Macbook Air: Perpetuating the myth

Jan 24, 2008 | Comment | Tags: , ,

Which myth would that be, you ask?

You know, the one that says Apple products are proprietary and expensive and overvalued. The one that says that Apple customers only buy their products as status symbols - that they are zealots who will drink whatever Kool-Aid is poured from the pitcher that is Cupertino. ‘Apple owners have more money than brains’ seems to be the popular consensus in the eternal ‘Mac vs. PC’ flamewar, despite the mainstream success of the overwhelmingly ubiquitous iPod.

Ok, you might say, big deal…Apple just posted $10 billion in revenue. If being the company that caters to trendy eccentrics with money is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

Sure, that’s a perfectly valid way to look at it. Unless you’re one of the Mac faithful who have gotten used to the Apple of the past decade…the one that innovates and pushes boundaries and makes the impossible seem obvious. In which case you’re shaking your head and wondering why Apple is releasing the Macbook Air amid such fanfare. For that matter, look at what happened to Apples stock after Macworld…people expect more from Apple, and this time they simply didn’t deliver.

Yes, it’s a stunning, sleek machine. And yes, the dimensions and weight and design are very nice; unfortunately the rest of the package isn’t. The internet has been quite vocal about the perceived flaws of the Air: inaccessible battery, poor resolution, lack of optical drive, a single USB port, no firewire, slow cpu, small capacity hard drive, limited memory, no ethernet and on and on, ad nauseam.

But that’s not the deal killer: the price is. If Apple had released the Air as a sub-$1000 laptop (which it almost certainly could have), it would have been a blockbuster of epic proportions. Tell me you wouldn’t have ordered one the first day if this thing had been priced at $699 and $1399 instead of a thousand clams more. Tell me that the entire PC industry wouldn’t have started shaking in it’s shoes at the thought of Mom and Dad buying little Timmy an Apple laptop instead of a Dell or HP or whatever else is on sale at Wal-Mart.

But instead, they priced it at substantially more than a similarly outfitted sub-notebook, stuffed it in a pretty case and called it a day. They overpriced it, under-powered it and made it a boutique item that will one day be spoken of in the same hushed tones used when discussing the Cube. How pretty it is, they’ll say. How lightweight and elegant and sleek it is, they will coo. But alas, say these future Mac fans, it was just a generic computer stuffed inside a beautiful facade… a Boxster body astride a Kia — a golden baked ravioli stuffed with deviled ham. Ok, that was a bad analogy, but you get the point.

There’s simply nothing new in the Air, aside from the smell of cash burning holes in pockets. There is no expansion capability that will allow you to use the latest peripherals a year from now. No built-in high speed WAN option, no nth generation storage device (SSD? Puh-lease) and no upcoming standard that needs a kick-start (USB3, FW800?). It’s a plain jane computer that makes using it slightly inconvenient to the person who has just plunked down a wad of cash for it.

Initial sales might be high…we’ll have to wait and see. But unless there is a drastic change in hardware or price, long term sales are going to be anemic at best. Niche doesn’t pay the pickle man.

Which begs the question: who is going to buy the Air? Well, there are the bleeding edge people who don’t care what it is as long as no one else has it, of course.

But it leaves the rabid Mac fans - the ones who give Apple the benefit of the doubt when they release something different. But this time, we are getting burned. Because this time, instead of being able to smile and take pride in how cutting edge we are with our technology, we’re instead making the case for those who point their fingers at Apple users and deem us elitist, brainwashed sheep.

See, when we buy our iPods and iPhones and Macbook Pros, we buy them knowing that what we are getting is top of the line. That it is the culmination of dozens of brilliant minds who have taken the best concepts available at the time and taken them one step forward. That two years from now, our item is going to be nearly as valuable as it is now and that it will be able to handle whatever is technologically hot at the time. We know that the people and the company behind what we’ve purchased have combined form with function while still pushing the envelope.

steverino With the Air, the only envelope Apple is pushing is manila.

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Viewing 6 Comments

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    I agree that the Macbook Air is a bit much for what your getting for right now.

