Macbook Air launched, but will it fly? | Comments (8)
Posted in Apple on 15th January 2008, 10:32 pm by Stuart
Apple have announced their new ultralightweight Macbook Air today at MacWorld. Whilst it’s hard not to be dazzled by shiny things, I’m personally not that impressed. Given that the cost of the basic spec model is £1199 in the UK this is a significant premium to pay for a lighter machine with a backlit keyboard and LED backlit screen. I’m looking forward to seeing one in the flesh for myself but I can’t help wondering if the thin chassis will make this machine more vulnerable to being damaged? I’m pretty sure I’d buy a macbook over one of these for sure.
Having had a brief play with Christian’s and Ed’s EEEPCs I was hoping that the Macbook Air was going to be more along similar lines. Naturally some compromises have to be made when you make the physical size of a device smaller and screens and keyboards are going be most affected so apple chose to just make it thinner rather than truly smaller. Comparing the two devices which are clearly at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of price, at around £240, I think the smaller EEEPC is best suited to being a hackable, portable device for geeks and children alike (sure it’s not OSX but it’s a grand less) whilst the Macbook Air will become the plaything of teenagers with wealthy parents, Pc Pro’s Jon Honeyball, well-off business types and a few geeks who cannot resist the lure of Apple’s new precious.
Have to agree. I also have a eeepc and am finding working with that plus my macbook works really nicely. The Air would only replace my macbook, not the need for something like the eeepc.
Oh, and some bright spark managed to get OS X 10.5 up and running on their eeepc. If you really must
We had a nickname at Dell for the ultra-lightweight notebook computers: Executive Jewelry.
@Gareth: 10.5 on an EEEPC that’s pretty insane!
@Carl: I like that!
[...] in a a Google search for “stuart”, one place behind me, ahaha, take that, Colville!) writes about the new Macbook Air and compares it unfavourably to the Eee PC. I’m a big fan of the Eee, because Asus have the [...]
Letting the air out of Air…
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 24-odd hours, you will have heard about the new Macbook Air ultra-slim laptop from Apple. Since everyone else is talking about it, I thought I would join in the fun….
[...] In Web Worker Daily, Judi Sohn wonders whether the Air will suffer the same fate as the G4 Cube (remember those?). No beating around the bush for GearCrunch, who think that it "is bascially useless". At CenterNetworks the “common man” take is that it has just enough bang for the buck. Stuart Colville is pondering (what I’m pondering) whether the Air will fly?. [...]
[...] since the announcement a couple of days ago (e.g. Sun acquiring MySQL for £500m!), but the Macbook Air is still an interesting [...]
DH, the battery is replaceable, it’s just not user-replaceable. In addition, Apple isn’t charging for labor, just the part, when replacing the battery. This also guarantees that Apple is the one who disposes of the old battery – which is exactly what we want.
Apple isn’t asking significantly more money than their competition for similar products.