MacBook Air. Engineering marvel, yes. Product I need, no.

I get how hard this thing was to build. I worked in the PC business long enough to know what all has to be integrated into very tight spaces, and the thermal engineers I am sure are still sweating bullets... But really...

...all that effort and all we get is thin??? Come on! Who cares about thin?! I want battery life and versatility. I'll take another 0.25" thickness if it buys me some mAhrs. But I'll give you a mulligan on this one... a do over... form over function tradeoff... I get it.

But no wired Ethernet port? That is seriously weak. WLAN sucks in urban apartment living, and particularly when accessing corporate VPNs. Oh, but wait, there's a cool usb dongle I can use that gives me ethernet, and sucks up my only USB port... Strike one.

Mini-DVI??? Lame. Yet another dongle I need to take with me. Strike two.

MacBook Air should be called MacBook Dongle. By my fair estimate, I will need the Mini-DVI-to-VGA dongle, the USB-to-Ethernet dongle, a USB HUB to get more than one port, and a spare battery... oh wait, non-removable battery... Strike three, you're out.

Apple, please give me a MacBook Pro with:

• 13" WSXGA+ with LED backlight


• 12 hour battery life


• Gigabit Ethernet port


• Optical drive (don't get too cute, Remote Disk... really Apple??!?)

The Air makes some sense to Apple corporate from a status perspective, but as a notebook computer user, who likes nice design, but ultimately require utlity to boot, I am only willing to sacrifice so much for Geek Couture. Plus who needs all the distractions at Starbucks from people coming over asking about my computer. My Vaio TX triggers enough of that already. And in 6 months, when everyone and their mother has one of these things, or a Taiwan PC wannabe, then it won't be the aesthetic appeal I'll be thinking about... it'll be all those damn dongles.

Comments

[John Hull]

So what you really want is a Dell XPS 1330. It's pretty sweet, particularly with Ubuntu 7.10. This is what I use as my everyday system now.