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This Is One Ugly Rip-Off
Samsung copies Apple's iOS devices quite well, but their PC designers are not as deft.
The accompanying review says the Samsung Series 7's will "rival the Apple Macbook Pros in terms of beauty". Are they blind? This thing looks like the keyboard and palm rest were taken from two different prototypes and then forced to "fit" together.
PCWorld: Windows Laptop Makers Can’t Catch Up to the MacBook Air
Building a better Air - or even just a cheaper one - is proving to be difficult. Those unibody aluminum chassis on MacBooks make them really rigid despite the thin design… Challengers like the Samsung Series 9 have metal bodies, but without the satisfying stiff feel and seamless edges of one carved from a single chuck of alloy.
Looks like PCWorld has discovered Apple's unibody advantage.
Apple's Unibody Advantage
As Apple describes it, the process takes a block of aluminum and utilizes CNC (computer numerically controlled) machining to create a structural part that comprises the bulk of the device. In fact, at the time it reduced the MacBook Pro's parts by 50%, and the MacBook's by even more.
The cost for Apple to implement this new method may have been enormous (Apple spoke of a product transition coming that quarter leading to lower margins), but look at the dividends it's paying now. It isn't just the reduction in parts, but the corresponding reduction in supplier deals, manufacturing costs, and failures and rejects. Then there's the increased quality that comes with a single, solid part. Ever since that first unibody rolled off the line, other laptops, including Apple's own white MacBook at the time, felt creaky and flimsy by comparison.
This is obviously an oversimplification, but imagine writing a new program, and then placing a slab of aluminum at one end of a machine to end up with a brand new device (e.g., the latest MacBook Air) on the other. Apple can change an overall design with just new instructions for the machine.
Of course there are other parts, and much more work involved in designing a new product, but the bulk of the structure is cut from a block of metal using "an assmbley method that is simple enough that we can get it right every single time" and that "enables a level of precision that is unheard of in this industry". This must give Apple a head start on swapping designs, and in manufacturing them as well. No wonder the iPad 2 could implement a new design in just nine months.
If I was an Apple competitor, I'd be concerned about how I'll overcome that advantage.
A MacBook, an iPad, and the rest: a study in sizes
I have an original unibody 13" MacBook. I love the thing. Less than an inch thick, only 4.5 lbs, etc. Awesome machine.
Then I got an iPad. As I used the iPad more and more the MacBook was relegated to little, and then no, mobile use. My daughter ended up using it.
Yesterday I had to travel for business, which required I use Windows, so I spent last weekend dusting the MacBook off (I hadn't logged into my account since August) and getting it ready. The MacBook seemed so big and heavy that I debated whether I should still take the iPad on the trip.
I did take the iPad, and was glad I did. At a crowded airport the MacBook is like a monster to take out and use. On the plane? Please. And in the hotel room—like at home—it's so much easier to use the iPad than the seemingly massive MacBook.
Then I went into the office. This is why I'd brought the MacBook in the first place. Plug in Ethernet, fire up VMWare and Windows and work away. I looked at the sea of PC laptops (mine was the only Mac) and was struck by how huge they all were. Dells, HPs, Lenovos were in attendance, and they were all absolute monsters compared to mine. Even did a demo on a year-old (newer than mine) HP, and it was a dog performance-wise. My virtual machine-running MacBook blew it away. In the afternoon, one of the attendees looked at my machine, pinched his fingers together and said "That thing is so thin."
The moral? Size is truly relative. In the world of mobile devices doing general tasks, the iPad rules, and even the MacBook seems overblown and outdated. But get the MacBook among its PC peers and one remembers just how much it still blows the majority of them away.
Yet Another Reviewer Understands The MacBook Air
All things considered, what the new MacBook Air is, is an advancement of the laptop in ways that no other manufacturer has come close to touching. It’s not the least expensive option out there, though we wouldn’t necessarily call the most expensive option either. What the MacBook Air has done, is slowly start to transform the laptop industry much like the iPad and iOS have started to transform the mobile industry.
As people get a hold of this thing and see what it can do, it's becoming clear to some of them what this machine is really all about. It's nice to see another one on board.
It Dawns On Another One: MacBook Air Can Be Your Only PC
The 11-inch Air might be the first computer you can seriously take with you everywhere and almost never regret leaving your beefier machine at home.
