MacBook Air

The MacBook Air is tempting to engineering types like me because we’re all looking for the next 20 years in computing. The Air is a typical Apple “polished try”, but it’s not it; it’s a stepping-stone device, like that forgettable first iTunes-Motorola partnership phone — expensive, a little rough around the edges, but mostly without a clear reason for being.

Perhaps that’s too harsh. The Air is astonishingly light and incredibly rigid; the construction is a lot like the 1st-generation iPod nanos in that it feels almost indestructible. I was pretty close to putting in a purchase at which point it dawned on me that I would probably be paying more money for a laptop that’s less powerful than the 1st-generation MacBook Pro I feel I’m outgrowing (Xbench scores 49.57 for the Air and 58.1 for the MBP).

Perhaps I should look into a 32GB SSD drive for the MBP; most of the lag I experience with this machine is during disk access. But the Air is not really much help here, in that I have to both spring for the $1000 64GB SSD and commit to a permanent 2GB of RAM (I wonder how fast VM swapping kills a flash device).

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Elsewhere in the world of software-media convergence, it still truly baffles me how slowly the studios move in terms of embracing new technology. I am here watching trailers in the new Front Row interface and I am about ready to spend at least a couple $2.99’s on some of these movies after a good teaser-trailer gets me in the mood to part with money. Yet, there are no purchase links Front Row, and when I load up the iTunes Movie Store it takes a good 10 minutes to find something I haven’t yet seen.

Sure, some of the movies aren’t yet released and might be in postroll or something. But at lot of these movies are in that no-man’s land between theater and DVD, and by the time the titles are released for purchase I’ll probably have forgotten about them.

Christ, at least put a fucking pre-order button on there, guys.