In response to Wild Willie's comment on my Macworld Keynote Speech reminder yesterday, THAT IS THIN! Sweeeeeeeet, indeed!
Not exactly the Earth shattering news that the introduction of the iPhone was last year, but this new MacBook Air is still pretty jaw-droppingly skinny.
I'm curious to see how movie rentals on iTunes works out. I've kind of gotten used to the low-pressure Netflix system where I can have a DVD sitting around for months, and not feel any rush to watch it. And considering the sloooooooooow DSL connection in my current residence right now, it just isn't practical for me to take advantage of this new Apple service.
I don't know--I still haven't gotten into this whole online music/movie store thing. The wife and I spent many a date night heading over to the local video store and perusing the aisles for some obscure movie we'd never heard of, but sounded good based on the descriptions on the box. I think there's a romance to that sort of thing that gets lost if you're sitting on your couch, flipping through iTunes on your Apple TV, and picking a flick. Same goes for music. Something about heading to a great independent music store like Waterloo Records in Austin or Ear X-tacy in Louisville, perusing through the listening stations and getting that warm fuzzy feeling when you discover a new artist you'd never heard about before? All lost when you try and do the same thing online. CD's seem to be slowly going the way of the record LP and the cassette tape. And even though the battle for high definition video may be won by Blu-Ray in the next year or so, it might be a moot point as the world moves to downloaded content instead.
I love the innovations that Apple has made for us in the past few years, but at times, I miss the world before them.
4 comments:
A few thoughts ...
First, I want one.
Second, I am a little surprised that it doesn't have a dvd rom drive, but if you have another Mac (which I do) you just pop the disc into the drive of the other computer and the Air reads it wirelessly just like it is its own drive.
Third, the touch pad technology (swipe, zoom in, zoom out) are pretty cool.
Fourth, the backlight keyboard was a great idea.
Fifth, I want one, but darnit I don't even have enough money to get Leopard.
But what would you need a DVD drive for? About the only time I ever use mine on my current iBook is to watch movies on planes. I'm telling you, man, it won't be long before nothing is on physical portable storage media. And just think how people reacted when the first iMacs came out years ago that only had a CD-ROM drive and didn't include floppy drives. Floppy drives--man, I feel old.
I especially like the option of getting a solid-state hard drive--I always worry my computer will crash someday because the hard drive is spinning all day long.
I sort of want one, but boy is it pricey. I'm not sure I travel enough to justify the expense. Can't wait to play with one in the nearest Apple Store soon, though.
Explain this solid state hard drive business. can you store more on it? is it something that doesn't crash?
A solid state drive is kind of like flash memory--no moving parts, which should translate into less heat, less noise, and less chance of accidently scratching a spinning disk if you accidently drop your laptop. I don't think the capacity of these things is as high as hard drives, but without the need of moving parts, I think it has the potential to cram much more information into a tiny amount of space.
Just seems like a cool novelty to have right now, but I'm not sure it's all that practical unless you really move around with your laptop--it jacks up the price an extra $1300 and you get 16 GB less memory.
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