Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11) Sprint PPC6850SP)
Ergonomics vs.Symbolically-Valued Dimensioning: The current Air taper down at front helps some people like me avoid carpal tunnel. Esp. in a world where 30" desks and tables haven't been dropped to 28" when a keyboard's to be placed on top. (Secretary desks used to be 30" high for the main part, and 2" lower for the typewriter extension table on the right.) If the 'Air' is for working while travelling, well, what happens while travelling? You take your support surfaces where you find them, at whatever height they may be. Some incompetantly-designed chain-restaurants set their booth's tables so damned high, it's hard to even eat on 'em! Last month I went to a university lecture, and the chairs had little writing desks on them, somehow so un-ergonomic that I instantly got carpal tunnel paralysis just from the added factor of my hand being lifted up for the 1" thickness of my spiral notepad. Luckily it went away in a few days. Now, for the Air, keeping the front end down so comfortably low, and increasing the volume by lifting the back or hinge-edge, does what? Tilts the keyboard a little more. Which as far as I can tell, is OK ergonomically, if not a bit better. The weight of 3 lbs. (or 3-1/4", or 3-1/2") is the thing; more than the closed unit's dimensions gaining a fraction of an inch at point A or point B. Nobody's jamming it into a bag that fits that tight! In general I think Apple needs to think through the mobile worker's situation and needs more: (1.) We never know if the next place we can sit down will have an outlet, so, a big battery life boost is needed. (2.) The more you travel, the tougher the case must be. (And who cares if it's "3 lbs.!", if you have to ADD another 2 or 3 pounds of padding and cladding to protect it, because the hinge is fragile or crushing it produces a "white donut" on the screen, or pushes the trackpad button into the screen?). (3.) Travellers never know how good/bad the ergonomics of the next place to use the computer, will be. So the Air's design should just avoid making anything worse. (4.) The idea that a travelling worker can rely on finding unlocked Wi-Fi to use, is unrealistic in the extreme. Increasingly everyone's locking them up. Even the ones that initially seem unlocked... if you try to use 'em, turn out to actually be locked. So built-in 3G modem is NOT a luxury, it's a neccessity. Somebody puhleeeze wake up Rip Van Jobs about that! (...plus, Sprint's 4G service may start in NYC next month, they just told me. And, Apple can afford to buy them, before someone else does; whatever happened to that rumor/idea?) And if one's rigid about the Air's loveley dimensions and weight, well, plugging an outboard "aircard" into the USB will disrupt the lovely design's width, weight AND aesthetics. Not to mention the pry-bar effect over time on your only USB jack and the little flip-down door that it's hidden in. /// If as in your delete-the-taper idea -- the thick end gets no thicker, then that flip-down door which some air-cards/etc. can't even plug into, remains in the Air's design. Ack! But if the thick end gets a little thicker, as in my idea -- 1 or 2 additional jacks might fit in a now-normal way on the right, deleting the weak design detail of the little door. .... And then for a big finale, Ive can take a page out of the book of the Casio G-Shock solar watches, and use the whole black bezel around the screen as a solar battery area. And on the solar Model III, anodize the rest in black, so it all matches. And finally -- White-on-black keys already are scientifically the most visible choice (check "low vision" web resources), so I want no change there!
