Techy Trini Blog

On January 15, 2008 Apple unveiled the world’s thinnest notebook. The new laptop was launched being removed from a typical brown office envelope and is purported to measure no more than 0.76″ at it’s thickest point. 15 days later on the 30th Apple announces it is now ready to ship these laptops.

It’s amazing how technology is getting smaller, thinner and lighter while still being more powerful than ever before. However while the novelty of the Air’s thinness (no pun intended) not smallness will certainly be a buying point for people interested in a light laptop, power hungry users should exercise restraint before grabbing one.

The addition of LED lighting to the MacBook’s 13.3″ line-up by all appearances is going to result in more battery conservation while maintaining the MacBook’s standard form factor. However at the time of the Air’s shipping it is configured as below for 1799USD:

What’s there not to like in this sleek form factor? Well for one, power hungry users will not be too happy with a 1.6 GHz processor no matter how much uncle Steve got Intel to decrease it’s form factor so that it occupies less space nor comforted by the fact that a 1.8 GHz option is available starting at 3098USD with a 64GB hard drive standard and no option to change it.

At present it seems that the most R.A.M you can get is set at 2GB with no option to upgrade to 4GB as with other MacBook variants. However, I would predict this to change as soon as production lines come on stream.

The new Solid state drive has been a matter of contention among I.T professionals who wonder about the longevity of write cycles that the disk could handle. The ideal life span of such solid state technologies has improved considerably over the past decade that they are beginning to give magnetic media a run for their money. Ask yourself, how long has your 64MB or 2GB memory stick lasted… enough said.

This new technology is expected to reduce if not eliminate all the problems we portable and desktop users have had to live with for years. Problems such as Disk Head failure, Bad sectors and the like. At present this technology is in its infancy but expect prices to fall off as more manufacturers come on board and size offerings increase by 3rd to 4th quarter of this year and by mid 2009 it should be a standard optional accessory.

Noticeably absent from the technical specs of the Air is FireWire. I am truly sad to see that go. Instead I am now forced to connect my Video camera via the slower and only 1 offering of a USB port if I am to buy one, or have to deal with lugging around a USB hub to connect other devices since if I use a Mighty mouse or plug in a memory stick I have used up the one slot I get. Similarly one of the sacrifices which had to be made to get a laptop this thin was the removal of the optical drive bay.. sorry..err.. SuperDrive. Instead Apple proposes that I hijack the optical drive of any computer around me using a piece of software designed for this purpose and it matters not whether it be Mac or PC.. It is their belief that we live in a wireless world where Trinidad has full blown access to all the glories of ITunes.. if only, coz now you can rent movies. They haven’t been outside Metropolitan areas now have they, and obviously they have not been to Trinidad where wireless hotspots are few and far in between, EVDO works sparingly and ADSL that’s another story. So while ingenious, they are putting me at the mercy of the speed and availability of the wireless infrastructure around me, or else fork out to buy the SuperDrive as an external option. I guess that’s the price of portability. So that’s no Ethernet and no ExpressCard Slot.

But I must say, though it is targeted at a simpler audience who will not want to lug around bigger laptop variants the drop down port bay does remind me of the overhead luggage compartment on an aircraft. Apple really knows how to design and blend style with functionality.

The one improvement which I know will be making its rounds to the other Macs in Apple’s portfolio is the Multi-touch trackpad.

With guestures borrowed from the Iphone, I think it is just beautiful that Apple has improved on the Human Computer Interaction which exists on the traditional touchpad. So navigating and manipulating on-screen items has become loads easier.

But what does this mean for the other Mac lineups.. There was no word on what is to come for the MacBook and MacBook Pro, however I hope or expect the following to happen:

Only time will tell, but again, I delay my personal purchase of a MacBook. I won’t personally buy the Air because I know how unforgiving I can be with technology. It’s far too thin for me and it will get squashed if not shoved around while jostling for space in my briefcase or desk, additionally it’s size and lack of performance or features does not justify it’s price point for me. If I were to get it, it would have to come with the solid state drive and custom ordered with at least 2 usbs and a firewire (Which I am not going to get). That being said brings me back to the specs of the typical MacBook and why I think it’s worth the wait if you are a power user. I see the MacBook Air being the equivalent of the Ipod Nano, the MacBook being the classic and the MacBook Pro being the Ipod touch. All in all, a good job raising the bar Apple.