
I think the Air is overrated, and a bit expensive for what you get (no wired Ethernet? you've gotta be kidding). I think solid state disk is neat and especially a good thing for laptops, but wait a year and it'll be more in line with the cost of traditional hard drives.
The whole party stopped as everyone passed it around the room in awe. It's like a piece of art.
Everything you need to know about Mac people, distilled so elegantly into two sentences.
It feels so right because it's on the bleeding edge, because there's nothing else like it. It is, in the jargon of my favorite sci-fi universe, shiny in every imaginable way.
It's also half the computer you can get for the money.
And let's not forget that solid state drives still have considerably lower MTBF than conventional drives.
If you want something that serves as a signal, by all means, get the Air.
If you want something that travels well and is a pleasure to use, get a more conventional subnotebook like a ThinkPad X Series or a Vaio TZ (both of which are nearly as good for signalling as an Air, anyway). There's also a full-featured Asus in the 4# regime that's eminently affordable.
...And if you get any subnotebook except the ThinkPad X (which has the same footprint and desktop area as the old TiBooks) you might want to make sure that your eyeglass prescription is current. Back before Averatec's U.S. market imploded over their fantastically bad support, I bought one of their subnotebooks and it was everything I could've hoped for, apart from the fact that my eyes would give up and go home without me after roughly ten hours of steady use.
Also expect crap battery life.
The Atlantic is a Mac shop, so my choices are limited.
Get the regular Air, with the conventional hard drive.
$1800 for the regular one is justifiable.
$3000 for the solid state drive, with very little improvement in actual functionality, is simply an insane waste of money.
"How can it be wrong when it feels so right?"
Price: $2,793.00
Of course with anything else, you'd have to use... Windows.
Bait and switch. I thought you were talking about a dildo.
Techno lust. It's like sex with a robot.
I just love the term "solid state".
Damn it AT! You beat me too the "obama of laptops line"
If you want the "John McCain of laptops" (small and tough) try the IBM x300
Boy I just don't feel that kind of a lust. Yeah, I can see the attraction, and if I had the choice between two things that worked equally well, I'd buy the prettier one. But I wouldn't pay much extra, and I wouldn't buy something that was functionally inferior just to get the luxury cachet.
Usually, I could afford the high-end thing, but I don't buy it and wouldn't enjoy it if I did (instead I'd feel like a fool who'd been suckered into wasting his money). I feel fortunate not to be infected with the lust for luxury, but I wonder what accounts for the difference between people who have it those who don't?
But you're spending the Atlantic's money and they require you to buy a Mac anyway? That's different...
I see a fragile little gadget that would impress the coffeehouse crowd, until they became envious and eventually violent with lust and greed; they would take your beloved wafer-thin technogasm away from you and leave you hardened but wiser.
Stay away from this one Megan, it is an ill wind (or Air) that blows no good.
Ya got that much cash to sling around for toys?
How 'bout ya buy toys for your frickin' child?
Grab a dictionary - your friends won't know either.
From the sound of things, the MacBook Air is the equivalent of a Prius. You pay a big premium, you don't actually get all that much more, but by God everyone KNOWS that you're Right On Top Of The Tech Wave, all they have to do is look at you.
It's the perfect Apple product. An expensive toy for people who're playing.
You go right ahead and like what you want, ma'am.
Fact is, MOST people don't use anywhere near the capacity or power of ANY computer they use. Some do. MOST don't.
This is all a fashion argument.
Trouble is, I am old enough to remember when the anti-Mac posters you see here (sadly, their parents) used to rail about how "dumb" a mouse was, and how line commands were "so much more powerful" than an "idiotic" graphic user interface.
A while later, the BeigeBox Brigade all have those things.
Same thing will happen here, too. And the folks you are reading here will have things very much like the Air, and they'll be kvetching about some new product from Apple.
Again: it's fashion. So why argue?
By the way, I love the Asus EEE! It probably does do the majority of what people need to do on the road.
But the Mac comes with a dictionary. :)
Everything you need to know about Mac people, distilled so elegantly into two sentences.
I have a friend who is one of those TSA luggage snoops. The guy is most emphatically *not* a Mac Person.
He says it is a work of art, the pictures do not do it justice.
