So Apple announced their thin notebook, the MacBook Air moments ago, and I couldn’t help but notice that, thin coolness aside, there is no Ethernet port on this machine. There’s an optional USB-attached Ethernet dongle (no full-speed Gig-E, then), but users are expected to be wireless essentially all of the time. This is more than a cynical attempt to sell APs (Apple also announced a couple of these, equipped with large hard drives for their clever real-time backup mechanism, Time Machine); it’s the future. Still, this is a gutsy move for Apple, but, then, they’ll sell tons of these no matter what.
Years ago I owned an Acura CL, which in retrospect was one ugly car, although it didn’t seem so at the time. One notable feature was the lack of a keylock for the trunk; it could be opened only by the wireless remote or via a cable release near the driver’s seat. This was done for styling reasons, of course, but was very controversial at the time. I’m sure Apple’s decision will be seen as such by some, but, well, this is the era of the wireless LAN, after all, and .11n leaves little to be desired save for the fact that, yes, we always want more throughput. Hey, take the cool new Air, use Time Machine for backup (the last really bandwidth-intensive network application), and go wireless. (Very thin) case closed.
