I Take Back All the Mean Things I Said About Crapple

That's what they said about the ipod.

Check out the demo. You can install from an external drive or from a PC's drive. Wirelessly. I doubt it's perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

 

I think the MacAir will be very useful for a great number of people.

 

Want to put money down on that?

 

For some people it will. If you don't need to burn or install much but you need something light, thin and very portable, then it's great.

With Apple there's no telling. The cube didn't really go. The Newton bombed but a few year's later Palm's PDA's were the thing.

I think the iTunes movie/TV downloads are really going to move. They will spur sales of the AppleTV. I haven't made the decision on whether to replace my current TV with a digital yet. When that time comes I'll be considering if I want to add an AppleTV to that setup.

 

What about saving the dvd to the hard drive and watching it later?

 

Take this from someone who's had all sizes of laptops: Size does matter.

The bigger laptops are great for those who want/need a full desktop experience in multiple places. When i had mine, it was great to be able to pick it up and take it with me when i went home from college on breaks. However, it's HIGHLY impractical to move around on a daily basis - it's just too big and too heavy.

After two years with that laptop, i upgraded to a tiny laptop - a 12'' screen, uber thin (although not as thin as the Air) and with no internal optical drive. Yeah, i had a dock for it in my dorm, but with that laptop it finally became practical for me to take it to class every day. For it's use, it was perfect - I didn't use it to watch movies, i didn't need to use a disc drive all that often and when i did i could either bring an external (self powered external CD drives have been around for a long time) or do it at home - it wasn't that big of a hassle. They key for the laptop was portability, and thats the niche the Air is filling.

Now today that small one is, sadly, relegated to be a low power desktop. After 4 years of amazing use, someone knocked it off a table and the screen broke. I currently have mid-sized notebook, and it's great, for its purposes. It has a built in DVD burner, can handle all but the most intense applications, and it small enough to be portable when i need it to be, which isn't too often since i'm no longer in school.


So there's a certain subset of people that each type of laptop appeals to. I would contest that the Air is about as perfect a laptop as you can get - for what its designed to do. Take a loot at it's ultra-thin competition. None of them have optical drives. Most (maybe all?) don't have the low-power LED backlit displays. None of them have the radically scaled down processor, and most of them don't have the battery life that the Air provides. None of them are capable of using other computer's disc drives as easily as the air. A lot of hard work went into the Air, and i would actually expect this to be a big hit on college campuses. When you walk 1+ mile to class every day, every ounce on your back counts.

 

I am still on the fence regarding AppleTV. Its HD format is not the 1080p that the larger (40"+) format flat panel digital tvs are presently capable of displaying. I was at Best Buy over the weekend checking out 40 inch flat panel tvs and when hooked up to a Blueray player, the quality was unbelievable. AppleTV is coming up short in the HD market.

 

One thing to realize is that 1080p does not become noticable until TVs start to get really big and/or when viewing distances get really small. I love this chart, because I think it really gives you an idea of when 1080p starts to become important. Basically, the upshot is that 1080p doesn't start to become important until you get in to TVs in the 60" range (or if you're going to be viewing a TV at a non-standard distance for some reason).

I should actually point out that the article argues that 1080p is necessary, but his viewing distances are too close, IMHO.

 

That test is flawed.

They should be comparing the two sets using a 1080p source such as a Blue Ray or HD-DVD player.

 

Shocked at the OP I am...just shocked!

 

Well, my current TV is a 13" and whatever I replace it with had better be small enough to fit in the cabinet the current one is in. That means no wider than about 26" and no taller than about 20". I don't need the speakers but they all come with them I guess. I have my sound wired through my stereo.

I'm thinking more about the Air. I do carry my laptop around a lot but I don't really need to burn with it. And I can import by firewireing it to my desktop and putting it in target mode. I have a flat screen and a tower at home with a burner. I could update both my tower and my laptop. If I did, I could probably use the Air no problem. When I first got my laptop I wasn't sure how I'd like it. Now I use it almost exclusively except for long hauls at the computer or video editing. I'm not ready to replace anything yet. No telling what Apple will offer when I do. But now I'm thinking the Air might be pretty practical for what I usually do with my laptop. I'd have to look at the size and speed first.

 

I was thinking about this as a way to address the relatively low capacity disk drive of the Air. However, you would need a quick broadband outbound connection on the desktop. Even 5 MBPS DSL is limited to something like 700 KBPS uploading. Personally, I am thinking I will be upgrading to a new MacBook Pro (2.6 Ghz, 4 Gb and 200 Gb (7200 rpm) disk drive). Anyone interested in my present MacBook Pro (2.0 Ghz, 2 Gb and 90 Gb disk drive)?

 

Ah, I see the problem. No firewire port. Only USB. Hmmm. I think I'll stick with the MacBook Pro. The longer I wait, the faster, bigger and cheaper it will get. Well, it will never get cheap, but the price will come down.

I must admit I was looking at the same MacBook Pro you are. I'm presently using a Titanium that's going on 5 years old. But I hesitate to replace it until my master's is done in case I need the APA style software. It only runs in Classic.

How much are you asking for your old MacBook? I've got a nephew starting college next fall.