MACBOOK AIR

The darling of today’s keynote is of course the new ultra-thin MacBook Air, which is 0.16″ at it’s thinnest, and 0.76″ at it’s thickest. Jobs made a point of saying the notebook is thinner at it’s thickest point than the Sony TZ sub-notebook is at it’s thinnest point. In addition to being really freaking thin, it’s also designed to appear even thinner than it really is. The bottom bows out and the sides taper, similar to how the new aluminum iMac is deceptively thin, but bulges in the center. This design also forces the edge of the of the notebook upwards, giving it a floating illusion.

It definitely fills a niche, but this is not the notebook for me. It only has 1 USB port, mini-DVI-out, no Ethernet (802.11n instead), a rather small non user-replaceable 80GB hard drive (or optionally, a 64GB flash solid state drive for an additional $1300), and 2GB of RAM soldered onto the mainboard. The 13.3″ screen is going to keep some people from calling it a sub-notebook, but it’s definitely aimed for that crowd. It fills a gap between someone who wants a very portable wireless computer to work on, something more than an iPhone or iPod touch, but not quite a fully functional “main computer.” I have to wonder though, starting out at $1800, it seems like most of the sales are going to come from people who are buying it for its design and not because neither the MacBook or MacBook Pro fit their needs. It also has a non-user-replaceable battery, but Apple will sell you a new one for $129 — the same as any other Apple notebook battery — and install it at no charge. It’s still going to upset a lot of people who need enough juice to be able to swap out a spare battery instead of plugging it in.The MacBook Air also lacks an optical drive, which can be remedied through either the USB Superdrive accessory, sold separately, or via “Remote Disc,” a feature that lets you access another computer’s optical drive wirelessly over the LAN. There’s supposed to be some software to install to make this work for those who can’t figure out how to simply share a location, which is apparently all it does.The trackpad is the feature I’m interested in. They say it is multitouch, but so is the MacBook touchpad, which is what allows for two-finger scrolling and two-finger right-clicking. The multitouch trackpad on the MacBook Air has a few new tricks, like using 3 fingers to go back and forward in Safari, or doing the cool pinch-zoom and rotate like on the iPhone. I really think this could be added to existing MacBooks and MacBook Pros with a trackpad driver update.

It’s gorgeous, and like the MacBook and the Apple TV, I appreciate it’s existence and I’m glad Apple put it out there for people who want it, but it’s just not for me.

APPLE TV, TAKE 2

Admitting failure is not something most companies readily do, and normally I would say calling version 2.0 of a TV related device “take two” would be just a cinematic pun, but Jobs actually said they completely missed the mark with the first AppleTV. I had to wonder how all those current AppleTV owners out there felt when Jobs said the device Apple sold them just wasn’t very good. Ouch. Probably all that pain was removed though when it was announced that AppleTV Take Two wasn’t a new hardware product, but a free-of-charge software update, along with a price drop on the AppleTV from $299 to $229. Most of the update deals with two new announcements, HD movies and movie rentals.RENTALSThere’s no way to do “digital rentals” without DRM. There’s no physical product to return to a video store, so your computer must at some point decide to stop letting you play the file back, by either disabling playback or just deleting it from your hard drive. DRM, all forms of DRM, are evil in my opinion, so I really cannot endorse the iTunes Movie Rentals simply in principle. The rules allow for 30 days to begin playback once it’s downloaded, and 24 hours to complete playback once it’s started. Both rules are completely arbitrary and one reason DRM is just wrong.

The nice thing, I suppose, is that you can do all of this with the AppleTV without any other computer. They are making it a standalone device. And your media can be transferred to it, but not away from it. I’m not a big TV person, but I am so firmly against DRM that I believe the AppleTV is going to forever be in the realm of products that might be okay for other people, but not me.