Actually, I beg to differ. This is an extremely practical product for its target audience, which is probably you.
The full-sized keyboard and display mean that you'll be able to write at your usual speed. Something like the EEE can't compare.
The extreme light weight mean that when you're dashing from terminal to terminal at LAX, or whatever your most-traveled airport is, you will barely notice this thing exists.
Battery life is about the same as its less chic brothers.
I tried it in the store and the SSD model woke up instantly from sleep. I don't know why but I loved that, as opposed to the non-SSD which takes about two extra seconds. It felt like a giant iPhone.
There is a definite high quality feel to the thing, if you see it in the store. It feels like it was carved out of a single perfect chunk of aluminum. It feels like it will last a good long time even if you don't treat it with kid gloves.
You can't do video editing with it because it lacks a FireWire port. If The Atlantic decides to branch into Youtube stuff, you might need to get another Mac or keep your existing machine. In any event, the low-capacity SSD makes video editing a bit hazardous for your disk space.
But you could probably still keep your complete works on it. There's about 56gb free on it after the OS is loaded. If you have a high megapixel digital camera and take a lot of pictures, you might find that a problem.
While it is less powerful than its competition, there are plenty of people who do video editing on a PowerMac G5, which is actually a less powerful machine than the Air. For writing it's going to respond instantly.
You might want to know that the $3,100 model you can get at the Apple Store has a faster processor and you might be able to walk straight out the door with one instead of waiting for shipping.
Many computer buyers focus on value per unit of specification and if you want to do that, this is not your machine. But that would mean you'd go to Wal*Mart to buy your clothes instead of Nordstrom, because the clothes you get at Wal*Mart are about 10% of the price and have the same specifications - the same size, the same type of fabric and so on. But the Wal*Mart clothes are not the same quality.
I'm sure there are plenty of women who own handbags more expensive than a MacBook Air, and nobody criticises them for buying expensive handbags since it's what women do. Seems to me the Air is a better deal. It has practical advantages and it gets more envious glances than the handbag, since a ton of people have expensive handbags and relatively few have Macbook Air
MacBook Air is a cool thing. We all love cool things. I think you'd find it well worth the money if $3,100-odd is not a budget busting amount for you.
D
Buy it? Not 'til they better the battery life.
All this hatin' on the MacBook Air never fails to amuse.
It's not a laptop for everyone, and it's especially not for power users obsessed with extra ports and reams of tech specs.
But for many (and perhaps most) people, it's everything they really need from a laptop, in a tiny, beautiful, and fairly-priced package.
Price point people, aren't going to understand. they probably don't remember when only business people had laptops because they were so damned expesive, and limited in their use. And the only people qith cell phones were people who actually needed them. Not a buncha bored people who talk to their friends constantly about nothing.
M, you and I and a number of people that post here, use our computers professionally. The pricepoint isn't the point, geting something that works the best for our needs is. I can't use a mac because I work in a windows shop, and many of my SYSADMIN apps. are written for Windows only. Makes it fun to try and troubleshoot some of our main customer's sites that uses Macs, but that's a whole other thing. The point is, when you have to sit in front of that screen everyday, you should get the one that feels right, that gets the job done. Remember how nobody could imagine not having a floppy drive on a computer? I saw a jumpdrive 512mb in the store the other day for $5.00 on clearence. Who needs even a zip drive? or a jaz drive? The things that arent on the AIR are things a lot of people will never ACTUALLY miss.
Paying the extra for the SS memory... maybe a bit over the top, but will it serve for it's time? If memeory serves, seems like you personal unit is a Vaio... perhaps it's time to junk it, and get an air for yourself... :agent provacateur, me?:
I'm not a hater. I don't want to pay $3,000 for an underpowered laptop with many missing features when I can get one almost as small and much more powerful for less. And I am exceptionally tired of having my preference for functionality over aesthetics be regarded as "hateration" or whatever else. If you prefer the pretty case to get value for your money, that's great. But stop trying to convince me that buying a commodity from a multinational corporation makes you a unique snowflake, and permit me to say "no thanks" to your personality surrogate.
That's HAWT.
