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thatcrazycajun(Reposted from junquegrrl's LJ replies) So yesterday Apple Inc. honcho Steve Jobs, as is his wont, dropped a bombshell of a new product announcement at the annual midwinter Macworld Expo in San Francisco: the thinnest, lightest laptop computer ever, the Macbook Air.
Pretty it surely is, as are all the things that come out of the House of Jobs. And thin and light it surely is; at its thickest point it measures only about 2/3 of an inch, and can be slipped into an interoffice envelope (though why anyone would send something this expensive—$1,799 for the base model—anywhere that way, or carry it around with such flimsy [non-]protection, utterly escapes me).
But even if I hadn't just bought a WinBlows laptop last month and/or didn't already have a Mac mini at home, this new toy has one big fat stinking deal-breaker from my POV: No CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive! You're expected to use Bluetooth or AirPort Extreme to pull files and install apps from elsewhere, and just rent or buy movies online and store them internally...or slave another computer's optical-disc drive to the Macbook Air using something called Remote Disc. The only way you can get anything into or out of the thing if the wireless dinguses stop working is to shell out more $$$ for an optional external peripheral. When you've just dropped $1,800 on a new piece of hardware, this is emphatically NOT something you want to hear.
This is the latest iteration of the whole "come live in the wireless world with us cool kids" meme Jobs & Co. have been trying to force down all our throats since the first Mac came out with no floppy drive a few years back. Someone needs to whap Steverino over the noggin with the ole clue-by-four to make him once and for all realize that no, not all of us out here can afford the fancy super-fast T1 lines and terabyte hard drives he probably has in his office and at home, and we still need optical media, dammit!!
A successful business gives its customers what they tell it they need; it doesn't try to tell them what it thinks they need or don't. But apparently, this rule does not apply to Apple, such is its historic accumulation of coolth in the computing community and the business world...and the power of the patented Jobs Reality Distortion Field™.
Sorry...rant over now.
UPDATE, 1/17. 5:07p: ZDNet's David Morgenstern, who claims to have been watching Apple and the Mac market for over two decades, asserts in his latest blog article that anyone who gets upset that the MacBook Air doesn't have FireWire, CD/DVD drive, RAM upgrade slot etc. is being a dumbass. He sees this as being an "elite" machine for guys in corner offices who value style over substance and are more concerned with impressing others with their newest execu-toy than in actually getting work done. Is he right?
junquegrrl's LJ replies) So yesterday Apple Inc. honcho Steve Jobs, as is his wont, dropped a bombshell of a new product announcement at the annual midwinter Macworld Expo in San Francisco: the thinnest, lightest laptop computer ever, the Macbook Air.Pretty it surely is, as are all the things that come out of the House of Jobs. And thin and light it surely is; at its thickest point it measures only about 2/3 of an inch, and can be slipped into an interoffice envelope (though why anyone would send something this expensive—$1,799 for the base model—anywhere that way, or carry it around with such flimsy [non-]protection, utterly escapes me).
But even if I hadn't just bought a WinBlows laptop last month and/or didn't already have a Mac mini at home, this new toy has one big fat stinking deal-breaker from my POV: No CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive! You're expected to use Bluetooth or AirPort Extreme to pull files and install apps from elsewhere, and just rent or buy movies online and store them internally...or slave another computer's optical-disc drive to the Macbook Air using something called Remote Disc. The only way you can get anything into or out of the thing if the wireless dinguses stop working is to shell out more $$$ for an optional external peripheral. When you've just dropped $1,800 on a new piece of hardware, this is emphatically NOT something you want to hear.
This is the latest iteration of the whole "come live in the wireless world with us cool kids" meme Jobs & Co. have been trying to force down all our throats since the first Mac came out with no floppy drive a few years back. Someone needs to whap Steverino over the noggin with the ole clue-by-four to make him once and for all realize that no, not all of us out here can afford the fancy super-fast T1 lines and terabyte hard drives he probably has in his office and at home, and we still need optical media, dammit!!
A successful business gives its customers what they tell it they need; it doesn't try to tell them what it thinks they need or don't. But apparently, this rule does not apply to Apple, such is its historic accumulation of coolth in the computing community and the business world...and the power of the patented Jobs Reality Distortion Field™.
