Last week was very busy at work, so I'm a little late in posting my thoughts about Steve Jobs' announcements at Macworld last week. One advantage of waiting is that I've had a chance to read and hear a lot of others' reactions and I have to admit that I've been quite surprised at the amount of negative commentary surrounding the MacBook Air. While it's a masterpiece of engineering and design, it seems that many people wanted an ultralight without compromise. Good luck with that. I don't know where folks get the idea that they're entitled to slag off on a product simply because it doesn't exactly meet all their fantasies. Maybe it makes them feel good about themselves, but that reveals a pretty sad level of self esteem on the part of the commenter.
Personally, the MacBook Air isn't everything I was hoping for, either, but it's a good product that's going to sell like hotcakes. I was hoping for a 12" form factor, like the old PowerBook G4 12", because it makes it much easier to use the computer in cramped coach airplane seats (or anywhere else where space is tight). The Air actually has nearly the same footprint as a MacBook, however, so the real value of the Air is its light weight and visually impressive thinness. One other thing that surprised me was the complete lack of a FireWire port. It should have been easy to provide an unpowered (4-pin) port within the existing form factor, so I wonder if this presages a quiet fadeaway of FireWire on future Apple products like we've seen with the iPod.
Some folks have carped about the slower processor in the Air, but frankly my workflow bottlenecks at hard disk access times, not raw CPU power, so I'd willingly make the Air's MHz trade-off. On the other hand, the Air's measly 80 GB hard disk is surprising in light of the availability of a 160 GB version in the same form factor. I wonder if there's a supply constraint? (UPDATE: It seems that the MBA uses a single-platter version of this drive, and that the 160 GB version with two platters is 1mm thicker, so the 160 GB version will not fit.)
In summary, if I were a road warrior as in the days of old I'd have already placed an order for an Air just to lighten my backpack's load. The me of today, however, would likely spring for a MacBook.
The other announcement that interested me was the Take 2 version of the Apple TV. Since I finally bought a new computer monitor and moved my Mac mini back to my office desk I've been looking for a good media extender to get A/V over to my home stereo. The initial version of the Apple TV didn't impress me because it lacked 5.1 Dolby Digital output, though, so I figured I'd have to eventually spring for another Mac mini to get the DD audio output and at the same time also get 1080p. (Apple says that you need at least 128 MB of video RAM to be able to output 1080p smoothly, but quite a few folks have said that the latest minis with the 2.0 GHz processor do a pretty good job regardless.) Now, however, the Take 2 release enables 5.1 DD output and I can live quite happily with 720p output—especially when it means I can save $570 over a Mac mini.
The only remaining question is whether folks will be able to figure out what format Apple is using to store the DD. There are hacks out there right now to allow AC3 pass-through for DVD content you've ripped yourself, but I must be getting old, as I'm really not interested in hacking stuff any longer. I'd like to be able to rip all the DVDs I own, just like I've ripped all the audio CDs I own, and then be able to instantly call up any movie via Front Row. I give the smart folks out there a couple of weeks after they get their hands on the Take 2 update to figure it out (and maybe even update Handbrake in the process).
As for the other announcements at the show, I was quite pleasantly surprised at the enhancements in v1.1.3 of the iPhone software. The GPS-free location service and improved Google Maps interface is excellent functionality and really remedies several painful usability points. The $20 fee to upgrade for iTouch users seems excessive, though. Lastly, the iTunes movie rentals aren't something I see myself taking advantage of—there's not a large enough selection of movies currently, and I already struggle to keep my NetFlix queue below 100 movies. While the iTunes Store's selection will likely improve, my Netflix queue struggle likely won't.
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