[Macworld]

Post your comments for Apple introduces MacBook Air here

[buuuudy]

$1799?!?!??!!??!?!?!?!?

I'll wait for a skinny book that does all that, has a nice screen, and can play DVDs.

Oh wait... http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Only $100 more (with the Optical drive).

:rolleyes:

Worst. New. Product. Ever.

[djourd]

Nice for traveling

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Nice and all plus I'm sure there is a market for it but certainly not my "cup of tea." $1,898 ( With SuperDrive accessory ) is not worth it. That's ~$400 more than the black MacBook. To others, have fun with it. :)

[darkelf]

"Highly recyclable, mercury-free aluminum enclosure, Mercury-free LCD display with arsenic-free glass, PVC-free internal cables, Largely recyclable, low-volume packaging, Meets ENERGY STAR requirements, MacBook Air received a Silver rating from EPEAT"
and by tomorrow, Greenpeace will take full credit for all this.

[jmincey]

This looks like one slick machine. Very impressive -- at least based on preliminary specs. A pity the speculation about a docking notebook (into an iMac-like chassis) were not true; but there's always the next Macworld Expo, right?

Yes, a bit pricey, but I'm sure the engineering demands for this form factor are great indeed -- otherwise, everyone would be doing it. It may well come down in price by a modest amount in nine months or so.

I'm surprised at the acrimony regarding the price. A watered-down MacBook? Are not ALL laptops "watered-down" versions of the desktop equivalent -- at a higher price? Small form factors have extra R&D, design, and manufacturing costs, and their market has a different dynamic as well. I would think everyone would understand this by now.

As for the eco-friendliness of this model, I think it's fair to say that organizations like Greenpeace have played a role in pushing Apple to be more conscientious about this. I don't think that's a stretch in the least.

Message was edited by: Jeff Mincey

[darkelf]

speak for yourself. it'll be a brilliant laptop for me, i already do nearly everything via WAN.

heck, at least you don't need to plug it into your PDA to use it. :P

[dvsbstrd]

Wow.
$1799 for what is essentially a watered down MacBook.
The wonders never cease.
Well, at least the Yuppie set has something new to spend their money on other than another SUV.

[surfguitarshredder]

Macbook Air? What is this going to do for me that my G4 12" macbook pro doesn't do? So it's thinner... but it's also wider and longer than the 12" Macbook. I never felt that my Macbook was too thick, or that it weighed too much. What I did think was that the baterry didn't last long enough, and that it was hard to read on the bus. If the macbook could just fold open all of the way, so that the keyboard faced opposite the screen like a book, and I could switch the keyboard off so this I didn't get false triggers, it would be more useful to me that the macbook Air. And I like watching DVDs on my Macbook. If I'm going to give up the DVD, what do I get in return?
Apple needs to release a tablet. Gates and Jobs need one. Business people, students, gamers and musicians need one. Apple should make an iTablet because they need to be competitive in a computing world where the tablets ARE coming. The only question is "When?"
Let's start by taking a look at the current tablet market from an unusual perspective: what is a tablet? The iPhone, Palm Pilot, Sony eReader and Freehand Systems MusicPad Pro are all well established tablets that are usually identified as personal electronics rather than computers. Be that as it may, they ARE tablet computers because they have processors, touch screen displays, wireless interfaces and are viewed in the portrait rather than the landscape configuration. The deceptive feature of these devices is their small size. The tablet of the future will actually be between the size of an iPhone and what we current think of as tablet computers. It will be between 5"x7" (paperback book size) and 8.5"x11" (document size).
We all know about the iPhone and the Palm pilot: They're great because they are portable, and the batteries run all day. The Sony eReader is great because os the clarity of the display that allows it to be read like paper, and becuse of the ten little buttons on the face. These hardwired buttons allow instant access to ten documents. You can switch between page 213 of your textbook, the syllabus your professor handed out at the beginning of the semester, the notes that your professor handed out at your last class meeting, your in-class notes from last week, and the notes you are taking today. This all happens on one small display, making the tablet easy to carry around in your back pack.
The Freehand Systems MusicPad Pro is the tablet that the public least familiar with. It's like the Sony eReader, but it's 8.5"x11", and the documents it displays can be marked up with a stylus. Musicians use it to display sheet music during performance, and stars like Dream Theaters' Jordan Rudess have it prominently displayed on stage. The MuiscPad features a removable footswitch that allows the user to turn the pages forward and back without touching the unit.
Now imagine an amalgamation of all of these devices" 8"x10", ten buttons to instantly access ten "desktops," touch screen like an iPhone that allows documents to be marked up, WIFI for wireless synchronization and email correspondence with your office computer like a Palm Pilot, light weight and runs all day on one charge. This product would absolutely DOMINATE high schools and college campuses.
Students would use this device to display all fo their textbooks and notes and do their assigned reading while riding the bus to and from campus and while waiting in the lunch room cashier line. Remember the price of college textbooks, usually ten time more expensive their their non-academic counterparts? Industrious students will be scanning all of those books and converting them into pdf format so they they can escape the $300-$500 book bill every semester. THIS is why they will buy the tablet... they will use their book money to do it, and take the surplus for themselves. Not to mention that professors will be able to receive submissions from students in their email, correct them with the tablet pen, and email them back, saving them from having o carry around those huge piles of term papers. Not to mention the paper that will no longer be needed, those saving trees. We all know how those liberal professors love to save trees. In short, the tablet is the paperless office that was promised in the beginning of the personal computer age come to fruition.
The real impact will happen when those students enter the work force. We've seen he gargantuan marketing budgets spent my computer corporations to install their products in schools because they know that what the children of today are accustomed to using will become the standard requirement of tomorrow. Any company that wants dominating sales figures in the future will need to provide products to students today. Apple has been grabbing the online music and video download markets, now they need to grab the online document download market from the Amazon Kindle. The obstacle Apple has to overcome is thinking of the tablet as a Palm Pilot or a notebook computer. it needs to be seen more as a portable document reader that interfaces with your "normal" computer. It will allow users to view documents and videos they downloaded earlier while on the road. It will allow brief responses to email that is received in public places. it will allow documents to be marked up for later revisions. For Apple, all it really amounts to is an 8"x10" iPod touch that allows finger or stylus navigation and allows a WIFI footswitch control of the back and forward buttons. Apple already has all of the technology on the market, What Apple lacks is the desire to give the consumers what they want. Apple needs to stop envisioning tablets as a small method of making power point presentations in business meetings or a replacement for the QWERTY keyboard. Users will still need a full sized computer. And this is why Apple really needs to jump on this product: it is an additional market for consumers, not an alternative market that cannibalizes traditional computer sales.

