Gizmos, Gadgets and Steve Jobs, Too
By DAVID POGUE
It's a rock concert! It's a pep rally! It's a news conference!
No, it's the Macworld Expo, the annual four-day trade show in San
Francisco,
where Apple introduces its latest products before adoring crowds.
On Tuesday, Steve Jobs unveiled four developments. Item 1: Time
Capsule, a
wireless backup hard drive for your entire network. It's sleek and,
considering it doubles as a wireless router, not unreasonably priced
($500
for a terabyte of storage).
Item 2: Software enhancements to the iPhone and iPod Touch. One of
them
pinpoints your current location on a Google map - pretty sneaky,
considering
these gadgets don't actually have G.P.S. (Instead, they calculate your
location by consulting signal strength from nearby wireless Internet
hot
spots and - on the iPhone - cellular towers.)
Item 3: Downloadable movies. You pay $4 for a new release, which you
must
finish watching 24 hours after you start.
That's the same deal offered by Amazon, Vudu and so on, but Apple
has deals
with every major movie studio (although the selection will be slim at
first). And you can start watching a movie on the computer, and
finish it on
your iPod or iPhone.
Item 3.5: New software and a lower price ($230) for Apple's slow-
selling
Apple TV. Now this set-top box can download rent-a-movies (and Flickr
photos, and iTunes music, and podcasts) for viewing on your TV
directly - no
computer required.
Apple's last and best announcement, though, was its hotly rumored
three-pound laptop, called the MacBook Air ($1,800). Apple says it's
the
thinnest laptop in the world, and no wonder; this thing looks like
it's
descended from a spatula.
It's a stunningly beautiful aluminum slab, three-quarters of an inch
thick.
Its edges are beveled to look even thinner. When it's on a table,
you might
mistake this laptop for a placemat.
The MacBook Air's footprint is no smaller than the existing MacBook
in the
other dimensions (12.8 by 9.8 inches).
There's some margin around the 13.3-inch screen and full-size
keyboard, and
that edge-tapering business wastes a bit of internal space.
But for anyone who shares Apple's admiration for elegance, the trade-
off is
worth it. This laptop's cool aluminum skin and smooth edges make it
ridiculously satisfying to hold, carry, open and close. You can't
take your
eyes or your hands off it.
Unlike other ultraportables, this one makes no sacrifice in screen
size,
keyboard size or battery life (Apple claims five hours a charge).
It also has an oversize trackpad that lets you scroll, rotate or
magnify
photos and other objects using iPhonish two-finger gestures (in Apple
programs only, alas). You can't make a three-pound laptop without
sacrificing something, however. And some serious sacrifices were
made on
this machine.
Here's the toughest one to take: the battery is sealed inside. You
can't
swap it out during a long flight.
That's a familiar Apple trick for saving bulk; as on the iPod and
iPhone,
sealing the battery eliminates the need for a walled compartment,
battery
contacts and a door. But when this battery no longer holds a charge, a
couple of years from now, you'll have to pay Apple $130 to install a
new
one.
The hard drive is the same miniature type that's in the iPod. Its 80
gigabytes are plenty for office work, but a little tight for big
photo or
video collections.
Just as the Web's rumor mill had predicted, you can order the
MacBook Air
with, instead, a 64-gigabyte solid-state drive (an up-and-coming
acronym to
learn: S.S.D.), meaning it's made of flash memory instead of
spinning disks.
With no moving parts, an S.S.D. is extremely rugged; it's also
supposed to
offer improved battery life and better speed, especially in starting
up and
opening programs.
Yet Apple is playing down this option, probably because these drives
are
still so small and expensive: the S.S.D. adds $1,000 to the Air's
price.
Meanwhile, Apple hasn't yet measured the speed and battery benefits,
and
doesn't yet have any S.S.D.-equipped models to test.
As on most ultraportables, the Air also sacrifices a CD/DVD drive.
You can
buy Apple's external U.S.B. drive for $100, if you're so inclined -
it's
tiny, just a hair bigger than an actual DVD.
But get this: Apple says that you don't need a CD/DVD drive at all.
Instead of burning music CDs for the car, Apple says you should get
an iPod.
Instead of playing movie DVDs, you should download movies from Apple.
Instead of backing up onto CDs, you should use Apple's new Time
Capsule
service.
Obviously, these arguments aren't exactly convincing, especially
since so
many of them involve buying more Apple stuff. At least when it comes
to the
most critical use of a CD/DVD drive - installing new software or
running
disk-repair programs - Apple offers a free workaround.
The laptop comes with a little program called Remote Disk, which you
can
carry around on a CD or a U.S.B. flash drive. It turns any other
computer -
Mac or PC - into a glorified wireless CD/DVD drive for your MacBook
Air. It
works seamlessly, even when you're accessing a Mac software
installation CD
in a Windows computer.
More sacrifices: the Air has only three jacks. They drop down as a
trio from
one edge of the machine. You get one U.S.B. jack, a video-output
jack and an
audio output.
In other words, there's no Ethernet networking jack, dial-up modem,
audio
input or FireWire connector. Apple and other companies sell external
U.S.B.
versions of these items for $30 to $40 each. But even if you buy a
U.S.B.
FireWire adapter, you can't use FireWire Disk Mode, which, on all
other Mac
models, lets you connect two computers with a single cable for
superfast
file transfers.
In other words, the name "Air" is particularly apt. It describes not
only
the laptop's aerodynamic shape, but also its nearly complete
inability to
connect to cables.
Finally, this machine comes with a 1.6-gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo
chip (a
1.8-gigahertz chip costs $300 more). That's faster than most
ultraportables,
and not underpowered by any means: During my day with one of Apple's
display
models at the show, I didn't experience a single hiccup editing
video in
iMovie, playing nine audio tracks simultaneously in GarageBand, or
even
conducting a wireless video chat with a friend in Paris. Still,
technically,
the MacBook Air, which arrives in stores in two weeks, is the
slowest Mac
available today. Even Apple's starter laptop, the $1,100 MacBook, is
faster.
It's hard to compare the MacBook Air with Windows ultraportables,
since
every company plays the compromises differently. Toshiba, Sony and
Fujitsu
all make near-three-pounders with built-in CD/DVD drives and more
jacks. But
they generally have smaller screens, slower chips, thicker bodies
and half
the memory (1 gigabyte instead of 2). And they all cost more.
Most of them also lack the standard Apple laptop goodies like an
illuminated
keyboard, built-in video camera and a magnetic power adapter that
doesn't
drag the laptop off the desk when you trip on the cord.
The new MacBook also runs cool, can use Windows and wakes from sleep
in one
second. Finally, of course, it's free from viruses and spyware, and
comes
without any installed junk heap of trialware.
Even so, the Air isn't for everyone. Bargain hunters, feature
counters and
people who don't see the value of elegance - in general, the same
people who
despised the iPhone before it came out - would be better off with a
bigger,
less expensive, more complete laptop. Thanks to the small drive
capacity,
limited connectors and missing DVD drive, the Air doesn't make a great
primary computer, either.
But as a satellite machine for travelers, executives and presenters,
it's
spectacular. Full-size screen, full-size keyboard and five-hour
battery in
three-quarters of an inch? Get psyched; this laptop is a razor-thin
slice of
heaven.
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