    Trying to think about why Apple priced this the way they did though, I think they did it because they didn't want to alienate their other notebooks, having everybody just buy the Air and ignore the Macbook and Macbook Pro. I also believe that at the current price point, not a whole lot of people will be buying the air and therefore Apple will have time to ramp up production on the product.

    Honestly. I'd have to say though, one of the biggest factors Apple probably looked at when pricing the notebook is looking at competition, namely Sony's TZ series notebooks, of which are slightly more expensive than the MB Air. If all you wanted was a featured notebook that was 3lbs and you looked at Sony's TZ and Apples Air, then it would all just come down to which compromises you wanted to make for that 3lbs.
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    AM: it's one heck of an expensive accessory, which is kind of my point: spending way too much for way too little gives credence to the elitist view of Mac users.

    I'll be frank: if I had the extra money for something like this, I'd like to have it. But if it's just for casual use, I'm perfectly happy with my EEE and the extra cash.
    :)
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    I think its you who are "perpetuating the myth".
    Apple never makes products for the "masses" - if it did it would be killed by the Asus's and Lenovo and other mass producing PC companies. I buy Apple products because each product is extremely functional and does "just enough" for the target market.
    Thats why there's no $100 iPod's with crappy screens and menu's (BUT oooh I got an FM Tuner - which seems to be what every crappy mp3 payer under $100 seems to be sporting)
    Thats why there's no $30 Airport Base station or a $300 Apple Desktop.
    Apple can never survive making "me-too" products.
    Each feature Apple ha dropped from the Air is something I have not used in the last 6 months on my PB: Ethernet port, Modem (over 2 years!), Firewire port, DVD Burner - its impressive how Apple can "guess" what technology is going to be obsolete and move on... remember the floppy?

    Having tried out the Air, I can say that this is one heck of solidly built portable for the size. This is targeted as a accessory TO the iPod or iPhone.

    They did not discontinue the MacBook or the MB Pro - so why do you think there will not be an update?

    And finally to those who say SSD is at a "hefty premium" - go ahead and find another laptop with an SSID that is cheaper or is as well designed - SSD is simply expensive - dont you get that?

    Yes, the Air is not for you and me - but there are millions of computer users who do not want a MacBook or MBPro and just want to use the Internet, send e-mail, watch a few movies bought/rented over the Internet - thats the direction with the Air - its just a beginning!
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    Right on the money!
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    i think everyone is missing the point. if you want a portable desktop- buy a macbook pro. if you want a real laptop- buy the macbook air. this (like all laptops) is not designed to replace your desktop. playing games, ripping dvds, and holding onto 500 gigabytes of music and movie is not for a laptop. buy a desktop. the size is the best part. everyone was upset with the iphone- not enough memory, too big, i can't control my garage door opener with it, i cannot open tins of tuna with it.
    name another company that has a phone that does what apple's does. you cannot. name another company that made a very portable laptop. you cannot. i think that people just want to be able to do the same with a laptop that you can do with a desktop. nothing is ever good enough. buy a macbook pro if you need a portable desktop.

    and you can get to the battery very easily if you have a torque bit and five minutes.
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    It's easy to agree with the thrust of this article - at the current prices Mac Air is destined to be a niche product - but it does break some new ground. The idea of relying entirely on the air interface (wireless) is new for a notebook. By doing this Apple has done away with the the optical drive as well as Ethernet and Firewire interfaces, A single USB is retained as a means of plugging in an external Ethernet, optical drive or flash drive. These are just fall-back items if no wireless network is available. It's an interesting concept, though it is market-limiting. Freely accessible WiFi may be ubiquitous in the US, but that's not neceesarily the case elsewhere in the world. Two other innovations are noteworthy: solid-state disk (but at a hefty price premium), and the enhanced trackpad. Mac Air seems to be a testbed for the last two features which we will presumably see in other Macbook products. My biggest disappointment is that Macbook Pro is so long neglected - no security devices, no SSD, no Blu Ray drive - it's being eclipsed by the latest Windows notebooks.
 

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