My day-to-day Mac is a 15” MacBook Pro hooked up to a 24” LED Cinema Display. It’s a fabulous setup that gives me just enough computing oomph, but also the convenience of being portable. Despite having a powerful laptop as my sole computer, I recently picked up a 13” MacBook Air. I’m not alone. Among the developers I follow on Twitter, I’ve seen a lot of similar purchases.
When Steve Jobs returned to the company back in 1997, one of the first things he did was slash the product line make buying a Mac as easy as possible. Want a personal Mac? Get an iMac or MacBook. Want something a bit more powerful or professional? Here is our Mac Pro and line of MacBook Pro’s. No overlap.
The Air really doesn’t fit in that lineup utopia. Instead, it’s pegged somewhere between a low-end MacBook Pro and an iPad. Chairman Gruber recently chimed in on where the MacBook Air fits in Apple’s lineup and I tend to agree with his assertion.
Here’s the way I see it: the Air is a secondary Mac; MacBook Pros are for use as a primary computer. I.e., if you want your MacBook to be your one and only Mac, you should get a MacBook Pro.
I’m looking at the Air as a replacement for many of the tasks I was using my iPad for as well as being capable of working in Xcode should I need to on-the-go.
The iPad has proven to be a great couch device for refreshing Twitter while watching a baseball game, jotting down an item on my grocery list when it pops in my head and browsing the Web. I don’t use it for much else. I prefer reading books on my Kindle because it’s easier on my eyes and lighter weight. Despite having intentions of using the iPad as portable document editor and Keynote presentation device I uninstalled the iWork suite a few weeks after I got the device because it was just too damn slow to work with and far too limiting. I gave a single presentation using Keynote on the iPad and it was far more compromising than I ever imagined.
The detractors of the iPad consistently claim it is not a creation device and is instead designed for consumption. I disagree slightly1. The iPad is perfectly capable of being a creation device, but it requires thinking outside of traditional computing metaphors and embracing a new work style. For me, I was willing to accept that tradeoff for small bits of information, but long periods of work proved to be too frustrating.
I recently went to a day-long seminar and used my iPad and Elements to take notes, keep up with my email and do a bit of casual tweeting in-between sessions. It was a capable setup, but typing on the iPad is far too slow compared to a traditional computer keyboard or even the iPhone where I can type at a fairly rapid pace. I’ve yet to meet someone who enjoys typing on the iPad for long spans of time. Instead they usually cradle it in a keyboard dock or use a Bluetooth keyboard. Having to carry a keyboard in your bag defeats the purpose of the iPad though, doesn’t it?
For many people, they buy an iPad because it’s the best mix of function, form and a small size in Apple’s lineup2. Now that Apple has refreshed the MacBook Air to look just like its big brothers in the Pro line and announced a forthcoming desktop equivalent to the iOS App Store, people now have a real choice for their ultra-portable computing offerings.
Plenty of people will still buy iPads, but a good chunk of those sales will be lost when people compare the iPad and MacBook Air and opt for the Air solely because it’s a more comfortable proposition. Why compromise when for a few hundred bucks more you can get a full-fledged Mac?