The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

I blogged about the Macbook Air when it was announced and was pretty excited about it. I recently got the opportunity to actually work on one as I was setting it up for a faculty member at the University where I work.

A few things to note you probably can’t get from the hyped up announcement.

• It’s not as light as you think it is going to be. It still weighs a substantial amount.
• The screen is really, really nice with the LED backlight.
• It really is that thin and almost feels like a toy it’s so small.
• The superdrive peripheral MUST be plugged DIRECTLY into the Macbook Air to work - this was a real “gotcha” because it means that you can’t utilize a USB hub to expand the paltry 1 USB port on the Macbook Air. Why didn’t Apple provide 2 USB ports if they were going to have this requirement???
• The USB-to-Ethernet adapter WILL work in the USB hub as well as thumbdrives etc, but if you have your hub plugged in you can’t use your SuperDrive as mentioned above.
• The back-lit and full-size keyboard is really nice.
• Multi-touch on the touchpad is neat and all, but doesn’t have much of a practical use that I can see.
• It does have bluetooth so you can use a bluetooth wireless mouse if you have the super drive plugged in to the only USB port.
• The box INCLUDES the micro-dvi -> DVI and micro-dvi -> VGA adapters. You do not need to buy these separately as we did (whoops!).
• There is no visible battery at all, it’s built-in to the case and you have to send it to Apple to get a battery replacement done for a fee. This also means you can’t have an “extra battery” to just swap out.

After those notes above, would I buy one for myself? Probably not. The biggest issue is the SuperDrive having to use the only USB port and not playing nice with external, adapter-powered USB hubs! This is just plain silly on Apple’s part and is something that they need to fix. One idea I had is that they could add some USB ports to the back of the SuperDrive so that when you plug it in, it becomes the USB hub itself! For now if I want an Apple laptop, I will stick with the tried and true Macbook Pro.

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