Last month, at Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's thinnest laptop ever. With a thickness of just .76'' at its thinnest point, the Macbook Air was clearly designed to wow. Despite its stunning design, however, Apple's first foray into the ultra-portable notebook business has met with much criticism. Even though I am an Apple fan, I certainly can sympathize with those who are disappointed by Apple's latest "innovation."
As Steve Jobs led up to the unveiling of the Macbook Air, he assured his audience that Apple made no compromises in the process of squeezing a mac into a 3 pound body, citing the Air's full-sized keyboard and glossy 13'' display. Despite these features, it's apparent that the newest member of the Mac family isn't without some compromises.
It has no optical drive, firewire, user-replacable battery, ethernet, or capability to expand its memory. On top of these, the Macbook Air's hard drive is a slow 4,200-rpm ipod hard drive – unless you cough up another thirteen hundred bucks.
While these issues are forgivable if the Macbook Air is viewed as merely an extension of a mac user's existing desktop computer, I find it hard to justify spending seventeen hundred dollars for a mere accessory to a computer that probably cost much less than the Air does while boasting substantially better performance, and I'm sure many other Mac users would agree.
Since Apple is unlikely to reduce the Air's price anytime soon (unless they pull an iPhone on us), I hope they at least make some concessions: First, a usb ethernet dongle and the external superdrive should be included in the box if they can't be built into the case of the Air itself. Also it would seem perfectly feasible to make that flip down i/o dohingy a little bigger so as to fit a firewire port and possibly an audio line in jack.
If Apple comes around and offers these features, the steep price for such a relatively sparsely featured mac may become a little easier to swallow.
Great work.
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