***Official MacBook Air Thread***

Isotope said:
Jesus, I actually cannot believe how utterly pointless the Air is. What a waste of time. Ugly, horrifically expensive, no optical drive and very little new features. Who in the hell is going to buy one of them when you can get the already top notch MacBook and MacBook Pro. Not a good move by Apple.
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You're 19; it's unlikely Apple are aiming this at teenagers ;)
 
bigredshark said:
They'll sell piles of the things, there's loads of photographers and other creative types out there still using 12" G4 powerbooks on the road because apple didn't replace it in the line up. They'll all buy them...
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I don't think so TBH. I'm looking for a laptop at the moment for just that, mobile photography. The fact it doesn't have a DVD drive is a slight inconvenience, but then you can back up on an external HDD instead. The fact, unless you pay £2000 for the SSD, you only have a 4200rpm HDD is the killer for me. 5400rpm is slow when you want to open 30MB images but 4200 is the speed of the dead.

It's a good niche product and the first good looking mac, it's 500g lighter than the XPS M1330 and about half an inch thinner at the back but it is lacking in the hardware area. Stylish people who will only ever use it for word documents and the internet yes, people looking to do intensive work on it, no.
 
Amp34 said:
I don't think so TBH. I'm looking for a laptop at the moment for just that, mobile photography. The fact it doesn't have a DVD drive is a slight inconvenience, but then you can back up on an external HDD instead. The fact, unless you pay £2000 for the SSD, you only have a 4200rpm HDD is the killer for me. 5400rpm is slow when you want to open 30MB images but 4200 is the speed of the dead.

It's a good niche product and the first good looking mac, it's 500g lighter than the XPS M1330 and about half an inch thinner at the back but it is lacking in the hardware area. Stylish people who will only ever use it for word documents and the internet yes, people looking to do intensive work on it, no.
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Are you a professional news photographer? Thats who will buy this... download photos from camera, preview for the best 30 or so, upload them as quickly as possible. It's not meant for editing and you'd never need to back it up really as you'd be transferring the photos to your mac pro as soon as you got back to your office/home.

The 4200rpm drive will be slower for random access than the 5400 but it will be almost exactly the same for transfer speed (higher data density on the smaller platters). So the impact on opening your 30mb images will be very small
 
bigredshark said:
So the mac pro, the professional software (final cut et al) was just in our imagination?
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There's a difference between professional and business. When someone mentions "business notebook" that implies strong build, common software image, common port replicators etc.

Apple haven't ever catered to large business I should have said, they do more than enough for small creative studios, but that's about as far as they go.
 
bigredshark said:
Are you a professional news photographer? Thats who will buy this... download photos from camera, preview for the best 30 or so, upload them as quickly as possible. It's not meant for editing and you'd never need to back it up really as you'd be transferring the photos to your mac pro as soon as you got back to your office/home.

The 4200rpm drive will be slower for random access than the 5400 but it will be almost exactly the same for transfer speed (higher data density on the smaller platters). So the impact on opening your 30mb images will be very small
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You have just downloaded a full 4GB CF to the MBA, you open the folder they are in to view and sort them and... wait 5 minutes for the images to load previews. Very productive. 7200rpm drives have problems with loading that many files so 4200rpm drives just don't stand a chance. Also professional news photographers are a very small group of photographers, what about the ones that do it for fun, as well as journalistic and travel photographers that do need backups and do edit their photos?

I'm in the market for a small ultra-portable laptop for photography and the MBA is something that ticks most of the boxes, even with the expensive price it could have been a goer. As I pointed out, smaller and lighter than the M1330, slightly better looking and a longer battery life. I could live without the DVD drive and the slightly reduced CPU speed, the HDD on the other hand is the killer. If I had the money for the SSD there would be some serious decisions I would be making in the next few days, as it is I can't afford it and so will almost certainly be going for something else.
 
How many ultraportables are out there with 2.5" 7200rpm drives, the same size/weight and equivalent performance as the Air? A single platter 80Gb 1.8" drive should be fast enough for most tasks.

It's a great replacement for the people that mourned the loss of the 12" PB, not the second coming of the messiah!
 
MagicBoy said:
How many ultraportables are out there with 2.5" 7200rpm drives, the same size/weight and equivalent performance as the Air? A single platter 80Gb 1.8" drive should be fast enough for most tasks.

It's a great replacement for the people that mourned the loss of the 12" PB, not the second coming of the messiah!
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The Dell XPS M1330 for one, and quite possibly the Sony equivilent.:)
 
if i had the £1700 to buy one of these, i'd buy a Mac Pro instead. if i wanted a mac, which i don't :)

i have to Admit that it does look very very pretty.
 
