MacWorld 08

[Jammrock]

For all those Mac lovers.

The only HUGE announcement was the MacBook Air, which was the highly touted ultra-light from Apple. It is the world’s thinnest laptop at 0.16” to 0.76” thick (trapezoid shaped) but weighs a hefty 3 lbs (sorry, bk, still not 2 pounders for you). Unlike other ultrlights it sports up to 5 hours on battery, a 13.3” widescreen, 2 GB RAM, a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and an 80 GB HDD or 64 GB SDD. Built-in wireless-n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR round out the major features.

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

The rest of the keynote was pretty, eh. Time Capsule (Apple’s equal of Windows Home Server), a few new iPhone features (still no 3G), and some updates to Apple TV.

[ZokesPro]

Here's a short list what I don't like about the new MacBook Air.

• One USB port.
• No Onboard NIc.
• Onboard ram, without options to upgrade.
• Glossy Screen.
• External USB Optical Drive.
• 80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk drive
• Intel GMA x3100 with 144mb shared memory. (with emphasis on the shared memory part)
• No other information about the SSD's performance or brand. (not that Apple ever provides you with this info to begin with. )

Here's what I do like about it:

• The keyboard.
• Battery life.

[Elie]

I agree with Zokes, I guess they had to compromise alot of features to make it as thin as possible.

[ZokesPro]

I agree with Zokes, I guess they had to compromise alot of features to make it as thin as possible.

Which is ok for some, but not for me. I'd rather sacrifice battery life and esthetics for performance, storage, memory and price.

[Nowhere]

Well, that's not the idea behind this product, Macbooks Pro OTOH...

[MultimediaMan]

Hmmm....I think the Latitude XT, with it's far superior feature set (and extreme expense) will likely come in less expensive than the MacBook Air. None of the other features of the Air (with the exception of the form factor) are very revolutionary: The Motion Control C5 Series Tablets are external-interface-less. You have to dock them to get USB and wired Ethernet.

All of the other Tablet/Convertible notebooks out there for this year are using this chipset combination, so there isn't much between them:

All use ULV Core 2 Duo Processors; the Air, Dell Latitude XT and the HP2710P tablets both use the same chipset, processors and mostly the same graphics adapters (Dell going with the ATI).

The Dell XT with the stock battery, gets 6 hours using Vista Business Ultimate... and with a daylight-usable LCD/Touchscreen (not just a digitizer) to boot. Add the "Slice" battery and battery life typically runs 10-12 hours. We get a couple in the next week or two... I can't wait. We saw the prototype last Summer.

The HP can support up to 4GB of RAM; the Dell can support up to 3GB (1GB is soldered on).

The Trapezoidal profile of the Macbook Air is a neat idea...until you have to stack a few...

[Helevitia]

IMHO, the 3G iPhone is not that great of an "upgrade". Edge is plenty fast. As a matter of fact, my wife's phone which uses EVDO is slower than my phone on Edge inside of my house.

I'd rather have MMS support than 3G. GPS will be the next big thing to have most likely. Other things that I'd rather have are mail, pdf, word and excel search support and the ability to take video.

One thing that wasn't announced today but now has support is 64-bit drivers(Vista but maybe not XP) for the iPhone. Now I don't have to use my work laptop to sync anymore.

[Sasq]

they need 3g to be able to sell it to the rest of the world.

[Wombat]

Not to mention that EDGE is only "plenty fast" if it ever works. It seems like here in Denver, and in Florida, and many many other places, EDGE just doesn't work.

[Jammrock]

They need low latency 3G, which is probably what they have been waiting on (that and lower power chips). Standard EVDO has up to a 500 ms response time, while Edge is significantly faster, so while EVDO wins hands down in raw throughput Edge can seem faster because of the latency issue. When you get into EVDO rev. A and 3.5G/4G your latencies drop down to sub-50 ms, which is broadband grade latency. Add low-end DSL bandwidth, or full broadband bandwidth with 4G, and it blows Edge away.

[Helevitia]

Hmm, edge works great here in the SF Bay Area. I guess I haven't tried it outside of California so I can't comment on that.

I should say that inside buildings, CDMA has really poor reception, so EVDO gets degraded to 1x which is really slow. So my wife's phone probably smokes my iPhone outside, but indoors there is no comparison and of course I have wifi and she doesn't so that is even better.

[VJ]

NIce design...

On the USB issue:having 2 usb ports is interesting as it allows one to power an optical drive (for write purposes) from usb only. With one port, one will need to carry a powersupply for an optical drive.... So that does feel like a disadvantage.
As for it having limited connections, they could have opted for a sort of portable docking station (size of a mouse), to add additional ports (usb, network, ...).
I wonder if our first response to lack of ports is perhaps similar to the our response to the first pc's without floppy drives...?
3G is easily achieved via a bluetooth cell phone, but would it would be nice to have it internally...

I'm using my P1510 as benchmark (1 kg, 8.9"display, convertible TabletPC), and would have exepect the AirBook to be closer to this in the portability department...


Jörg

[az]

I would have preferred 12", higher res (!!), multitouch on the screen (what's with this very limited multitouch trackpad stuff?), 2 USB ports, 3G. I'd have saved up even if it cost 2000 EUR then.

[Fluff]

Is the battery user replaceable? The website says it's integrated.......

Personally a fully pimped out Thinkpad X61s is more desireable for me. And what apple should have released!

[Jammrock]

Is the battery user replaceable? The website says it's integrated.......

Personally a fully pimped out Thinkpad X61s is more desireable for me. And what apple should have released!

Battery costs $129, but labor is free.