Macbook Air: The downside

Well, a slight problem would be the lack of a firewire port. I bet some hardware developer will come up with a firewire hub/cable with one end as a Micro DVI and another as a place to connect a Firewire cable, since most DVI displays have infused firewire ports.

For me, the biggest downer is the lack of firewire. With the lack of the optical drive, I can't imagine losing firewire simply because of target disk mode. I don't understand how they could lose one of the single most useful features of mac portables...

Chris

We can all say we don't need this and we don't need that. But I know you will feel the lack of the Macbook Airs features when you need them. You might be on a trip and need to re-install or install some software and you can't. What happens if the machine does not start up? how do you reboot from a CD??? Apple tech support will tell you to go buy the external optical drive then you will have this thin little mac with all this junk hanging off it.
I think the Macbook Air is junk at 1700.00. If the machine was a 5" mini computer you could fit in your breast pocket or a purse and it had all the features of the MacBook Air, then Apple would have had something.

Time will tell my friends

You may know more about it from this review:
http://www.aimersoft.com/news/first-macbook-air-review.html

I am a "professional" user. I use mac's both professionally and in my family. Collectively I have pretty much have every version of the mac. Macbook Pro, MacBook, Mac Pro, Mac Mini, iMac 64.

I see this new product is sleek and interesting but I would never buy it. If you design a machine for portability then you need all the available tools for travel. True wireless ( not WiFi ) meaning 3G support ( like my EVDO expresscard ). Not being able to have multiple batteries is an other problem. No DVD another problem. Another HUGE problem is 80Gig disk space. On my macbook pro without video files but 5gig of music, I consume 90Gig.

These are all big negatives when thinking about portable computing. At least for me.

wow, what a bunch of dorks.. and even worse because you guys don't even realize how dorky you are. if you're taking the time out of your day to read and respond to a "unofficial Apple weblog" you're a power user, or an extreme geek. im sure some of you have contemplated sticking a car battery inside a mac pro and putting a 20 inch flat screen on the side of the thing so you could animate toy story 3 on the train.. but most people aren't like that.

this thing is designed for 3 groups. A. 20 somethings with to much money B. business men on the go C. girls.

anyways, like i was saying, you guys are professional dorks, which is why there is a sub set of computers offered by apple called "PRO". its not called the macbook pro air.. its not for you. get over it.

This makes me very sad! Doesn't Apple communicate with its users anymore and learn from its mistakes?

Mac Portable Battery life is generally 2 hours less then stated, so if you're lucky you'll actually get 3 hours at best. They claimed more hours in the past and I've never met anyone that actually got the specified battery life in anything Apple.

No user replaceable battery also means that in 6 months to 1 year from purchase when they tell you they were made in China and explode or go on fire, then you will need to send in the actual Mac for the recall, rather than getting the recall in the mail that seems to accompany every portable Mac, meaning; you will incur downtime and need a backup mac within 1 year, its practically guaranteed.

No extra slot inside for doubling the battery life for serious commuters?

HD's are the small and the HD upgrade downsizes the space and they call that an upgrade? Huh? Did I miss something like a place to put all of Adobe's applications? Can I wireless connect to those so I can store something for more than a day?

Speed is slower and "not revolutionary" --> at all.

Most business people will skip it without an optical drive it becomes "more work" and "harder" to use its also not cutting edge in whats inside so it counts less (no pun intended).

Very, very sad that innovation of size overpowers usability. At this point they should have made it a 9" travel laptop so we could consider it even more convenient for traveling.

Maybe the Macbook Air Pro will address all this and I will buy one and have something nice to say. Otherwise I'll stick with Apple's 2 year old technology (how unusual) that is more realistic... the old Macbook Pro line.

This is "Nothing Revolutionary" speak to your users or just stick with the iPod-ucts.

Doesn't Apple know they cannot sell compete with computers that are overpriced. Apple gives less for more $.

Just an FYI, I have and "only" use Macs since 198X when I used the Macintosh Plus. I always buy and use Apple, but I am also tired of always being behind the times and paying more for less.

Wake up Apple! Where is that iPhone and iPod ingenuity with your portables?

So this would not be useful for those who want to do some video editing? I mean, with no firewire port?

One thing that I thought about, that I have yet to see addressed is how you are supposed to (re-)install your operating system if you don't have the USB optical drive. If it supports booting from a remote optical drive over wireless networking, that would be quite a feat. (I doubt it is able to wireless network boot, however.)

downside is the form factor/design. in particular the drop down door for the ports. it looks cheesy. something u'd see on a compaq laptop. here's my solution:

keep the nice curved top (display) but don't curve the bottom so aggressively. the sides should be parallel so that all ports are exposed (like the mb and mbp) and have a beveled edge. u would also be able to use the same magsafe conn and save on some engineering funds.

it seems like the design came first and then engineers had to work around it. what happened to form follows function.

it'd also be nice if it had more than 1 usb port. once u get back to the desk u immediately have to plug it into a hub. boo!