Well said, SwissArmyD. (I would point out, however, that my company is also a Windows shop -- but that doesn't stop me and those of my growing Jedi order from using MacBook Pros as daily drivers. We, too, have Windows binaries that likely won't ever be ported to the Mac, but big deal -- that's what virtual machines are for. Connecting to our Active Directory network is a no-brainer with ADmitMac from Thursby Software -- no AD schema changes needed. The company is preparing to roll out MS Office 07; I'm running Office 08/Mac, so I'm ready when they are. If people didn't already know that I use a Mac, they wouldn't know it from the Office documents they routinely exchange with me. Finally, I have corporate clients who are actively considering piloting Macs in their enterprises.)
Oh sure, you can get cheaper machines than the Air. An Acura costs more than a Chevy, after all -- but which would you rather drive?
It has a much larger screen than comparable ultralights; you can get it with an SSD drive which, combined with the LED display, gives it enough battery life for a transcontinental flight (my MacBook Pro goes flat about the time we reach the Rockies from Atlanta).
The things that make the Air compelling, IMHO, are the sheer excellence of its industrial design combined with its long battery life, large display size, and light weight. If you don't need a monster disk (I do) and haven't been hopelessly spoiled by a 15" screen (I have), it's definitely worth a very long look.
And, of course, it runs OSX. Bid adieu to your BSODs.
Go for it, Megan.
"All this hatin' on the MacBook Air never fails to amuse.
It's not a laptop for everyone, and it's especially not for power users obsessed with extra ports and reams of tech specs.
But for many (and perhaps most) people, it's everything they really need from a laptop, in a tiny, beautiful, and fairly-priced package. "
But it's none of those things. "Extra ports"? It lacks the basic complement. "Reams of tech specs"? If you mean enough computing power to justify the purchase price, you bet it doesn't have it.
And it's not tiny. It's very thin, but it still has the same footprint of similar laptops. And fairly priced? That kind of attitude makes Apple stock a good buy, no matter what mediocre products the company produces.
The most humorous part about the whole thing is the hipster cred that Apple seems to hold. Kind of hard to be deep when you admit you'll spend extra for an underpowered computer because it fits in an envelope.
The criticisms regarding the MacBook Air's performance are off the mark for a few reasons. First, you *cannot* measure a computer's performance by simply looking at processor speed. In many tasks, your computer is bound by the speed of secondary storage (e.g. your hard drive). The Macbook Air's solid state memory is far faster than a standard hard drive so you are likely to find that overall performance compares quite favorably to other laptops despite a relatively slower processor.
Second, the idea that a Core 2 Duo running at 1.8 GHz is "slow" is silly. A scant few years ago, this would have been considered a very hot processor (two cores, and all). Has word processing or web surfing grown so much more complex that you need anything much faster? Admittedly, this is not the machine for a graphics or video professional or a software developer but I don't think that is what Megan has in mind.
Third, someone else pointed this out but it bears repeating: with other, less expensive laptops you'd have to run Windows. Mac OS X is not only a better OS, it is much better with multi-processor support and so will benefit more from the 2 Cores in the Air's processor. Does it make sense to say that you could get a "faster" machine when, in the end, your "extra" speed is eaten up by the OS? Where's the logic there?
And before you accuse me of unfairly bashing Windows, note that I own a small Windows/Web software business. I've personally built all of our Windows products (and the DOS products before that). After writing several hundred thousand lines of Windows code, I think I've earned the right to say that you'll simply find the Mac a better platform.
So, Megan, you think a MacBook Air is sexy? Go buy one and have some fun. Let all the Beige Box types sneer as they try to squeeze their fingers into the little Dell econobox keyboards. (Just don't use it for high-end video processing, graphics work or software development - get a Mac Pro for that!)
Ignore the haters. Buy what you love.
I'm typing this on an IBM Model M keyboard, a heavy, ugly, space-sucking monster of a keyboard that is so loud that it can be heard across the house. If you want to buy a new version of the same thing, it starts at $60 and rapidly heads north. But nothing else feels like this. Nothing else types like this.
There is no substitute.
It clicks every time you hit a key, and the click occurs at the very moment that the key is sensed. You can touch-type with your eyes closed, knowing every time you hit the wrong key whether it registered or not.