Sorry...rant over now.
UPDATE, 1/17. 5:07p: ZDNet's David Morgenstern, who claims to have been watching Apple and the Mac market for over two decades, asserts in his latest blog article that anyone who gets upset that the MacBook Air doesn't have FireWire, CD/DVD drive, RAM upgrade slot etc. is being a dumbass. He sees this as being an "elite" machine for guys in corner offices who value style over substance and are more concerned with impressing others with their newest execu-toy than in actually getting work done. Is he right?
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 02:47 am (UTC)W. T. F?
Jobs has a remarkable ability to make this kind of shit work against all logic, but I don't think the Reality Distortion Field(TM) is powerful enough to avoid a fiasco on this one.
And frankly, I'm not even rooting for him this time. I still have a sentimental investment in Apple's fate (in fact, I'm very excited about my imminent return to The World of Current Macs when I pick up a Mac Mini in the next week or so), but this is just fucking stupid.
It's great to push ahead of the bleeding, curved edge of the envelope and all that; and no doubt the day is not too far off when computers configured this way will be completely practical. But it's just too fucking soon.
This kind of thing will make a lot more sense when optical media have been replaced by, say, something like SD cards as the standard distribution method for software. An SD card reader is a lot smaller and cheaper than an optical drive, with no moving parts to worry about.
In fact, I'm starting to wonder why there hasn't been a move to introduce SD cards as a software distribution option. Given the ability to cram at least a DVD's worth of data into a space an order of magnitude smaller than an optical disk, you'd think someone would be working on it. I should mention this to Anne, who might want to research it for her blog.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 03:33 am (UTC)They're re-usable, of course, but as far as the publishers are concerned that's not an advantage. Might as well download and save the intermediate step.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 06:16 am (UTC)Remember when they introduced SCSI? Or dropped the floppy drive? Both of those times we had this kind of shock- and in the end Apple ended up being the market leader on both technologies.
The Air is a first generation product of some really new technologies. Remember the 20th Anniversary Mac? They hardly sold any of them, but the technology that went *into* it revamped PowerBooks and eventually led to the iMac- both huge successes.
The Air is certainly *not* a first computer. It's a machine for marketing and sales weenies who have the bucks and a home or office base station. It's for CEO's (like Steve) to look cool. And the people who buy it will be financing the development of the Next Thing for the rest of us.
I agree that this MacWorld was long on form, and very, very, very light on substance. But, all things considered, I feel that it was a development year.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 04:44 pm (UTC)I think I know where my next work laptop is coming from
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 03:37 am (UTC)Of course, my ideal machine would be the One Laptop Per Child project's XO in something like the Air's case, with a Thinkpad keyboard, and with Gigabit ethernet.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 06:22 am (UTC)The thing that concerns me the most, actually, isn't the thing everyone complains about (the optical drive).
What concerns me the most is the fact that you can't replace the battery....
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 02:54 pm (UTC)Are these people simply incapable of learning from mistakes, or what?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 03:52 pm (UTC)Gack.
Figures. I didn't read that far; I gave up after the optical drive thing.
I agree with the previous post that this is a product for the elite few, not for the masses; that it's about enhancing their image, not actually profiting on the sales of the thing. But can they really afford to manufacture a product solely for the purpose of demonstrating how pretty a product they can manufacture? Haven't they ever heard of the idea of a "concept car?"
Whatever. I still love Apple (though, culturally, they stopped being the company I fell in love with about 2 decades ago), and I still have enormous, if grudging, admiration for Jobs, who, almost alone amongst the his fellow sociopathic CEO motherfuckers, uses his incredible powers of assholery for for Good.
Jobs and Gates: Fuckin' Wonderboy and Young Nasty Man.
Shine on, Steve, you crazy diamond.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 10:20 am (UTC)But damn it's tempting. I _miss_ having a truly lightweight laptop and the Air is sweet. (Of course, I'm here and have had one in my hands, which I think makes it more compelling than just seeing the keynote via stream, or reading the news feeds.)
They're not marketing this as a replacement for the MB Pro... this is a niche machine, aimed at the people who've been clamoring for a subnotebook, and who understand the tradeoffs that you make in order to _get_ a true subnotebook.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-19 06:36 am (UTC)