Apple Briefs

The MacWorld San Francisco keynote speech was today, and, as expected, Steve Jobs introduced a new Mac sub-notebook called the MacBook Air. I won’t go into all the details of the MacBook Air because you can learn everything you need to know at the Apple website and the Apple Store. Instead, I just want to share a few impressions and surprises:

1. As rumored, the MacBook Air has an optional external optical drive. What surprised me was the price – $99 – which is very competitive with everything else on the market.
2. The Big surprise regarding the optical drive was Remote Disk, which allows the MacBook Air to share the optical drive of another Mac or PC on the same network. I think we should expect to see few sales of the external optical drive because the MacBook Air seems like a much better second computer than a primary personal computer.
3. The multi-touch trackpad was a nice feature. Rumors had suggested some kind of multi-touch capability on a new Apple product, but people weren’t sure whether the rumors were linked to the sub-notebook or some other product being developed. I don’t see much need for the extra multi-touch features. I already use two-finger scrolling on my MacBook Pro. Rotating and zooming makes sense on an iPhone, but how often do people need to do that on their computer?
4. The MacBook Air ships with 2GB of RAM and isn’t upgradable. It’s nice to see Apple ship a laptop with a reasonable amount of RAM, but design considerations probably drove the decision more than generosity (if you can call “not price gouging” on RAM upgrades generous).
5. According to Steve, the MacBook Air gets 5 hours of battery life. If this is true and unaffected by the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field (see, e.g., Wikipedia), I’ll be pretty excited. I regularly got 2+ hours out of my 12″ PowerMac with the wireless on. Getting 5 hours of wireless use without adding ugly external batteries (I am looking at You, Michael Dell) is quite an accomplishment.
6. There was some concern over the fact that the battery was not user-replaceable. However, many sites are now reporting that Apple will replace the battery for $129 (parts & labor included in the price). That’s a tidy sum, but paying $129 every 1-2 years to keep your laptop going is a small price to pay for the size and convenience of the MacBook Air.
7. Finally, we come to the price. I was hoping the MacBook Air would come in a little cheaper (in the $1600-1700 range). Having watched the keynote, though, I can understand the price point. A lot of engineering went into the MacBook Air, and, judging from the reaction of the crowd, I think Apple will have no trouble selling many, many MacBook Airs at $1799.



8. The big shock came from seeing the price of the 1.8GHz model with the SSD drive. One of the benefits of SSD drives is their superior reliability. If that’s the only benefit, I don’t think many people will find the price justifiable. I look forward to seeing battery life and performance tests for the new drives. Hopefully Bare Feats will get their hands on one soon.
9. I am confused about Apple’s choice to list two models. Both the 1.8GHz processor and the SSD drive are upgrades on the base MacBook Air. They could just as easily have had a single model and make everything an upgrade of that model, like they did with the Mac Pro.

I look forward to the day I can visit our local Apple Store and see the MacBook Air in person. If they’re shipping in two weeks, that day can’t be too far off …. can it?