kfitz

Air

I’m still processing my responses to yesterday’s Macworld Stevenote and the announcement of the MacBook Air. On the one hand, a super-lightweight portable computer seems to me a great niche for Apple to move into. On the other hand, this one is almost too focused on lightweight portability for me. It would be a fantastic travel machine, but not so great for working on day in and day out: not enough storage, not enough ports, not enough screen real estate.

Which makes me begin to suspect that Apple has opened a new front in consumer electronics marketing, as of yesterday: not upgrade-your-current-computer but instead buy-a-second-machine. After all, if you’re going to take advantage of things like Remote Disc, you’ve got to have another machine nearby. And if you’re going to use wireless networking for everything including backups, you’ve got to have a Time Capsule. So the digital hub seems increasingly to be throwing out new spokes, producing not a convergence of appliances but instead appliance proliferation.

I held off on replacing my 12″ PowerBook G4 until now, hoping that I’d want to replace it with something new and sexy. And I do, as it turns out: I want to replace it with a 24″ iMac and a MacBook Air. But until I get some grant that will allow me to do so, it looks like I’m going to be getting the same MacBook Pro I’d have gotten last month instead. Ah, well.

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