Really the price for this thing isn't all that high. If you look at ultra portables from Fujitsu and Sony, you are going to spend something like $2200 for a reasonably spec'd machine. And that'll have a slower cpu.
Of course the use of a 1280x800 13 inch wide screen is crazy. You rarely sit far away from a laptop like this, so you can easily fit that many pixels on a much smaller screen (Been using 1280x768 on a 10.6 inch screen for 4 years now) or you can put more pixels on the same size. 13 inches really isn't much better than 10.6 if you can't actually fit more stuff on the screen.
I'd say if anything, the screen is too large, the cpu is too fast, and the graphics card is overkill. If you just want to do your productivity and communications apps, then you don't need that stuff. You do need that much power to run OS X, though, so maybe it's just best not to use an Apple for anything which approaches minimal functionality.
I work at a university helpdesk, and once this came out one of the well-funded professors called and asked us to get him one. Then we explained the lack of usb, ethernet (we won't have wifi for 2+ years,) and optical drive. He immediately changed his mind and went with a MBP. This is one of those guys that has to have at least one of every product that Apple puts to market, and even he didn't think it would be useful. And since he has two desktops and a MacBook already, he is the target market for this device, as far as I can tell.
I think this is just a ploy to get other manufacturers to copy Apple, so they can say they invented another new trend. I honestly believed that Apple could do a much better ultra portable than this. Oh well. And yes, my laptop fits easily into a manilla envelope, even though it was released 4+ years ago.
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Really the price for this thing isn't all that high. If you look at ultra portables from Fujitsu and Sony, you are going to spend something like $2200 for a reasonably spec'd machine. And that'll have a slower cpu.
Of course the use of a 1280x800 13 inch wide screen is crazy. You rarely sit far away from a laptop like this, so you can easily fit that many pixels on a much smaller screen (Been using 1280x768 on a 10.6 inch screen for 4 years now) or you can put more pixels on the same size. 13 inches really isn't much better than 10.6 if you can't actually fit more stuff on the screen.
I'd say if anything, the screen is too large, the cpu is too fast, and the graphics card is overkill. If you just want to do your productivity and communications apps, then you don't need that stuff. You do need that much power to run OS X, though, so maybe it's just best not to use an Apple for anything which approaches minimal functionality.
I work at a university helpdesk, and once this came out one of the well-funded professors called and asked us to get him one. Then we explained the lack of usb, ethernet (we won't have wifi for 2+ years,) and optical drive. He immediately changed his mind and went with a MBP. This is one of those guys that has to have at least one of every product that Apple puts to market, and even he didn't think it would be useful. And since he has two desktops and a MacBook already, he is the target market for this device, as far as I can tell.
I think this is just a ploy to get other manufacturers to copy Apple, so they can say they invented another new trend. I honestly believed that Apple could do a much better ultra portable than this. Oh well. And yes, my laptop fits easily into a manilla envelope, even though it was released 4+ years ago.