Apart from the big ad campaign about the size of the newest edition to the mac family, I’ve don’t really know much about the air, not because there’s no info out there on it, but because I haven’t gone looking for it. Ive not got caught up in the hysteria that normally surrounds the apple releases of recent, which got me thinking; why is this? Have I subconsciously told myself its not worth it? So I have taken it upon myself to see what role this new macbook fills.
So lets start from the ground up, the size of this machine is quite astounding, not that it is a tiny compact machine, but as I’m sure you are all well aware the thickness of it, which is only beaten on amasement value by the miracle of the ipod touch (well for me anyway). And the general asthetics of it are too inline with apples current style so nothing groundbreaking there, but what is really making waves is the cd drive, or more to the point the lack of one. “Whats going on here no CD drive on a laptop? was it built in 1995?” I hear you cry, well apparently you have to fork out another £65 on top of the £1199 you just paid for the damn thing, you would have thought they might have thrown one in! its either that or you could use the new capabilities of the air to borrow the hard drive of another mac, which is a great feature but you would already have to have a mac, and probably wouldn’t need a new one.
Ontop of this the air has a rather strange lack of ports, apple only opting to put a USB port, a mini dvi port and a h/p jack into a small flap on the underside of the air. Which raises the point of the lack of a firewire port, which in turn means you cant transfer all you files and preferences onto you new machine. This certainly raised my eyebrow. On a plus note Apple have incorporated the touchscreen features from the iPod touch into the touchpad of the air, which greatly enhances the navigation power of the touchpad, so thumbs up there!
Right so where does the air fit into the market, well it certainly does not lye with the music producers and designers who have come accustom to the macintosh o/s, as they crave the high power that this machine just does not have. And the lack of a CD drive will probably not bode well with consumers switching from a windows laptop or PC, as you cant put any of your music cds or programs you already have onto it and you definitely cant burn cds without having to buy a plug in burner. So who does that leave us with, seems to me that the only people who are going to buy this are those who have a main machine at home and want something to take when there out and about, perhaps your designer types or maybe just your run of the mill apple fanatic (you know the type who cry when they get the newest iPod) but it certainly wont be on my christmas list this year.check out the you tube vid:
