Kenny Hemphill
The launch of the iPad is certainly something to get excited about. Let’s just hope it doesn’t consign the MacBook Air to the history books.
The iPad may have been delayed on these shores due to unexpectedly high demand across the water, and possibly even, by the time you read this, by that cloud of volcanic ash, too. Yet there’s no doubt that when it does arrive, it will change the way many of us use our Macs, iPods and iPhones for work and play. Anyone who still thinks that it’s little more than a big iPod touch is in for a pleasant surprise the second they pick one up and start to use it. And then they’ll start to wonder whether they can justify buying one when they already have an iPhone and a MacBook Pro.
Many will find justification for having all three and a few others won’t see the point of the iPad at all. But for the rest of us, there will be a decision to be made. There really is no need to carry around a laptop, iPad and iPhone. In all but a few cases, the overlap is too great to make it necessary. Anything that can be done with an iPad can be done on a combination of laptop and iPhone – almost. Likewise, if you have an iPad and laptop, why bother with an iPhone when the only feature lacking is the ability to make calls, and send and receive text messages, things that can be accomplished with the most basic mobile phone.
If that kind of overlap is clear to us, you can bet its glaringly obvious to Apple, and in particular, Steve Jobs. One of Jobs’ first tasks on his return to Apple was to simplify its product line, ridding the company of everything that wasn’t absolutely core to its function of producing Macs.
Out went the Newton Message Pad, Apple’s digital camera, its printers and its scanners. There was no place for them in Jobs’ new, simplified product line-up. The reasoning was straightforward: Apple was in dire financial straits, there were real doubts about its continuing viability, and Jobs and the board believed that the route back to growth had to be started with a cull, so the company could focus on its core product, the Mac.
That resulted in the famous 2 x 2 matrix of professional and consumer desktops and laptops. And while that matrix has long since gone and the product range grown significantly, every new product is still subjected to the highest level of scrutiny to make sure it’s worthy of its place in Apple’s line-up. Now with a new kid on the block, I fear there’s at least one existing piece of hardware that could be for the chop.
It’s a machine that some greeted with incredulity on its launch a couple of years ago. A Mac that seemed to have too much in common with the Power Mac G4 Cube (great looks but over-priced and under-specified) to be successful, and yet to me and others, it symbolises everything that we love about the Mac. Having used one every day for the past 15 months, I can happily say that it’s the perfect portable Mac for me and many other users like me. Those for whom the most important characteristics in a laptop are its weight and size, and its ability to perform all the duties we ask of it. I’m referring, of course, to the MacBook Air – that sliver of aluminium that’s small enough to hold in the palm of one hand, yet powerful enough to run all but the most demanding games and applications, and still the only Mac to ship with SSD storage as standard.
At the time of its launch, it seemed like Jobs’ personal two-fingered salute to netbook manufacturers and those who were demanding that Apple make its own netbook. A way of saying that if Apple was going to produce an ultra-portable Mac, it was going to rip up the rule book and do it its own way. Now though, there’s a smaller, slimmer Apple device that can do much of what the MacBook Air can do – albeit in very different ways. For someone like me, who uses an Air to check email, surf the web, collect notes in Evernote, write documents, play with spreadsheets, and watch the occasional video, there’s little reason to choose another Air over the iPad.
The fact that the Air was conspicuously absent when the MacBook Pro range received an update last month makes me think that at the very least, Apple has cooled on it and is waiting to see whether iPad sales dent those of the Air. All of which makes me wonder if the Air’s days are numbered. Had the company been as enthusiastic about it as it once seemed, the Air would have been updated alongside the Pro range, as it has been in previous revisions. Yes, the MacBook wasn’t updated either, but then it’s already out of sync with the MacBook Pro update cycle.
I hope that I’m wrong. Despite my own reservations about the logic of upgrading my Air with a newer model, rather than an iPad, it would be a great shame to see such an innovative and beautiful Mac consigned to history.
