Geek Brief TV #321

I switched to Mac with the advent of the Mac Mini. We've followed the
same pattern from the beginning. We buy a desktop and then the
notebook most similar in specs and performance to the desktop. After
the Mac Mini, we added an iBook (currently on Ebay [1]). Before we
started GeekBrief.TV, we got an iMac G5. The notebook we paired with
the iMac was a MacBook. When we went pro with the podcast, we went pro
with the Mac Pro. We added to that a MacBook Pro and then another. The
MacBook Air [2] was the first Mac that's come out that dosn't fit our
growth pattern. It's the first Mac since we switched that I can easily
live without, so I didn't plan to do a review.

My friend, Mark Taylor (taylormark.com [3]) bought one and
dedicated it to our Big Trip fundraising effort [4], so I've played
with it for three days, reviewed it and put it on Ebay.

Most people I'm around are always looking for more power in a
computer. We want fast hard drives, fast processors and fast RAM.
We'll sacrifice our desire to have a notebook that runs cool, and I'll
live with the machine being heavy. Not everyone shares the mission of
a power user, and it is those people that will get the most out of a
MacBook Air.

It's the ultimate writer's computer. It's size doesn't compromise
it's quality. It's solid and well balanced. It doesn't want to fall or
lean in any direction. It is perfect for online activity and really
any job where the primary requirement is the production or consumption
of text and pictures. It isn't good for video and I really don't
believe Apple meant it to be. I could watch video in iTunes, some HD
videos I tried downloading to watch in Quicktime just gave me a
spinning beach ball. I also wasn't able to watch a remote DVD in
another machine with out getting a beach ball.

The MacBook Air is like a conceptual design brought to market.
Apple made something that most companies would only design to suggest
what a machine might be like sometime in the future. That's one of the
reasons I'm such an Apple fan.

The MacBook Air isn't for me or anyone who aims to produce video,
but for anyone else looking for portability, it's definitely worth a
look.

OH!!! And we know we got the show number wrong!

List of current items on eBay [5]

Links:
------
[1]
http://cgi.ebay.com/Newly-Updated-Apple-iBook-G4-Laptop_W0QQitemZ290210078108...
[2] http://www.apple.com/macbookair
[3] http://www.taylormark.com
[4] http://www.paidbypixels.com
[5]
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQdfspZ1QQfrppZ25QQfsooZ2QQfsopZ2QQsassZcalilewisQQ...

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• #321