MacBook Air

[Kryten]

Apple - MacBook Air

I quite like it.
























I shall now proceed to stab myself in the testicles with forks.

I think I'm going strange, or gay, or something, but I quite like it. It's tiny.
I gaurantee it will suffer from ASS issues (Apple Screen Syndrome) something chronic and will probably break if someone does something as daring as type on it, but if they've actually gotten past these problems that have plagued previous Apple products they might be onto a winner with that, which will mean that Proper Computer laptops are for once chasing after a Mac's ideas, rather than the other way round.

But the point is purely the size - oddly enough it's not a bad price either, for an Apple. Normally you'd have to mortgage 3 family houses and sell your prize winning hound, but you'd only need to sell one property to buy this one.

I might even get one to play with at work soon, and I'll try and break it then and provide a proper review







The above is the nicest thing I've ever said about any Apple product, ever, and will not be likely to say anything nice about them ever again. As you know, I'm HUGELY anti-Apple - lack of true innovation, stupid prices, poor quality for what you pay for and company ethics that would make a mass murderer blush all contribute to my dislike of them. I'm not going to start an Anti-Apple thread or anything like that, most of you know my views already and are free to have your own - but even these people are to be congratulated for doing something this useful. Not many are actually happy carrying around the full size laptops we've got currently.

I think Moo from IRC summed it up nicely btw:

[19:09] <moo`> apple's slogan should be "We make beautiful shit"

Soo, Apple have done the one thing we all thought impossible.

They have the ability to polish a turd.

[Starman]

Normal Apple overpriced shit that the stupid masses will buy cos its so pretty and shiny.

[Deebs]

Got an iPhone then pete?

[Kryten]

Looked into it a bit more and a few annoying features:

No ethernet port.
1 USB port.
PARALLEL ATA hard drive - 4200rpm.

Even my old drives are 5400 and my current (but aging) Dell has a 7200rpm Sata drive in.

Price is starting to look less good than perhaps it should be.

[Starman]

Originally Posted by Deebs

Got an iPhone then pete?

Funny fucker Deebs - To answer your question No I bloody have not.

[Ch3tan]

Ahh but you can choose to have a 64gb solid state drive instead of the ATA drive.

It does look nice, but it's a gimmick really.

[Kryten]

I just feel that by now, this is how laptops should be looking. The average laptop is still fairly bulky by anyones standards and still a pain to carry around all day.
Add an optical drive to that and more expansion and it'll be a clear winner. Needs that solid state drive as standard though. You can see by the inclusion of the 4200rpm ATA drive how standards are low to keep that entry level price looking tempting.
There's no way in hell that a 2.5" ATA drive will survive life for long in that machine, even if it was cased in rubber and titanium.

[DaGaffer]

Its a bit pointless really. Sure, its thin and pretty, but its weight that really matters. The Samsung Q30 I took on my travels was lighter, cheaper and had more USB ports than this (and even a firewire port), and the optical drive and a spare battery was included in the (I'm guessing much cheaper) price.

[Kryten]

Quite like the Samsung lappies, quality wise better than the equivelent Acers.


Another downside I've just found out - Apple haven't learned from one of the many huge mistakes involved in the iPhone, and have in the Macbook Air, a battery, sealed inside the system, non user changable.

That's gonna be expensive in a few years time.

[DaGaffer]

Originally Posted by Kryten

Quite like the Samsung lappies, quality wise better than the equivelent Acers.


Another downside I've just found out - Apple haven't learned from one of the many huge mistakes involved in the iPhone, and have in the Macbook Air, a battery, sealed inside the system, non user changable.

That's gonna be expensive in a few years time.

Yeah that's just fucking stupid. My Samsung came with a 3-hour standard battery and a double size six hour one that I could just dump in my backpack for when I needed it (and even that was light, about the weight of an iPod classic) . Having a sealed battery makes this a toy, not a real replacement for a 'proper' laptop.

[Starman]

Same old trick as with the ipod, iphone - next year they will announced a new iphone and macbook with a removable battery. Bloody Apple will never learn.

[Chilly]

To be fair, the packaging of the unit probably prohibits easily removable spare parts. Although no ethernet is plain gay.

[DaGaffer]

Originally Posted by Chilly

To be fair, the packaging of the unit probably prohibits easily removable spare parts. Although no ethernet is plain gay.

Oh come on, if you can make a mobile phone with removable batteries you can do it with this. Its just the usual incremental revenue scam from Apple.

[ECA]

Apple ! Presenting the new Macbook Air! That's because to buy one your brain would have to be made of air!

[ford prefect]

I agree that macs tend to be made poorly, but someone has to say it... Mac OS is so far ahead of windows in so many ways its just not funny.

The OS is stable, never known one to need a reinstall, and for messing with video and other memory intensive tasks it blow windows away. Personally in the OS stakes, I would say MS are four to five years behind apple now.