I'll admit it, the Mac Air is pretty. But a recent review from Business Week finds Apple sacrificed a lot of functionality in the process of making the ultra-thin laptop.
The thing that stood out most to me was ONE USB PORT? What on earth? How will I plug in two game controllers and play Mario Kart with my wife? How will I moves songs to my iPod while using a mouse? How will I save my history paper to a flash drive while moving ringtones to my cellphone with a Bluetooth adapter?
And even that wouldn't be too bad, except for the fact that there's no CD/DVD drive, which means if you want to import a CD or watch LOST season 3 on DVD, you need to plug in an external drive.
And there's no Ethernet port, so if you need to plug into a LAN, you need to plug in a USB adapter.
And there's no port for a third-party wireless network adapter, like from Verizon or AT&T, you need yet another USB adapter.
This just solidifies my opinion that Apple often puts style before performance. Try putting a little less money into design and more into functionality, Steve.
5 comments:
yeah that is one pretty laptop...but not CD/DVD drive is kind of silly. The USB port problem could be solved with a USB hub, but using a hub like that slows down the connection if I remember right...that is kind of lame.
Actually, if I understand correctly, USB hubs need to be plugged into a wall... and that kinda defeats the purpose of using a laptop.
most of them don't, however it will slow the peripherals
While I agree that not having a cd/dvd drive or more than one USB port makes things difficult, I think the point of this laptop is to enable you to carry less weight... which to me says that you don't want an extra mouse, or all that other extra peripheral stuff. It has a track pad, and wireless, and the capability to use other computer's drives via the network. Not saying I'll buy one any time soon (I'm more worried about overheating, myself, plus they're super expensive), but I do think they put more thought into it than you're giving them credit for.
Resident Apple Nerd says:
The MacBook Air is flawed. I am disappointed that Apple went with a style choice over what they should have done: Bring back the 12-inch PowerBook with an Intel chip. It was the most portable portable ever, and it had everything. 2 USB ports, and optical drive, a FireWire 400 port, mini-DVI out...it's amazing. I have no idea why they made this Air crap instead of that.
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