Is the Macbook Air really as great as Apple and its devotees tell us?
It is amazing how Apple can convince people their stuff is so wonderful, to the extent that reviewers are prepared to brush aside some obvious shortcomings and tactics in their products. And so it is with the new ‘thin’ Mac laptop, the Macbook Lite.
Apple can produce products with limited or proprietary features and get away with it. If Microsoft tried similar things there would be howling from the rooftops, Apple gets a much easier ride.
Apple also manages to promote ‘special’ features that are also available Windows users, but you’d think that Apple had a lock on the idea.
Now before the Apple zealots start sending their hate mail let me say that Apple does some great things. The iPod is a wonderful piece of equipment and deserves market leadership. The iTouch has some issues but is my favorite gadget of recent years. My Macbook has given good service for many years and I’ve been happy to recommend a Macbook over Windows laptops for some of my friends.
But I could not recommend the Macbook Lite to anyone for one simple reason – the non-replaceable battery.
The fixed battery is a great feature, for Apple. The iPods have the same built-in obsolescence. It ensures that people will buy iPods more frequently that they might otherwise do. The success of the in-built battery has led Apple to try the same trick with the more expensive Macbook Lite.
Most reviewers mention the battery issue but don’t consider it a big problem. I was struck by one reviewer who said that the fixed battery wasn’t a problem because most laptops are obsolete before the battery degrades. Only someone who gets a fresh laptop on a regular basis could say such a thing.
Out in the real world, the battery is usually the first thing to go in a portable computer. Over time the battery holds less of a charge and can’t be away from AC power for too long. I’ve seen many laptops still giving good service after 5 years, but only if they are always plugged in.
The other option is to buy a replacement battery, which usually isn’t too hard.
But that’s not an option for the Macbook Lite – as the battery degrades so does your entire investment in a thin computer.
A similar argument applies to the memory on the Macbook Lite, you’re stuck with the fixed configurations available. On most laptops you can upgrade the memory at a later time (it’s a cheap way to keep an older laptop relevant).
More reviewer ink is spent on the omission of a CD/DVD drive from the Macbook Lite. Personally I don’t see this as a big problem. To make a thin laptop the designers have to drop an optical drive option in favour of a smaller size. I’ve been happily using the IBM/Lenovo X series laptops for many years and choose the smaller/lighter machine over a CD/DVD drive I’d rarely use on the road.
An optical drive takes up a lot of battery life so while the idea of playing DVD movies is enticing, it usually takes up a lot of power (and you have to carry around the disks). These days there are various options for copying DVD’s to the hard drive for later playback. Music can be ripped to MP3 files by Windows Media Player (among many, many programs).
Apple’s Remote Disk features on the Macbook Lite lets you access an optical drive on another Mac computer – which presumes you have another Mac available. It sounds like a ground-breaking idea and you’d be forgiven for thinking it is something new from the glowing coverage. A pity that Windows users have been able to do the same thing for many years.
Any Windows drive, including a CD/DVD drive, can be shared for access across the network. It’s not normally done for optical drives but it’s something that savvy Windows users have done for years. Simply right-click on the optical drive icon, choose Share and setup access as you can with any other drive. From another permitted machine (including a Macintosh computer) the shared optical drive will appear.
Since the Macbook lacks Ethernet, mobile broadband and many other options you’d think the designers would put in many USB or Firewire sockets – but there’s only one USB socket.
In short, think twice and thrice about a Macbook Lite, you’ll win coolness points with your friends for a while but in the end you’ll get more and better options from other laptops (Mac or Windows).
