I sat on this one for 24 hours because I wanted to make sure that the Jobs Distortion Field had dissipated before talking about a new Apple product.

I have to say that the design and the specs of the MacBook Air (MBA) are rather impressive on many levels. The big questions are “do I want one?” Well yeah, because it’s shiny. “Do I need one?” No, because I just got a brandy new T61p from Lenovo. “Will I buy one?” I don’t know.

“How hot does it get?” No one knows yet.

The heat will would be a deal breaker considering that every PowerBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook I’ve seen or owned runs way too hot for either human or electronics.

Wait, wait, let me take a step back, especially before Steve calls me an “Apple hater” which would force me to throw one of two iPod nanos, an iPod, or Mac mini at his head.

Of the products released announced yesterday, the MacBook Air is the big one. The “features” announced to the iPhone are bug fixes. Every phone since 2000 has supported multi-recipient SMS messages and every video media player I know of supports skipping between chapters. Features? Spin it how you want, those are bug fixes. The Google Map rev and custom home screen stuff are both good feature adds, but I’m a lil gauled that they were announced with such fanfare. Time Capsule? Yay, Apple has a NAS that’s a fairly priced product for a change. Video downloads? Again, it’s an impressive list of studios – very impressive – but just a blip on the radar, in the grand scheme of things.

AppleTV 2 caught my interest – a good deal of it, considering that I’m attempting to avoid buying one with a Mac mini – and depending on how my little expriment goes, it may find a place in my living room. I have to agree with a co-worker though: how cool would it be to replace my current DVD player with an AppleTV that also played discs? All this talk of device convergence and I’d still have to have two separate boxes for movies… ah, well, it woulda been a nice to have (and I’ll have it if I can get the Mac mini to cooperate!)

And that brings us to the fourth big announcement: MacBook Air.

One of my best notebooks was the Sony 505VE. It was a small bugger – like 8″ x 10″ x <1" - with a 12" screen. 1024x768, P3 (I think,) a decent sized HDD at the time, and an external PCMCIA based optical drive. I bought it after my first day in my first class of my master's program - I couldn't write on a paper notebook as fast as I could type any more and I was desperate for “searching” my notes… 10 classes and a degree later, I was still getting stopped for comments about it. It was small, light, and uber portable. Shortly after I had this notebook, the sales/marketing people of America started to demand “desktop replacements” and BAM – 17″ 9 pound notebooks hit CompUSA.

DO NOT WANT.

Over the last few years, I had a number of ThinkPads: 2 that were 14″ and my current [work owned] model which is 15″. Weight on these models have ranged from 4.9 to 6.1 pounds. This go around I wanted to stick with the 14″ model but it wasn’t available so I bounced to the 15″WS which weighs more: 6.1 pounds and it uses more power than I’m used to. It’s a great notebook but it’s one more level away from what I like to have: lightweight and small.

Why’d I go with the 15″ T61p and not the 12″ X61? Resolution. I do a lot with terminal services. The smallest screen I connect to is 1400×1050. To look at that one a 12″ 1024×768 screen felt… well, ridiculous. I was really keen on the Dell 13.3″ XPS M1330 model, but I didn’t want to buy my own notebook and the majority of us at work was going with ThinkPads this go around (on my suggestion, no less!) so that was out.

So what about the Air? It’s interesting, applying an iPod mentality to a notebook. I mean, there are many different classes of notebook users – I’m the first person to say one size does not fit all. Apple has a MacBook and MacBook Pro for this very reason. And since Apple has a monopoly on the hardware that’s allowed to run OSX, not having a lightweight notebook hurt their product line. Does it bother me that the battery isn’t removable? Only slightly – I like to know I can pull the plug on a machine if I have to (and I had to for my PowerBook often enough). Locked away hard drive and RAM? That bothers me a lot. One of the things I dig about Lenovo is that I can replace parts. I wear letters off my keyboard? One call, 24 hrs later, and I can replace mine with four screws. Need more memory? Nine screws. Does the average Mac user care? No, probably not. It’s something that bothers me and while I think it a poor design decision, it doesn’t tank the product.

The multi-tap-gesture pad thing… ugh. Again, I say “give me a fuckin’ right-mouse button!” because I hate tapping on a touchpad for anything. I always hit the damned thing when I’m typing and that sends input all over the place. At least some of the initial screens lead me to believe that you can turn of tapping and still have the ability to multi-finger something… although I also think they’ve taken something simple and made it uber-complicated. Savor the irony with that one… we have a remote that has “fewer buttons because it’s easier” yet you need to be a finger contortionist to work in iPhoto. Maybe it’ll kick ass when you use it but conceptually it sounds bad. Also, I find the lack of a PCMCIA/ExpressCard slot to be strange, but again, that bothers me for my needs, mostly because it reminds me of the niche that was trying to be filled by the failed Palm Folio. It’s a little too port free, for my needs, but I could probably even live around those. If I was going to get one, that is.

Which brings me to final question: am I going to get one?

If I did, I’d not want to carry the new Lenovo around… my boss would kill me, since I’ve made many a grumble about not having a good work-owned notebook since I joined the company. Not to mention the $1800 of my own cash I’d be laying out before adding tax and AppleCare. And then deciding on whether or not I want to bother with OSX or stick with Windows. One thing that just infuriates me with OSX – as I was reminded of again last night – is the fact that Ctrl+Shift+LeftArrow doesn’t select one word at a time… it’s the little things like that – shortcut keys like that – that that prevent me from being as productive as I feel I should be. If I have to look at a keyboard, then somethings wrong. And while I can respect that both Windows and OSX have had their respective keys for years, there should be options for emulate Windows keyboard shortcuts in OSX. Windows has that option with a number of pieces of freeware. Even if OSX had such an app it would probably be a $40 shareware package.

Meh. Again.

What I really want to know is how hot it actually gets, especially since it’s got a metal exterior.

Maybe someone other than Ray Charles applied the thermal grease this time. *g*