5 ms·

Macbook Air - Few Pics

21 points by seren6ipity 19y ago

Zak 19y ago
I see one major downside to this machine: it has memory soldered to the motherboard. In my experience, memory is a fairly high-failure item, and I've seen more than one laptop bricked by onboard memory failing. It's potentially worse with a very thin machine since the memory is less protected. If you're planning to keep one of these beyond the warranty period, know somebody with SMT soldering equipment.
- sspencer 19y ago
  Not to mention the "Integrated Battery." If the batteries are as failure prone as normal batteries, this would worry me. And what about traveling? Is TSA going to take me to a windowless room for not removing my laptop battery? Also, they project a lifetime of 18 months. Kind of low for the price point. Seems less a practical upgrade and more of a pretty rich kid's toy. Especially when my choices for a hard drive are a $1000 64 GB drive (yeah, yeah SSD. Not worth 1K to me) or an incredibly slow 4200 80 GB drive. Ugh.
  - gibsonf1 19y ago
    The integrated battery is a real flaw. 2 years is usually max (if you're lucky) on batteries. What to do then? Hmmm.
    - Zak 19y ago
      Disassemble and replace the cells, of course! This is hacker news, not shiny consumer product review.
    - mdemare 19y ago
      Have apple install a new battery for $129 all-in.
uuilly 19y ago
I think the best part is the mouse gestures. It doesn't actually add any functionality that you didn't have before but it makes the whole experience more organic and you forget you're using a computer. That's what apple does right. This machine is a big step b/c it's shedding unnecessary historical devices like the optical drive. It's leaping into a world where there is always a connection between machines and to the internet. All the while they are meeting and sometimes surpassing old functionality with software that makes networking a lot easier (bonjour, time-capsule etc.) While slashdot is lamenting the lack of "options" apple is striving toward a machine with no ports and no keyboard. They want as little friction as possible between you and your experience. The macbook air is just a temporary stop-off on this trajectory.
- Zak 19y ago
  Apple is sometimes a bit premature about dropping legacy tech. They eliminated the floppy drive from all their models before USB flash drives were common, for example. The lack of an optical drive is appropriate for a subnotebook, but I've found myself needing wired ethernet quite a bit during the past year. Of course, there are USB ethernet adapters, but that takes up the only USB port. There are USB hubs, but at that point there's enough random crap to carry around to negate much of the compactness of this machine.
  - derefr 19y ago
    Thus comes a complementary product, the Airport Express. Normally just a wireless router with an AirTunes doodad, it could be remarketed in this case as the Air's "wireless-to-Ethernet adapter."
    - Zak 19y ago
      Do they have some new gigabit wireless protocol I didn't know about? If not, it will take about 20 times as long to transfer a large amount of data.
      - derefr 19y ago
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
gibsonf1 19y ago
Now that is a sweet looking machine.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  I just checked SBCL (Lisp), and they support Mac OS X :)
- mhb 19y ago
  Agreed. But I wish they would stop mentioning how thick it is at the edge.
  - gibsonf1 19y ago
    Perfection is difficult :)
ardit33 19y ago
I don't know, but what's the big hoopla about it? It is very thin, and light, but at $1,800 you are paying very dearly for a machine like that it is not that powerful.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  The power of it is being able to easily take it wherever you want. Right now I have a very powerful Dell Inpiron 9400, and it is heavy. I only take it on major trips. With the Mac Air, I can easily take it with me whenever I need it without a second thought. Also, I want to use if for remote coding, and with sbcl/emacs/slime, it is plenty powerful. Killer feature: extreme portablility with very good power. And.. It is simply beautiful. It looks like a dream from a futuristic scifi movie. In fact, this may be the most beautiful computer to date - but I have to see it in person to confirm. (I still remember going crazy over the Next computer when it came out)
  - manvsmachine 19y ago
    Yes, it's portable, but I'm kinda curious about how it would be to work with it over long periods of time. Considering how thin it is, I would think that there would be a pretty serious learning curve when it comes to typing. If, in fact, the keyboard is implemented so that you don't feel like you're typing on the tabletop, this will probably be a winner due to the weight savings. I could care less if they make it any smaller, if the regular MacBook only weighed a couple pounds, I would probably own one right now.
    - pchristensen 19y ago
      I would this would be a benefit, having a keyboard so thin it feels like typing on the tabletop. Wouldn't that lessen the risk of RSI?
  - ardit33 19y ago
    Yes, I have that dell too, and it is powerful and heavy. But, for 1800, you can buy that, and the Asus Eee PC, so you can have them both, one very powerful machine, and one very portable one, for even cheaper than the Mac air.
ivankirigin 19y ago
I've been thinking about an ideal working setup. Lots of people fantasize about these things. I used to have two 24" monitors with a pansy dell laptop to power them. Now I have just a 17" MacBookPro. It's excellent, but I could use more pixels. The ideal setup would be a MacPro with 2 30" screens, with something like MacBook Air setup to mirror my configuration. It would be docked like my iPhone, auto-install software that I install on the desktop, auto-configure to match the relevant system settings, auto-update the local repository that I'm developing, etc. Any time, when you need portability, you could take the Air. I'm sure a simple script could get most of this done on a local wireless network. Too bad I don't have $13K to spend on it ... yet.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  To be technically correct, the ideal monitor setup is N M" screens, where N is 1 greater than your current number, each currently (M-2)"
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    This would get my +10 upvote of the day
  - tb 19y ago
    I believe that ideal monitor count goes up in a Fibbonaci sequence. e.g. When I had two monitors, I wanted three - now that I have three, I reckon five would be brilliant.
- alaskamiller 19y ago
  This is where .Mac's BackToMyMac really shines: http://www.apple.com/dotmac/backtomymac.html http://www.apple.com/dotmac/backtomymac.html They should have pushed this as well in the keynote. I'll have a MacPro/iMac, or even a MacBook Pro, on my desk and when I need to go to catch a flight, show a keynote presentation, or do some typing somewhere, I'll just grab the Air and walk away. Come back and everything's resynced and backed up on my Time Capsule. My current system involves juggling my desktop, my dell laptop, and my macbooks, along with like 15 different drives.

