- Feb 14, 2004
- 48,626
- 5,399
- 136
I have been wanting a Mac ultraportable for a long, long time. Several of my friends had 12" iBooks and PowerBooks and I really loved the form factor. When the 13" Intel MacBook was initially released, I was super excited and jumped on it right away only to discover it wasn't quite what I wanted - no dedicated GPU, a little too heavy, a little too thick, plus I got burned by all of the first-gen defects (you name it, I had it). I later upgraded to a 15" Santa Rosa MacBook Pro and loved it - perfect thickness/weight for a 15", but it was still a little too large for me. I really wanted an ultraportable. Then the Air come out. Oh joy...and mixed feelings. Slim, sleek, and lacking. The missing features stood out immediately:
-No Ethernet
-No DVD drive
-No Firewire
-No ExpressCard
-No core upgrades (ram, hard drive, battery - all sealed)
-No stereo speakers (mono only)
-No digital audio output (or analog/digital input)
At first I was appalled, honestly. This is an EEE PC in a silver case! The lack of Firewire/ExpressCard is a huge turn-off...I enjoy using my HD camcorder and not having a place to plug it into when I'm on vacation just seems retarded. Not even an ExpressCard to add Firewire...what the heck Apple?
But I thought about it some more and other than that it actually seems pretty good. The multi-touch trackpad would replace my wireless mouse, eliminating the need for a USB port. It has a good-sized screen and I personally love the MacBook keys. I don't use the DVD drive a ton, so the USB SuperDrive or Remote Disk could work for me. The lack of Ethernet isn't that big of a deal since it has wireless, especially N. Mono speaker is...weird. Mostly I use Internet apps and Word processing-type stuff, which makes this the perfect laptop, more or less.
Except for the price. It's like getting slapped with the new Dell Tablet PC all over again...$1799? And only 2 gigs of RAM? I use 2 gigs in my Windows XP VM alone! Ideally this would fit in well at $1199, but that kind of clashes with the 13" MacBook pricing. So $1499...I heard a lot of people say that $1500 would be their sweet spot for a Mac ultraportable. Even $1599 would work...but shoot, for $1800 I'm going to buy a MacBook Pro.
Can someone explain the Mono speaker onboard?
All in all, I think most of us who were waiting for an ultraportable were extremely disappointed. The Air is cool, but...that's it. It's cool. It's aimed at those hip Apple users who have all the chic stuff and show off the contents of their bags on Flickr. What about the geeks?? Apple has their entire dream product line laid down for them and they completely ignore it...we want a functional ultraportable and we want a Mac Pro Lite, aka Cube 2.0. Price them both at $1499 and we'll be perfectly happy to pay it! ARGGG!!!
Conclusion: If I had the extra disposable income, I would definitely buy an Air. SSD if I could, haha! It would be the perfect supplement to my Quad machine at home...lots of power for processor-intensive apps and then a thin-and-light to tote with me for day-to-day stuff. I really, really, really wish it had an ExpressCard port, if not a 4-pin Firewire port...with an ExpressCard port, you could add Firewire 400 or 800, more USB 2.0 ports, eSATA ports, and the holy grail for ultraportables - the cellular Internet card! It makes zero sense why they didn't add this...based on what I've read about Steve Jobs, he probably felt it made the laptop look ugly or out of place. I don't know. I really hope Rev. 2 sports an expansion port so we can add more stuff to it.
So, how do you feel?
-No Ethernet
-No DVD drive
-No Firewire
-No ExpressCard
-No core upgrades (ram, hard drive, battery - all sealed)
-No stereo speakers (mono only)
-No digital audio output (or analog/digital input)
At first I was appalled, honestly. This is an EEE PC in a silver case! The lack of Firewire/ExpressCard is a huge turn-off...I enjoy using my HD camcorder and not having a place to plug it into when I'm on vacation just seems retarded. Not even an ExpressCard to add Firewire...what the heck Apple?
But I thought about it some more and other than that it actually seems pretty good. The multi-touch trackpad would replace my wireless mouse, eliminating the need for a USB port. It has a good-sized screen and I personally love the MacBook keys. I don't use the DVD drive a ton, so the USB SuperDrive or Remote Disk could work for me. The lack of Ethernet isn't that big of a deal since it has wireless, especially N. Mono speaker is...weird. Mostly I use Internet apps and Word processing-type stuff, which makes this the perfect laptop, more or less.
Except for the price. It's like getting slapped with the new Dell Tablet PC all over again...$1799? And only 2 gigs of RAM? I use 2 gigs in my Windows XP VM alone! Ideally this would fit in well at $1199, but that kind of clashes with the 13" MacBook pricing. So $1499...I heard a lot of people say that $1500 would be their sweet spot for a Mac ultraportable. Even $1599 would work...but shoot, for $1800 I'm going to buy a MacBook Pro.
Can someone explain the Mono speaker onboard?
All in all, I think most of us who were waiting for an ultraportable were extremely disappointed. The Air is cool, but...that's it. It's cool. It's aimed at those hip Apple users who have all the chic stuff and show off the contents of their bags on Flickr. What about the geeks?? Apple has their entire dream product line laid down for them and they completely ignore it...we want a functional ultraportable and we want a Mac Pro Lite, aka Cube 2.0. Price them both at $1499 and we'll be perfectly happy to pay it! ARGGG!!!
Conclusion: If I had the extra disposable income, I would definitely buy an Air. SSD if I could, haha! It would be the perfect supplement to my Quad machine at home...lots of power for processor-intensive apps and then a thin-and-light to tote with me for day-to-day stuff. I really, really, really wish it had an ExpressCard port, if not a 4-pin Firewire port...with an ExpressCard port, you could add Firewire 400 or 800, more USB 2.0 ports, eSATA ports, and the holy grail for ultraportables - the cellular Internet card! It makes zero sense why they didn't add this...based on what I've read about Steve Jobs, he probably felt it made the laptop look ugly or out of place. I don't know. I really hope Rev. 2 sports an expansion port so we can add more stuff to it.
So, how do you feel?