How many of the "whiners" on here have ACTUALLY TRAVELED with their laptop?
I bought a MBP almost exactly one year ago. I've done two nationwide tours with rock bands and a number of one off shows. there are 3 things I NEVER used while traveling with my MBP.
1. ethernet. where can you even FIND a wired network to use anymore ( other then at home or in the office ) ? ( hell I've only used it to config routers/modems anyways.. the 30 bucks to buy one would EASILY be covered by ONE install. )
2. Firewire. I fully believe that firewire is better then USB. I own mostly firewire external HD's ( of course they all have USB also .. and it's harder and harder to find a FW drive lately it seems... ) my iPod, iPhone, thumb drives, and digital still camera all do not use firewire they use USB.
3. I have not purchased, nor needed a second battery. I have had it replaced at the apple store. for them to have opened my machine dropped in a new battery closed it back up and handed it to me would have taken ABOUT 30 mins longer then it took to just get a new batt ( well to have it replaced under warranty.. just buying and walking out would have taken less time.. but again .. I've never needed a second one...). Apple stores are getting more and more common . The Denver metro area alone there are 4 ( and maybe 5 now).
I have 3GB of ram ..... I quite often have well over 1GB of ram free and I consider myself a power user. On one of the tours this machine was used for video production/projection during the concerts. worked perfectly with only 1GB of ram.
I have a 120GB drive in the machine. It's BARELY half full. I keep all of my music and movies on a second HD anyways. (for 2 reasons 1. I have an iPod to listen to the music with and I can always hook up my drive to watch a flick..... besides if my HD takes a crap I can format with little to no information lost. )
My only issue is the slower 4200rpm drive. it will boot slow and load programs slow. HOWEVER..... once safari, mail, ichat ( or adium in my case) are loaded once how much faster does it need to be? so it takes an extra 10 ( just a random number I picked) seconds to load up word, or powerpoint. Plan ahead 10 seconds in life and launch the program earlier.
The speakers on the MBP are not exactly all the great anyways. using headphones is common. might as well kill the speakers and save some weight.
Need to load new music? buy it from the itunes store.
Wanna watch a movie? same thing.
no optical drive needed.
as many have said the macbook air is targeted as a SECOND computer.. do your hardcore vid editing on your mac pro. grab your macbook air jump on that plane to wherever do the show ( or the presentation, using the miniDVI out ) write some e-mails and watch the rest of that movie you rented on the iTunes store on the way back home.
All this having to carry two pounds less while running thru the airport to catch your connecting flight 2 concourses over when your first plane landed late.
Very good points, and I think this illustrates exactly the point here.
The MacBook Air isn't going to be all things to all people; but it expands the available portable Mac options with a third option that Apple hasn't had in a while (and especially not a laptop in the 3 pound range).
It seems like some people are looking at it, seeing it doesn't meet their own deeds, and deeming it to be unnecessary or stupid or not suitable for anyone.
But this isn't the case. It has its own strengths and weaknesses, just like Apple's other machines and many other manufacturer's systems.
No machine is 100% perfect. I've seen so many comparisons to the TZ (natural of course given that this is what Jobs used as the comparison in the keynote), but the TZ is not the end all be-all either.
I personally had considered a TZ for quite a while, but I found the screen to just be too small for me, and the keyboard to be just too tiny to comfortable type on. I owned an SZ for a bit, but had issues with it as well (didn't like the keyboard, and some other things).
Is the MBA perfect? No, of course not. But I think it makes for an interesting third portable Mac option, and the compromises it makes are not compromises for those who don't need those options; I've rarely ever used the optical drives on most laptops I've owned in recent years. One of the other laptops I'd been strongly considering was the ThinkPad X61, which has widely been praised, and is also an optical-drive-less machine. The X61 has an absolutely amazing keyboard, but it also has a pretty mediocre screen.
I think Apple has done a nice job here, and added a nice option to their product lineup that gives Mac laptop buyers another option to consider. For some people, the MacBook is more than fine. For others, the MBP is the right choice. But it's not hurting anyone to have the MBA as an option too.
A bit disappointed...Not quite enough for me and then, no MBP update, meaning I waited to buy until MWSF for nothing. Maybe I'll hold out in the hope of a minor update on the MBP soon.
Apple may be skipping the basic Penryn CPU refresh, and just waiting for the new Montevina platform in the Spring for a real MBP update.
I think this probably makes sense, given that the various Penryn benchmarks so far seem to generally show no more than 5-10% increases in performance and battery life.
-Zadillo