While others are tripping over themselves still believing the MacBook Air must be a secondary machine, there are those seeing it's capable of being your only machine in it's own right. Even these people have a hard time coming right out and saying it, but they come oh so close.
If the 11" MacBook Air is something you can "take seriously" and have no issue with leaving "your beefier machine" behind, then it's pretty clear the beefier machine isn't even necessary for a lot of consumers in the first place. Not everyone's a geek who'll take the thing out of the box and open 40 tabs in Safari and 20 tabs in Chrome.
And that's just the 11" model, for the 13" the case is even stronger. That the 13" MacBook Air can be one's sole PC is a no-brainer to me. A threshold with UMPCs has been crossed, and the people having issues with it are the same ones who took too long realizing a laptop computer could be your sole PC (over a desktop) 5-10 years ago.
The standard 15" MacBook Pro has some explaining to do.
The maxed-out 13-inch MacBook Air remains about 10% slower than the standard 15" MacBook Pro with its significantly more powerful Core i5 processor
I know we're used to gauging the MacBook Air by the compromises one's willing to make, but I think the tide is turning on just what those compromises are. It seems to me more traditional notebooks are beginning to show compromises for which they must atone.
The "maxed-out" 13" Air and the standard 15" Pro are the same price ($1,799). With the Air you lose only 10% in speed and 70GB in drive space. However, you gain a much smaller package that's nearly half the weight. You keep the same resolution screen (1440x900) and similar battery life as well.
Out of the box it's almost a no-brainer for the Air except for two things:
- Firewire. If you require FW connectivity, the Pro is it.
- Expandability. The Pro can have it's hard drive replaced and RAM expanded to 8GB.
Realistically, users who require FW (instead of USB 2.0) are few and far between, as are those who actually expand their computers. Yes, if you're one of them the Air is not for you, but that's a relatively small percentage.
Some might want to add Ethernet to the list, but Ethernet is available for the Air. It's not Gigabit, but that just makes it similar to the FW question. There may be those who require Gigabit, but it's not typical. Same is true of an optical drive. You can get one for the Air, but do you need one?
For everyone else the Air's "compromises" are no such thing. It's no longer a question of performance, battery life, or even screen display. Nor does one take a hit in the keyboard, build quality or reliability. Instead, the compromises have moved higher up the chain. I could argue the standard 15" Pro contains more compromise now. Do I really want to haul around a much bigger, heavier machine all the time on the off chance I might expand it or use FW someday?
This could all change, of course. A higher screen resolution is an option on the 15" that Apple could make standard in the next update. Probably use a faster processor and bigger drive, too, so those gaps would widen. But that's the future, for now I think the standard 15" Pro requires as much justification for its compromises as the Air.
Then and Now: The MacBook Air
While the original's CPU and bus were good for something so small, the machine was handicapped by Intel integrated graphics and a dog-slow hard drive. The drive was the same as used in iPods, not a typical laptop drive, and was especially an issue because maximum RAM was 2GB, so disk swapping was more prevalent.
The new model gained a lot in CPU (today's Core 2 Duo is more efficient to begin with), but the more significant improvements are in graphics and storage. The Nividia 320M provides graphics more than respectable in terms of speed while offering higher resolution. Meanwhile, one could say Apple bypassed a step in storage, eschewing a typical laptop hard drive—that would itself be faster than the iPod drive—and going straight to flash memory which is faster still. Allowing 4GB of RAM is a big help, too.
I think a reasonable case was made two years ago that the MacBook Air was not likely to serve as most people's only computer, but I'd disagree with that statement today. If you'd be fine with either a 13" MacBook or MacBook Pro, then there's a chance the MacBook Air could work for you as well. Which one you choose is now more a matter of your priorities and personal needs, not one of major sacrifices in power, battery life or performance.
Finally, I chose the $1,799 models only as a point of reference. The true beauty of the MacBook Air is that one can spend much less and still get all the primary performance enhancements discussed here (320M high res graphics, flash storage, 4GB RAM).
I believe the overall performance improvement of the new MacBook Air is why Steve Jobs called it the future of MacBooks. Unlike the original, the current model represents a design philosophy Apple can rollout over their entire laptop line as the components become more affordable.
