Boom. Macworld kicked off today - and kicked is the perfect word to describe it. I went off the grid until the keynote became available online. I watched Steve Jobs’ presentation with no inclination of what was to come. Needless to say, experiencing the reality distortion field was an interesting experience.
Apple launched iTunes movie rentals, revitalized the Apple TV, and revamped many of its mobile platform features. However, I am only truly concerned with two of the announcements:
1. Time Capsule
2. MacBook Air
Time Capsule is a previously disclosed feature, now built into the Airport Extreme. I have mixed feelings on this one. Rather than letting you wirelessly sync Time Machine backups to an Airport Extreme with an external hard drive, Apple is now offering it as a premium feature on a new box. However, it’s a great feature in a good product.
The MacBook Air is the star of the show for me. At this stage in my life, I have no need for an ultra-portable like this. But it’s an amazing product. The world’s thinnest laptop with 2 gigs of RAM, a 1.6 GHz Core2Duo, running the world best operating system - Mac OS X Leopard - is a win. As I was in the reality distortion field, I thought of selling my MacBook Pro and purchasing a MacBook Air.
When I snapped out of it, I remembered the I/O and looked at the specs. As a primary computer, it’s useless to me. No firewire and only a single Universal Service Bus. 80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk? No way.
I use a daisy-chained Firewire 800 setup for a Time Machine drive (500 gigs) and another hard drive (320 gigs). For me, The MacBook Air is feature and power anemic. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a wonderful machine and I hope to own its later incarnation one day. It’s not Apple’s fault - they’ve done the best they could to create an ultra-mobile laptop and succeeded.
Although I won’t purchase myself a MacBook Air, I take donations. Any takers? 
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