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MacBook Air - the "tipping point?"
Why does the MacBook Air make so many so dumb? posits that the important MacBook Air users will be the power elite:
These customers want excellent design and will value the drama created by the MacBook Air. When they open this machine at a meeting, it may say more about them than a $300 haircut, or a bespoke suit.
Will these users worry about connecting FireWire for digital video or external storage? They may worry more that a heavy briefcase filled with a heavy notebook could wrinkle their suit before a meeting. Listen, if one of these persons needs an power outlet because the battery is heading towards critical, someone will find them an outlet. And besides, there's plenty of juice for notebooks and mimosas in the first class cabin.
I think that's right - though more ordinary folk will buy this too. The point is that it's another wedge in the rock face of Microsoft Mountain, and it's a damn important one. With the tech guys carrying MacBook Pro's and the executives carrying Air's, how long do you think "Windows Only" software can last in the corporate environment?
More and more I run into "switchers" using Macs at home and being very disparaging of the Microsoft junk they have to suffer with at work.. this trend is moving, and it's moving fast. People are paying attention to the Mac ads on TV and they don't see dissing Windows as anything but a well deserved helping of reality.. and when some of their co-workers have already switched and are extolling the joys of OS X, the day that these folks switch themselves may not even wait till they really "need" a new machine.. I think the "tipping point" is very very near..
Note to those app folks who don't support Mac clients: you could find yourself playing catch-up sooner than you think. Is 2008 the beginning of the end for Microsoft?. It may very well be..
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Mon Jan 21 22:03:24 2008: drag
Well hopefully Macs will make inroads. It'll help convince the PHB of the world that portable software and standards are important.
Microsoft is pushing the lock-in very hard lately and they've gotten quite good at hiding it. They've openned up binary formats, for example, and they seem to be pushing hard for OOXML to become a standard... but in reality they are pushing the lock-in higher up the software stack and are going to OOXML as a 'standard' for information exchange and network-based services... using XML to encapsulate and push around binary blobs, more or less. They are working on things like Sharepoint server as another example. A web-based CMS that integrates into existin infrastructure that just happens to degrade and lose features and compatability if you use it without a pure IE7-on-Windows configuration.
But the ZDNET guy is smoking crack about the Macbook air. Laptops do make good desktop replacements... you just use a dock to connect the laptop to a monitor and keyboard. The vast majority of users don't even remotely need the power of a 8-way desktop machine. A 1.5ghz Celeron-M, 512megs of ram, and a 5400rpm disk is plenty for the majority of tasks the majority of business users need. Sure there will always been a need for larger workstations for some types applications, but most users don't need that to surf the web or do email. Just as long as they don't use Vista, of course.
But the Macbook Air is too expensive right now and way to limited in terms of I/O. Apple needs to drop the high-dollar CPU, halve the ram, make it smaller (in terms of width and depth), and drop the price down to about 700-900 dollars. THEN they would have a smash hit on their hands. People would be abandoning their old laptops left and right to get their hands on one of those.
For the ultra-small, ultra-portable laptops they are in a different target group. They aren't competing in the same level as their Macbook pro. There is a new classification of machines like the EEE PC or the soon-to-be-released Everex Cloudbook that are small, light, and 400 bucks. Very low-voltage cpus with limited performance, but are dead cheap and only slightly bigger then your average paperback book. They are as small as possible while still retaining a usable keyboard. And also, they run the 'other unix'. :)
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