MacBook Air - quite under the expectations
Now, after all the year++ of waiting for a smaller MacBook, like the size of the former 12″ PowerBook “sub-notebook”, Apple wants to sell us the MacBook Air? Nice try but they should have tried a little harder - at least my expectations are not really satisfied:
- Form: A wedge shaped - something one expects from Sony and Dell? It’s not as simple and stylish as the last designs.
- Keyboard: Black keyboard in an Alu case? Not without reasons the external Alu keyboard has white keys - this really does not match into the line … Imagine the external Alu keyboard connected to the “Air”, …
- Ports: Too few ports! At least 2 USB ports are a must, and where is Firewire? - Especially with the need of an external drive (which, however, is good ™ I was waiting for this space reduction for quite some time already) a little more connectivity would be welcome.
- Ethernet: Or, the lack of it. Much fun opening professional image, audio and video files from a network server, think Photoshop or Video editing or just copying those huge Xcode project folders around
- The moving ports door: To break apart sooner than later. At least it is not a rubber clutter as Sony is using.
- Battery: Built-in battery? So no second battery for longer traveling abroad and bring-in plus service fee every year when the battery is worn out
- Speaker: Mono? What? Still living in the 70′th of the last century? As if back side, display reflecting stereo speakers of the lower price MacBook would have added much to the size …
- Screen frame: Why the heck does this “world’s thinest” laptop come with such a big frame around the display that already looks so ugly on the MacBook? As small as on the Pro’s the frame should have been.
- Air: Built-in 3G (UMTS) would have made the thing even more wireless in the Air abroad.
- Name: Air? Why not MacBook nano or mini? Such a name would have fitted so much more into Apple’s current cooperate naming scheme.
In my opinion the 3D models and photoshop’ed images floating the net for some time where better designed. Maybe Apple should google for Mac mockups for inspiration more often …
So still waiting for the perfect sub-notebook to fill the gap still left open.