[NW_Mike]

It looks to be a very slick product. I am on the fence on this one (whether I will buy it). One thing that made me laugh was this ; "Even migration is wireless. How do you transfer all of your files, music, photos, and other valuable content from your old Mac to your new MacBook Air? Forget the FireWire cable ? that?s the old way. MacBook Air lets you migrate everything wirelessly."

How long would this take???

[Adwiz]

Pretty impressive. It's not a "must have" for everyone, but for the people who really need and want a super-thin MacBook, this is perfect. Great technical innovations like this always cost more, because of the huge R&D expenses involved. So I'm amazed at the negativity surrounding the price. If you don't want to pay that much, don't buy it. I have a very thin portfolio-style briefcase and have always struggled fitting in my PowerBook as well as any business papers. There just isn't enough room. This is the perfect solution for me, and I feel the price is quite acceptable.

The new Remote Disk feature and wireless Time Machine are brilliant touches that show Apple understands the future of computing. Outstanding!

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
You think $1,799 is bad? I don't think it is a bad price but just not a price I'm willing to pay but I don't need that kind of portability. Check out the price tag on the SSD version. "They're pricy, but they're fast" - Steve Jobs. More like "expensive!" Packages...

Quote

13-inch: 1.6 GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB memory
80GB 4200-rpm PATA hard drive1
Built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi2 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Ships: 2-3 weeks
Free Shipping
$1,799.00

and

Quote

13-inch: 1.8 GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB memory
64GB solid-state hard drive1
Built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi2 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Ships: 2-3 weeks
Free Shipping
$3,098.00

I will be interested in seeing benchmarks of the hard drives in these, see if that extra $1,300 is really worth an extra 400MHz ( 200MHz x 2 ) and 16GB less of storage.

[Argent]

Love it. It's not for me, MacBook Air would be a great laptop for anyone who needs a lightweight travel/presentation machine. Still, the lack of a FireWire port is disappointing, if for no other reason than the loss of Target Disk Mode. It's still the fastest, easiest way to transfer huge files.

Anyone else bothered by the fact that the battery appears to be internalized? I have yet to own a laptop that didn't need its battery replaced after a year-and-a-half of use.

[doglesby]

"The device has a slightly wedge-shaped profile that runs from 1.2 inches down to 0.8 inches high. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches."
I don't think so. That doesn't make sense. The competition is between 1.2 and 0.8 inches thick.