MacBook Air
So yesterday, I said to not buy anything from Apple because today they’d be possibly announcing some new products. Well they did indeed announce a few new things and I bought one of them, the MacBook Air:
It had been long rumoured that Apple would release a sub-notebook and I had guessed that it would fall (pricewise) between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro which it did. My guess was actually $1800 and it lists for $1799US. Strangely it’s STILL more in Canada despite the strong dollar (although slipping a little lately) coming in at $1899.
One of the expected rumours would be that it had a solid state drive (SSD) which means a flash memory based hard drive with no moving parts. It can come with that as an option (over $1000) which is pretty much in line with a similar drive Dell sells as an addon to one of their sub notebooks (the Apple tax in effect). I declined that option as it’s just not worth that much to me and would be cheaper to replace the moving-parts hard drive many times over instead. Plus, it’s a sure thing that SSD’s will drop in price as they become more mainstream and could potentially be swapped into the Air at a later point in time.
My ship date is February 6th with expected delivery by the 18th (just in time for Northern Voice and SXSW!) although past experience with Apple shipping is that these dates are always very conservative and it will most likely arrive much sooner. I also didn’t pay for the expedited shipping (an extra $23) since in the past, new products tended to ship as soon as they were ready so I may end up getting it as soon as a friend that paid for the faster shipping.
Let the MacBook Air race from China begin!
Expect more updates once I get it and some comparisions to current MacBook, Powerbooks and my (potentially for sale) eeePC.
It seems to me that the eeePC is still a very different beast — it is actually small, while the MacBook Air is (to oversimplify) a much thinner and lighter MacBook, having exactly the same footprint dimensions.
In other words, if you find the extra-small size of the eeePC, or really like your old 12″ PowerBook or iBook, the MacBook Air may not really offer a replacement. But if your laptop bag is always bulging (ahem), the Air can help slim it down.
I agree with you Derek….but after having the eeePC for a few months now, I find myself missing OSX on my laptop. Linux and all it’s variants are really coming of age but they still aren’t OSX.
Believe me I considered getting a fully loaded MacBook or even going up to a MBP….the MBA falls in between those two in many ways….and falls short in others. I had to decide between size and performance mostly. The MBA has a number of different features that neither of the current laptops have that I’m excited to try out as well as being an acceptable weight.
When the MacBook came out, it just wasn’t that much better than my 12″ Powerbook – at least not enough to justify and the MBP was too big for me – I didn’t want to lug around a 15″ laptop.
Unlike many other MBP/MacBook users, the MBA won’t be my primary machine (neither was the eeePC) – having a fully loaded iMac and a G5 Powermac at home fills that need just fine.
This is also my first new Mac computer in a couple of years (Powerbook was 3 1/2 and the iMac is closing in on 2)…and the first time that I can remember being a rev 1.0 adopter of portable Apple computers (iPhone/iPods aside)…which did make me think about it for a bit due to previous issues friends have had with the initial aluminum Powerbooks and MacBooks.
I haven’t fully decided what I’m going to do with the eeePC yet…my wife may keep it or I’ll sell it. It’s price point *almost* makes it worth keeping just to play with….I did say almost.
As the friend who was suckered into spending the extra $23 I guess we’ll see. Hmm… expedited shipping: $23. The chance of getting it a day or two before you and actually being able to beat you to a blog post: priceless ;).
so how much for the eeepc? :)
Chico: come by my desk and we can do a deal ;)
I hope you get this before Northern Voice so I can see it in action while I’m out there :) I’ve been thinking mac lately, and this is a nice looking little option they’ve just announced :P