By T.R. Witcher
After the disappointing Consumer Electronics Show early this month, where the biggest hit of the day was a 150-inch plasma screen that wouldn’t fit in most garages, tech fans looked forward to Apple’s annual Macworld event, in San Francisco, to see what miracles Steve Jobs and his band of geniuses had cooked up.
Air was the dish, as in the superheated variety that issues forth from Mr. Jobs’ iconic keynote presentations, as he shows off new products. (“Isn’t this in-CRED-ible? ...” “... a-MAZ-ing? ...” “AUW ... some?”) And air as in the new ultrathin MacBook Air laptop. Less than an inch thick, the machine looks—as you’d expect—incredible. It weighs just 3 pounds. And it comes with an enlarged trackpad fitted for the multitouch gestures that have made the iPhone a hit.
I almost get the Air. Maybe 3 pounds is the threshold when a laptop ceases to become a portable computer that you can take with you when you need to—but that you leave at home when you don’t—and into something that you take with you all the time, because you never know, and it’s so small and light that carrying it imposes no burden. Maybe that’s when the computer becomes more like a magazine, or a journal.
But $1,800 for a system with no optical drive and no ethernet, which means if I can’t find a wireless hot spot, I’m screwed? Jobs made a note of showing how well the Air stacks up against other ultrathins. What he neglected to mention was that there’s a better product out there, and it’s made by a company called ... Apple. For $500 less you can buy a MacBook with almost double the hard-drive space, an ethernet cable and a faster processor. All this in a stylish case that is only 1.06 inches thick and weighs a mere 5 pounds.
Still, the thing is sexy as hell and will probably sell well. But it’s an unwelcome sign. At its best Apple makes stuff where the substance and the style are the same, where they mutually reinforce one another, where to remove one is to eliminate the other.
But this product—and in some ways the iPhone, too—seem more intent on showing off the company’s design and engineering prowess to poor use, or to solving the wrong problem—vain baubles that give up too much to appeal to the black-rimmed-glasses set. This really sucks, because you sense that Apple has the capacity to just kill categories, but Jobs & Co. continue to hobble their own products, like designing a Ferrari to run errands.
What Apple needs to remember is just this—its shit is not better because it’s cooler. It’s cooler because it’s better.