21 points by seren6ipity 19y ago

Zak 19y ago

I see one major downside to this machine: it has memory soldered to the motherboard. In my experience, memory is a fairly high-failure item, and I've seen more than one laptop bricked by onboard memory failing. It's potentially worse with a very thin machine since the memory is less protected. If you're planning to keep one of these beyond the warranty period, know somebody with SMT soldering equipment.

sspencer 19y ago
Not to mention the "Integrated Battery." If the batteries are as failure prone as normal batteries, this would worry me. And what about traveling? Is TSA going to take me to a windowless room for not removing my laptop battery? Also, they project a lifetime of 18 months. Kind of low for the price point. Seems less a practical upgrade and more of a pretty rich kid's toy. Especially when my choices for a hard drive are a $1000 64 GB drive (yeah, yeah SSD. Not worth 1K to me) or an incredibly slow 4200 80 GB drive. Ugh.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  The integrated battery is a real flaw. 2 years is usually max (if you're lucky) on batteries. What to do then? Hmmm.
  - Zak 19y ago
    Disassemble and replace the cells, of course! This is hacker news, not shiny consumer product review.
  - mdemare 19y ago
    Have apple install a new battery for $129 all-in.

uuilly 19y ago

I think the best part is the mouse gestures. It doesn't actually add any functionality that you didn't have before but it makes the whole experience more organic and you forget you're using a computer. That's what apple does right. This machine is a big step b/c it's shedding unnecessary historical devices like the optical drive. It's leaping into a world where there is always a connection between machines and to the internet. All the while they are meeting and sometimes surpassing old functionality with software that makes networking a lot easier (bonjour, time-capsule etc.) While slashdot is lamenting the lack of "options" apple is striving toward a machine with no ports and no keyboard. They want as little friction as possible between you and your experience. The macbook air is just a temporary stop-off on this trajectory.

