Apple specializes in pain!

The Macbook Air has been released, and the Apple faithful rejoiced! There was much celebrating in the streets as the fruity faithful expressed the unending joy brought about by the arrival of yet another incredible product destined to be hailed as the greatest of its generation!

Or something like that. Maybe.

So, lets see what makes it so great. For starters, its slim as hell. So slim, that it would slide right through your asscrack. That's no joke. And light too, (3lbs) light enough that you wouldn't feel uncomfortable reaching around to engage in said maneuver. Not that it belongs in your asscrack. Not at that price, anyway. 1800 bucks makes it far too valuable for toilet paper duty.

The trackpad is large, and the controls useful and intuitive. The backlit keyboard is surprisingly spacious, and the 13.3inch display is nice and clean. It comes with a camera that can record in 640x480 resolution, as well as a microphone. Even power seems adequate for something so small, with a 1.6ghz Intel Core 2 Duo on tap (redesigned to be 60% smaller), 2 GB of RAM and 80GB of hard drive space. (Lame on board intel graphics, but i don't think anyone expects much in the way of graphical prowess out of something so small. For that price, yes, but not that size. We'll call it a trade-off.)

The Air sports a light and cool all aluminium chassis, but unfortunately its not enough to keep the Intel chip happy. So, when the heat ramps up, as it inevitably does, the processor will disable one of the running cores to reduce heat production. So, it shouldn't catch on fire, but it just won't run at full power.

Still, sounds pretty decent. So what are we missing? An optical drive, for one. No cd's or dvd's for this baby. That would make it too fat. Instead, it has software that, if you install said software on another computer...you can use the optical drive on THAT computer. Sweet. Or you can buy an expansion drive for a few hundred bucks. But carrying that around kind of messes with the whole point of havin a small laptop, doesn't it? So what else. There's no ethernet port either. Only wireless for the Macbook Air. 802.11 a/b/g and draft n. Having draft n sucks on something that can only run wireless. But how many people use it anyway. Everyone has a nice g router with a strong signal, or if they don't, they'd better get one. If this is a problem, don't worry, there's an expension you can buy. What about USB ports? We have one! But only one: anymore would make the system far too obese. So only one expansion at a time, people. Display? There's a micro dvi port. Something that would be utterly useless without the fancy connector you get. Yay! And a 3.5mm headphone jack as well. Making the Air compatible with smaller headphones, but not larger types that require a larger port. That makes sense: Small laptop, small headphones. Large headphones aren't cool enough for the Air, they belong with the fat laptops made by other companies.

To be honest, it seems to me that all Apple has really done with the Macbook Air is externalize the girth. Its all small and dandy, until you tack on all of the extra gadgets you need just to make the thing functional. Something that adds even more to an already overblown price. It just doesn't make any sense. Especially when Asus offers a 3.8lb laptop that has all those externalized features built in.

So, in conclusion, the Macbook Air is pretty good. If you have a lot of money to burn, and don't really want to do anything with your laptop. Just buy it and be happy knowing that getting kicked in the head by everyone's favorite Silicon Valley snob is just part of being involved in electronics. Sort of an initiation, really.

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While I'm on the topic of Apple hating its consumers. I just had to point and laugh at the iPod Touch and iPhone. That poor iPhone is still barely 7 months old, yet has already suffered one major price drop, and now a significant upgrade, and the Touch is only 5 months old.

When it was released, the much hyped iPhone cost a bloody fortune. After cashing in for a couple months, Apple dropped the price. Significantly. It hurt their stock, (and consumer perception - for a week or two) but not their bottom line, which was already bloated with early sales profits. 8GB seemed like not a bad deal for a phone, but now it must seem pretty weak, with the release of the 16GB version for $100 more. And while an extra 8GB of memory almost certainly costs Apple nowhere near $100, in terms of consumer perception, its a steal. When someone is paying a premium price for their phone, an extra $100 to have double the memory really isn't a tough sell. Just remind us that we are inferior beings if we have less memory, and our wallets will open.

Now: iPod Touch. Still not impressed. As far as i'm concerned, looking at it strictly in terms of being an mp3 player (along with photos, videos, etc), its gaudy and absolutely pointless. Especially with only 16GB of memory. Now, with 32GB...my opinion hasn't changed, though I dislike it less than I did before.

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Anyone wondering about the general tone of irritation prevalent in todays rant need look no further. Yes, I may be just a *tad* crusty at Apple because my much beloved Nano has suffered from a technical failing. Aka: The battery has lost 90% of its capacity after 2 years of use. My theory: Planned obsolescence. No doubt about it, iPod (and consumer electronics sales in general) would absolutely tank if everything worked indefinitely, especially items that don't necessarily suffer from severe product cycle depreciation. Of course, going through Apple to replace the battery costs a fortune. So, in protest, I refuse to buy a new iPod, and I refuse to utilize Apples overpriced warranty service. I intend to buy a replacement battery and change it myself. So there! Take that Steve!