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Why do people keep calling the air an ultra portable? It's not, apart from the thickness it's the same size as a normal macbook. A sony TZ is an ultra portable, a Thinkpad X61 is an ultra portable and a damn sight more useful and upgradable. I have one right now 2.0Ghz C2D, 4GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive in a size I can really throw around and with the 8 cell battery will do 7.5 hours. It also has a hell of a lot more ports and like the MBA comes with full size keys.
For the price they are charging and the woeful spec nearly everyone would be better off with a normal macbook or MBP.
 
bam0 said:
Why do people keep calling the air an ultra portable? It's not, apart from the thickness it's the same size as a normal macbook. A sony TZ is an ultra portable, a Thinkpad X61 is an ultra portable and a damn sight more useful and upgradable. I have one right now 2.0Ghz C2D, 4GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive in a size I can really throw around and with the 8 cell battery will do 7.5 hours. It also has a hell of a lot more ports and like the MBA comes with full size keys.
For the price they are charging and the woeful spec nearly everyone would be better off with a normal macbook or MBP.
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I disagree in some areas.. I'm glad I bought my macbook - because at the present time I dont have any need for the MB Air - however pretty it is.

In terms of portability - I think you're missing the point... The fact that apple are exploiting wireless technology in a way no competitor has/is is what makes this ultraportable..... and I don't just mean wireless connectivity..

Although I also agree that the MB Air lacks wired connectivity (only 1usb etc) - you have to admit that its wireless capabilities are phenomenal! As I mentioned earlier - especially now that apple are pushing apple TV into the mainstream and the new time capsule adds another edge to it..

I dunno - each to their own - personally, if I had the money, I'd have one - but as I said, I have no need for it...

If some kind of dock came out for it - which would enable me to use it at home with my monitors etc, I'd look more carefully into it!

Its also important to know that the fact that the MB Air can 'pinch' another machine's optical drive is fantastic..

Anyway, just my 2p!

Tom*
 
I don't like the design. I didn't like the MacBook's and I don't like this. The MacBook Pro is still the best Apple notebook design in my opinion. I hope the future MacBook Pro's are based around the design of the new iMac...now THAT's an awesome design.

I don't mind the lack of DVD drive however. An external one is a perfectly reasonable compromise and I LOVE the idea of Remote Disc. Well done Apple.

I don't think it's underpowered like everyone else says, but it is too expensive for what you get. The cost of the SSD is perfectly reasonable though, it's on par with the price of other SSD's out there. Again, well done Apple for taking the lead in this area!

I'm still in the market for a MacBook Pro though, just waiting for Apple to refresh the line then *boom*! Purchased. :)
 
itsallaboutyou said:
In terms of portability - I think you're missing the point... The fact that apple are exploiting wireless technology in a way no competitor has/is is what makes this ultraportable..... and I don't just mean wireless connectivity..
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Apple have done nothing wirelessly that hasn't been done before. 802.11n? Nope, that's an option in the X61 if you want it, hell several laptops nowadays come with built in 3G modems. Talking about the remote cd feature, well tbh that's a bit of a gimmick, sure you can use it with machines in your home, but unless you are carrying the software with you all the time to put on a machine wherever you are it's pretty pointless.

itsallaboutyou said:
Although I also agree that the MB Air lacks wired connectivity (only 1usb etc) - you have to admit that its wireless capabilities are phenomenal! As I mentioned earlier - especially now that apple are pushing apple TV into the mainstream and the new time capsule adds another edge to it..
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phenomenal? It has bluetooth and 802.11n, neither are really that new or revolutionary. 3G data would have been good, WiMax would have been interesting, but plain old wireless? Nope, nothing like phenomenal.

itsallaboutyou said:
I dunno - each to their own - personally, if I had the money, I'd have one - but as I said, I have no need for it...
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If I was buying another mac it'd be an MBP, if I wanted a small mac portable it'd be a plain macbook, the thinness isn't worth the reduced spec or the increased price, and if I really want an SSD you can get them in normal 2.5" laptop form factor.

itsallaboutyou said:
If some kind of dock came out for it - which would enable me to use it at home with my monitors etc, I'd look more carefully into it!

Its also important to know that the fact that the MB Air can 'pinch' another machine's optical drive is fantastic..
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A dock would have been useful, especially one that allowed it to hold more hardware, like for example it's own optical drive, maybe another hard drive. But you do realise it's been possible to mount remote drives with windows and linux for literally years, and the way the MBA does it isn't magic, you have to install software on the host machine first.
 
DVD Cinema said:
Apple have filed a Patent where the Macbook Air would slot/dock into the side of a iMac desktop.
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No they haven't, they've filed a patent for an imac-like docking station, but docking stations require ports to connect the docking peripherals to the laptop's, the MBA doesn't have a docking connector, or ports that could be used as such.
 
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