The MacBook Air is not cheap. It is not a great deal. It is expensive and weak. But it is thin enough to fit in a manila envelope, and it is beautiful, and it is full-width. It is not something to use to process video. It is not something for me - I'm too poor. But it is magnificent, and I know that the people who go out and buy it are pushing the prices down on every piece of computing machinery I hope to buy, just as they always have.
The only Apple product I own is a first-gen iPod Nano, 2GB. As far as I can tell, there are all of two flaws in the UI - you cannot quickly return to the currently playing song, and you cannot browse the properties of a file without playing it. Not bad for a device with effectively seven buttons.
Oh, and Asher - the footprint is intentional. Thin is much more important than small, which several companies have used to enormous advantage. The Motorola RAZR wasn't smaller than the competition, it was thinner. By a lot. The Nano I mentioned above wasn't sold as a small device, although it is. It was sold by ads that showed it in profile. The ports don't matter. How many people actually hook up laptops to Ethernet? Or Firewire? Or, for that matter, anything other than a projector, USB key, or headphones, all of which are included? Not many; certainly not most. You and I would. But we're not the target market.
Megan,
Ignore the proles that say you can get twice the computer for half the money. You get a PC if you go that route. A PC. With PC problems. With a PC operating system. Without Mac OS X.
Sure, you pay a premium for the Air. But you get a three pound Mac with a decent sized screen, a full-size backlit keyboard, and Mac applications. You're paying a lot for it, but it's the only Mac ultralight in town. You think a Sony Vaio would be an adequate substitute? Only if you think using Windows is the same as using the Mac. And you probably don't want to put Linux on it. (Take it from a long-time Linux system administrator. I can handle Linux on a laptop. But I still use a Mac to get real creative work done.)
If you wait a year the performance will be much better and the cost will undoubtedly be lower. Intel's getting into solid state drives in a big way, and this will drive the prices on those down significantly as well. And if you wait, the TSA might actually know what a solid state drive IS by that time, and you won't get stopped in the airport!
Anyway, why does everyone think every laptop has to have every feature known to man? Ridiculous! It's like complaining that the convertible can't carry a two-ton payload of manure out to the pasture, or that the dump truck won't fit into those COMPACT spots at the Ikea. Does every car have to suit every possible purpose you can dream up for a four-wheeled vehicle?
Get the tool that suits you. If you suffer buyer's remorse, you'll have learned something about what you really value, and you can apply that lesson to the next purchase. If you don't, you'll have a happy ultralight Mac laptop experience. Either way, you win.
Air Mac Downside:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/business/15online.html
LOSING AIR
The selling point for Apple's MacBook Air is the laptop's lightness and thinness. But be careful, warns Steven Levy, a technology columnist at Newsweek, the Air is so light and so thin that you can easily lose it.
Mr. Levy should know, because he lost his. After tearing his apartment apart and considering that the laptop might have been stolen, he remembered leaving it on the coffee table, where newspapers and magazines tend to pile up. “My wife,” he wrote, “whose clutter tolerance is well below my own, sometimes will swoop in and hastily gather the pulp in a huge stack, going directly to the trash-compactor room just down the hall.”
As far as Mr. Levy can tell, that’s where his laptop ended up.
I'm wirting this comment on that machine (also purchased from Amazon): in my opinion, it's worth every penny, the best laptop I've ever owned by far (and I've owned a lot).
I'm wirting this comment on that machine (also purchased from Amazon): in my opinion, it's worth every penny, the best laptop I've ever owned by far (and I've owned a lot).
I love it, too. It has a few shortcomings that make it pretty much impossible for use for me, but it is a beautiful piece of kit.
For the nay-sayers, I say that it's a rare person who only chooses utility in their life. I chose my car not only because it goes from A to B with few problems, but because I like the way it drives, the way it feels, the way it looks, and the way it has few problems. I choose my computer not only on the basis of the size of the hard drive, the graphics card, and the amount of memory, but for all those things and an operating system that I love, a design that I find attractive, and because it very simply works for me and my needs.
And I don't proselytize because I figure that the rest of you folks are adult enough and smart enough to choose for yourself.
All the complaining about what someone else chooses to use for their own reasons and needs is just a recipe for looking a bit like a jerk.