Zak 19y ago
Apple is sometimes a bit premature about dropping legacy tech. They eliminated the floppy drive from all their models before USB flash drives were common, for example. The lack of an optical drive is appropriate for a subnotebook, but I've found myself needing wired ethernet quite a bit during the past year. Of course, there are USB ethernet adapters, but that takes up the only USB port. There are USB hubs, but at that point there's enough random crap to carry around to negate much of the compactness of this machine.
- derefr 19y ago
  Thus comes a complementary product, the Airport Express. Normally just a wireless router with an AirTunes doodad, it could be remarketed in this case as the Air's "wireless-to-Ethernet adapter."
  - Zak 19y ago
    Do they have some new gigabit wireless protocol I didn't know about? If not, it will take about 20 times as long to transfer a large amount of data.
    - derefr 19y ago

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

gibsonf1 19y ago

Now that is a sweet looking machine.

gibsonf1 19y ago
I just checked SBCL (Lisp), and they support Mac OS X :)
mhb 19y ago
Agreed. But I wish they would stop mentioning how thick it is at the edge.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  Perfection is difficult :)

ardit33 19y ago

I don't know, but what's the big hoopla about it? It is very thin, and light, but at $1,800 you are paying very dearly for a machine like that it is not that powerful.

gibsonf1 19y ago
The power of it is being able to easily take it wherever you want. Right now I have a very powerful Dell Inpiron 9400, and it is heavy. I only take it on major trips. With the Mac Air, I can easily take it with me whenever I need it without a second thought. Also, I want to use if for remote coding, and with sbcl/emacs/slime, it is plenty powerful. Killer feature: extreme portablility with very good power. And.. It is simply beautiful. It looks like a dream from a futuristic scifi movie. In fact, this may be the most beautiful computer to date - but I have to see it in person to confirm. (I still remember going crazy over the Next computer when it came out)
- manvsmachine 19y ago
  Yes, it's portable, but I'm kinda curious about how it would be to work with it over long periods of time. Considering how thin it is, I would think that there would be a pretty serious learning curve when it comes to typing. If, in fact, the keyboard is implemented so that you don't feel like you're typing on the tabletop, this will probably be a winner due to the weight savings. I could care less if they make it any smaller, if the regular MacBook only weighed a couple pounds, I would probably own one right now.
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    I would this would be a benefit, having a keyboard so thin it feels like typing on the tabletop. Wouldn't that lessen the risk of RSI?
- ardit33 19y ago
  Yes, I have that dell too, and it is powerful and heavy. But, for 1800, you can buy that, and the Asus Eee PC, so you can have them both, one very powerful machine, and one very portable one, for even cheaper than the Mac air.

ivankirigin 19y ago

I've been thinking about an ideal working setup. Lots of people fantasize about these things. I used to have two 24" monitors with a pansy dell laptop to power them. Now I have just a 17" MacBookPro. It's excellent, but I could use more pixels. The ideal setup would be a MacPro with 2 30" screens, with something like MacBook Air setup to mirror my configuration. It would be docked like my iPhone, auto-install software that I install on the desktop, auto-configure to match the relevant system settings, auto-update the local repository that I'm developing, etc. Any time, when you need portability, you could take the Air. I'm sure a simple script could get most of this done on a local wireless network. Too bad I don't have $13K to spend on it ... yet.

ivankirigin 19y ago
To be technically correct, the ideal monitor setup is N M" screens, where N is 1 greater than your current number, each currently (M-2)"
- pchristensen 19y ago
  This would get my +10 upvote of the day
- tb 19y ago
  I believe that ideal monitor count goes up in a Fibbonaci sequence. e.g. When I had two monitors, I wanted three - now that I have three, I reckon five would be brilliant.
alaskamiller 19y ago
This is where .Mac's BackToMyMac really shines: http://www.apple.com/dotmac/backtomymac.html http://www.apple.com/dotmac/backtomymac.html They should have pushed this as well in the keynote. I'll have a MacPro/iMac, or even a MacBook Pro, on my desk and when I need to go to catch a flight, show a keynote presentation, or do some typing somewhere, I'll just grab the Air and walk away. Come back and everything's resynced and backed up on my Time Capsule. My current system involves juggling my desktop, my dell laptop, and my macbooks, along with like 15 different drives.