Why Not Go For Macbook Air?
I was, still am a bit, ecstatic about the Macbook Air. Seeing pictures of it and watching the tour really attracted me. But I won’t be getting one for a while. Here are my reasons:
- Battery not replaceable. For my iPhone, not a care since all my cellphones have never needed to change the battery. But for a laptop? Five hours run time is cool and all, but with my current Macbook Pro and its spare battery, I can run it for nearly 7-8 hours. Enough time to fiddle on it at the airport and still enough juice to play with it in-flight (though it’s hard to use if the passenger in front slides his seat back). Even if I don’t travel often, not having the ability to swap the batteries is a major factor for me not to get a Macbook Air.
- No expansion slot. I just bought an ExpressCard/34 to read the SD card for my camera so I don’t waste its battery syncing it to my laptop. At first, I wondered what the heck I was going to use that expansion slot for. Now, I can’t see not having it. There’s the Lexar JumpDrive Trio which was awesome when I had it, but I gave it to a friend. Also, read the next bullet.
- One USB port. At home, I’d only use the USB port to sync/charge my iPhone. Traveling? It’d be used to not only sync/charge my iPhone, but charge my Jawbone bluetooth headset, use the external SuperDrive (maybe not often), used with the JumpDrive Trio or similar product to download my photos from the SD card or just connect my camera to it. Oh! And I can’t do any of these if I want to be connected to the internet at a location where I need to use an Ethernet cable since I have to use the USB to Ethernet cable adapter.
- No built-in Ethernet port. See previous bullet why this is a BAD thing.
- Shoddy graphics card. I have a desktop rig to play games, but sometimes I want to play on my laptop somewhere else in the house (or elsewhere even). The games I play, I won’t be able to with the Macbook Air (at least not enjoyably). My Macbook Pro, though, is cherry.
- Minuscule drive space. 80 Gigs? Too small and if given the option, I’d go with Solid State Drive any day, but again too small (64Gigs). My gaming rig is just that… for gaming. My laptop will be the command center of my life and thus will hold all of my writing, photos, music, movies, expenses (when I get my ass into gear) and whatever development projects I do. Not to mention that I have Parallel Desktop and Vista installed for any work-related stuff I’d have to do.
While the Macbook Air is filled to the brim with Hot, Sexy and Cool, I think Apple went a bit too far with Form and left out too much Function. Either put back a built-in Ethernet port or add a secondary USB and it would be much more attractive. I don’t see how you can add in a beefier graphics card but then again, the Macbook Air isn’t targeted to gamers (or media editing maniacs, for that matter). But even the demographics they are going for may not like it much when in order for them to get stuff done, they have to hassle and juggle with adapters.
I’m really attracted to the new laptop, but even if my Macbook Pro is heftier, the weight is proportional to its features. The Macbook Air just seems like a downgrade in comparison. I’m hoping that the next version will have a bigger SSD drive and at least another USB port. I don’t know if they’d be able to make replaceable batteries for the Air, but that’d be good too, because while I can deal with not pimping it in an airplane, I don’t think I could lose my command center while Apple replaces my battery. That is unless, it’s made known that Apple Store Geeks can replace them. Until then, I get plenty of love from my MBP.
