Apple unveiled their long rumored "ultra portable" laptop yesterday, the Macbook Air, and I'm far from impressed. I talked with a bunch of people yesterday, but I feel like it has a lot of good ideas, but the sum of its parts somehow less than the whole. An LED screen? Great idea; it's bright, saves on power, but what the hell is up with the low resolution and the inch wide bevel all along the edge of the screen. A solid state drive? Great idea; insanely fast, saves on power, but it's a $1,000 upgrade, and for all that money I only get 64gb? Five hour per battery charge? Awesome, if I believe Apple. I'm supposed to get 3+ hours on my Macbook Pro, but I don't get anywhere close to that and I'm on my second battery. Also, I can't change the battery myself? Lame. I think the multi-touch trackpad is pretty cool, but it feels a little tacked on. The only thing I can use it for is viewing photos? Great, that'll be useful for like 1% of my computer time. All of that, and it's still upwards of $3,000 just to take advantage of the best options? No thank you.
Again, these are the beginnings of trends I'm very interested in. I like the LED screen, LOVE the solid state drive, and there's no denying it's in a sexy package, but I think I'll pass (not that I had any choice in the matter considering the price). I'm sure most of these features will be implemented into the rest of the Macbook line at some point this year (hopefully sooner rather than later), and maybe then it'll be a little more polished. Shooting for the stars here, but it'd be awesome to see a dual drive option. My operating system and other files on a solid state drive for speed and low power consumption, and a traditional drive for the space. It'd be like the hybrid of hard-drives.
The Time Capsule though? Me likey.