Apple is good for people it is intended to. To understand if you belong to this group check the programs you use and have on the hard disk at the moment. E.g. does this include serious image or video editing?
I personally would never buy the Air for several things: I sometimes need a quick run of the computational programs (Maple), I enjoy 8 hours battery of x60 (and then 2 more with a spare one), I would like to have DVD writer included. I think IBM's x300 will be my next laptop. It is like a choice between some Lamborgini or an 8-seats minivan for a family with 5 children.
I quit choosing "cool" over "useful" in about 6th grade.
Sometimes, though, coolness is useful.
In many tasks, your computer is bound by the speed of secondary storage (e.g. your hard drive). The Macbook Air's solid state memory is far faster than a standard hard drive so you are likely to find that overall performance compares quite favorably to other laptops despite a relatively slower processor.
Amen!
My old computer was just a 1.8 Ghz with dual processor, but I paid for a 10,000 RPM hard drive. It was far faster than my 2.2 Ghz dual core notebook.
Keep in mind, though; large screens suck tremendous amounts of power.
You can't rationalize lust. You can only resist until it passes, or give in.
I am writing on a Gateway laptop that cost me $599 and is about an inch thick. I have 3D CAD and Office on it.
The Mac seems like it has a certain niche market now- kinda the opposite of the gamer niche that has been pushing PC technology-it will be great when the technology gets used broader just like how the gamers mega memory and processor speeds trickled down to us-
I am writing on a Gateway laptop that cost me $599 and is about an inch thick. I have 3D CAD and Office on it.
The Mac seems like it has a certain niche market now- kinda the opposite of the gamer niche that has been pushing PC technology-it will be great when the technology gets used broader just like how the gamers mega memory and processor speeds trickled down to us-
Well, when we get down to brass tacks, what is the opportunity cost? And what price tag are you REALLY putting on eliminating another few millimeters from the width of a laptop?
And next: Can you pay cash? Or will you have to finance it somehow?
Now you have a new "object of the week!" Or perhaps we should think about changing it to 'object of the year?'
Go for it. The bulk of the "that thing is overpriced!" crowd is staring at the cost adder for the solid-state hard disk, which is not Apple's doing -- the price of Solid State Disks is presently falling at something like 60%/year but that basically means that only the 8GB-16GB models are at a pricepoint where they don't make your wallet whimper and dial the molestation hotline. There will be a similar cost adder for putting a high-capacity SSD into any laptop.
The base price is actually not unreasonable for a laptop of these dimensions. It's a very limited-function laptop, but that's the tradeoff for the dimensions.
Myself, I think Apple made one truly stupid design mistake, and that was only including one USB port. That's unconscionable for a device that cannot accommodate an internal DVD drive.
I actually have owned an MBA (1.6 mhz with the standard drive) for about 3 weeks now. I regularly do the following in parallel:
- Entourage
- Word, PPT, and Excel
- Windows XP running in VMware for Webex (their mac client seems to suck), as well as Office 2003 for workbooks with macros)
- A browser, maybe a few other things
I have found it to be the equal of my former MacBook Pro (1st gen) in everyday usage. I had originally planned to keep my MBP and use this only for trips, but with the pleasant surprise of the MBA's performance I have sold the MBP.
Living with only one USB port has been the biggest challenge. No big deal on my desk - my monitor has a built-in hub. On the road I use a EVDO USB dongle and a bluetooth mouse, so it really hasn't been too limiting.
I've also had the need to do some editing in Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro on the MBA. It works fine - of course you have to use some other mac for acquiring the video via Firewire. But for doing projects with 3-4 video layers, transitions, etc. it can work in a pinch.
I wouldn't buy the SSD now. Buy the MBA and figure on upgrading the drive in 18 months or so. I really love this system.
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Here's how it can be wrong: you can easily-- easily-- find a significantly more versatile, more powerful laptop for a similar or lower cost. If small size and weight are truly your top criterion, then perhaps the Air is the way to go. But you pay a steep price for that small stature, in terms of what is in my opinion the only really important benchmark for evaluating any kind of computer: power and versatility compared to price point. There are simply too many other laptops at that price range that do everything better than the Air for me to ever consider getting one.
Posted by Freddie | March 15, 2008 11:26 AM