Another earthshaking innovation from Apple

[dbtrek]

Steve Jobs has unveiled another earthshaking technological innovation . . . the really skinny laptop! Can you feel the excitement in the air?

SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/15/apple.macworld.ap/index.html

How do the people at Apple do it? Such genius!

:P

-DBTrek

[Gene Steinberg]

Originally Posted by dbtrek

Steve Jobs has unveiled another earthshaking technological innovation . . . the really skinny laptop! Can you feel the excitement in the air?

SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/15/apple.macworld.ap/index.html

How do the people at Apple do it? Such genius!

:P

-DBTrek

As it turns out, nearly everyone is raving about its looks. Even better, it's priced below most of the brand-name competition, yet offers a larger screen a full-sized keyboard, and better performance.

But you'd rather comment on something before you see it, right?

[dbtrek]

Originally Posted by Gene Steinberg

As it turns out, nearly everyone is raving about its looks. Even better, it's priced below most of the brand-name competition, yet offers a larger screen a full-sized keyboard, and better performance.

But you'd rather comment on something before you see it, right?

My comment was aimed more at the general feeling of disappointment voiced by the media after Apple failed to live up to the hype this year. Hey, every year can't be an ipod/iphone year. This year they unveiled a skinny laptop with some wireless capability . . . forced wireless capability I should say, since they dropped things like a DVD player and ethernet port in the name of preserving 'thinness'. Good on them for their stylistic gamble, but not exactly revolutionary.

-DBTrek

[Gene Steinberg]

Originally Posted by dbtrek

My comment was aimed more at the general feeling of disappointment voiced by the media after Apple failed to live up to the hype this year. Hey, every year can't be an ipod/iphone year. This year they unveiled a skinny laptop with some wireless capability . . . forced wireless capability I should say, since they dropped things like a DVD player and ethernet port in the name of preserving 'thinness'. Good on them for their stylistic gamble, but not exactly revolutionary.

-DBTrek

What is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary:

1. Full-sized screen and keyboard. The competition in the thin and light category tends to scrimp on one or both.

2. Cheaper by hundreds of dollars than the mainstream competition from such companies as Sony.

3. Faster processor, more standard memory.

Notebooks of this sort have certain tradeoffs that you can either live with, or simply get a different model and sacrifice thinness and light weight.

[dbtrek]

Originally Posted by Gene Steinberg

3. Faster processor, more standard memory.

It's this point in particular that disappoints me. The standard MacBook air runs a core2duo at 1.6Ghz. Only 1.6? For a Core2Duo that's terrible. As for the memory, check out

http://www.apple.com/ca/macbookair/specs.html :

800MHz frontside bus

2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM on board

Why are they selling a laptop with slow memory? It could handle 2GB of 800MhZ DDR2, but they opt to give the custome 667MHz instead. Why are they being cheap with the hardware? Front side bus speeds are at what . . . 1333Mhz now? Many are running at least 1066MHz . . . so Apple is already behind the curve with their 800MHz FSB. To hand the user memory even slower than the outdated 800MHz motherboard is just cruel, don't you think?


-DBTrek

[Gene Steinberg]

Originally Posted by dbtrek

It's this point in particular that disappoints me. The standard MacBook air runs a core2duo at 1.6Ghz. Only 1.6? For a Core2Duo that's terrible. As for the memory, check out

http://www.apple.com/ca/macbookair/specs.html :

800MHz frontside bus

2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM on board

Why are they selling a laptop with slow memory? It could handle 2GB of 800MhZ DDR2, but they opt to give the custome 667MHz instead. Why are they being cheap with the hardware? Front side bus speeds are at what . . . 1333Mhz now? Many are running at least 1066MHz . . . so Apple is already behind the curve with their 800MHz FSB. To hand the user memory even slower than the outdated 800MHz motherboard is just cruel, don't you think?


-DBTrek

You need to compare this to the competition, my friend. Intel built a custom chip for this notebook to get what they could from a thin and light product of this sort. That particular chip won't be available for the rest of the industry for six months.

[dbtrek]

Originally Posted by Gene Steinberg

You need to compare this to the competition, my friend. Intel built a custom chip for this notebook to get what they could from a thin and light product of this sort. That particular chip won't be available for the rest of the industry for six months.

I'm amazed to say that you're right on this one.

I looked up various laptops in the same price range and found to my utter horror that they all had what I would consider 'slow' components. Wow. I'm pretty disappointed at the available selection of laptops for approx $1500. They're all running RAM slower than the Pentium D I bought a couple years ago. That's just sad.

I'm still wondering who Steve Jobs thinks is going to buy a Macbook Air (apart from the usual Apple fans, that is). I work with a couple of pro-Apple techs, and even they aren't too impressed with it.