There’s been a lot of whining about the MacBook Air. Some of it may be justified—I don’t know, I still pre-ordered one—but there’s one point of contention in particular that confuses me.
It’s the same size as the MacBook! Only thinner! And lighter! This isn’t a real subnotebook!
Okay. Imagine if it were 9 inches across instead of 12. What would this do for you?
Would it be easier to transport? It’s still not going to fit in your pocket, unless you’re a scary kind of guy who wears ginormous trenchcoats. You’re still going to need to put it in a bag to move it around. It’s basically the size of a notebook or normal paper, so it’s hardly going to be the limiting factor in bag size.
Would it be easier to use? Yes, if a smaller keyboard makes it easier to use. I don’t know about you guys, but I have full-sized fingers, and they like a full-sized keyboard. And the screen resolution on 12″ PowerBooks makes me cry.
Would it be more powerful somehow? Come on. The motherboard is already the size of two playing cards.
Honestly, I don’t understand the little-tiny-laptop thing. Devices are either pocket-sized or bag-sized. Anything in between is really just bag-sized pretending to be… I’m not even sure what. Levitation-sized? That would be pretty awesome, but unlikely until the MacBook Lighter-than-Air.
The Conversation {6 comments}
Handbook-sized? Handbook-wielders are people too, y’know.
Handbook? _Handbook?_ Handbag, obviously. Duh.
Hah! I totally forgot about them. True. I guess this may be why everyone’s saying women are into this market.
I have a smallish messenger bag kind of thing, but the Air will still fit just fine.
ahruman got it.
My purse is not that small, and a subnotebook that would fit into it would rock (think the size of some of those UMPCs). My iPhone isn’t fantastic for some things I’d like to do on the road (and speaking of fitting in pockets, even my iPhone won’t fit into some of mine if there are any pockets to begin with..alas, the curse of wearing girl-pants), and lugging around my MacBook isn’t always feasible because the laptop with the thinnest sleeve I have is still bigger than my purse.
I think what I would have liked and what I wish was released at macworld was a smaller subnotebook that weighed less and came with a removable battery and possibly more ports. I could give up the latter two if it was truly light. I don’t even need power. I would something physically bigger than the iPhone that runs OS X and the apps I want…things like colloquy, safari, textmate, nnw, skype, adium, intellij…nothing like Final Cut Studio.
But I think that dream will have to be shelved, along with that midsized tower without xeons that should go between the iMac and Mac Pro and Macs that have new and good video cards for some serious gaming..sigh.
Hm, okay, I see. But wouldn’t it have to be really small to fit in a purse? I mean, do any of the other sub-notebooks fit? You’re definitely right that there’s a market for something in between, but it’s really for a different use case: having a full screen and keyboard makes the MBA a viable all-the-time notebook for most of those who have a desktop at home, despite its maybe-deficiencies. Something that fit in a purse couldn’t really be used like that: the keyboard would be too small and the screen resolution too limiting.
PS: Does anyone actually do the whole keep-an-extra-battery-charged-and-with-them-all-the-time thing? I don’t understand the complaining about that.
Hmmm, some do and some don’t. I suppose it depends on how big your purse is and how small the subnotebook is, etc. But yeah, the Air seems to be for a different purpose. Still torn over whether or not I should get one, despite all those things I don’t like about it.
I do the battery thing all the time. It’s that, lugging around the adapter, or both. Sometimes I have classes all day and have no convenient time/place to plug it in and having that extra battery really comes in handy.
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