First CES, the giant Consumer Electronics Show, then MacWorld, starts each new year off with a trade show bang. It's hard to tell which one generates more excitement, although MacFans eagerly flock to San Francisco for MacWorld, and CES in Las Vegas is more a work assignment for most. I get to avoid both, although I always enjoy an excuse to go to San Francisco.
The hot news from MacWorld so far is the MacBook Air, another winning laptop full of style, coolness, and pricetag. This model starts at $1799, which is way too much for most small businesses, but within limits for corporate laptops. Scott Bradner calls it an “evolution, not revolution” in the world of laptops, and I basically agree. My only quibble with Scott (a dangerous person to quibble with, because he's one of the smartest guys at Harvard, an area known for smart folks) is whether the solid state hard drive option deserves a “revolutionary” tag.
Laptop batteries spend a lot of juice spinning the hard drive, and illuminating the screen. Smart phones and PDAs have solid state memory, meaning memory chips rather than disks, but only at a maximum 8GBs. Solid state disks are used in data centers for some applications, but they zoom up the price list. The MacBook Air offers a 64GB solid state disk for an extra $999.
Adding that takes this thin laptop to a fat price: $2798 minimum. Yet Apple is the first that I know of to put a solid state disk of typical capacity inside a consumer laptop. I wouldn't be surprised if that $999 for the 64GB disk isn't close to the price Apple pays, but they're pushing to increase volume and therefore lower costs over the next few months.
Does the solid state disk make the MacBook Air revolutionary? I'm not completely convinced, but I'm leaning that way. Light and thin is good, longer battery life, more rugged, and no moving parts may be better.
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