Now, don't get me wrong. I love Apple. I guess you can call me a fanboy. What they make is beautiful and easy to use. Even people who have never used OS X before can jump in and get something done with minimal explanation. The computers come installed with the ports and software to make it a great complete computer. What they stand for is great, but it has been slipping as of late.

I grew up using an Apple IIe in grade school, playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Logo, and Oregon Trail. We never had a Mac at home, so after school I would program BASIC on our AT&T PC6300. The first Mac I bought was when I was a sophomore in college. It was a Powermac G4 running at a whopping 550MHz. I loved it and used it for about 5 years before it was way too slow and the power adapter broke. I since have a Macbook and the new iPhone looking iMac. I love my Macs and so does Sam. Everything is easy to use and intuitive. One of the main reasons for buying a Mac.

Introducing the Macbook Air. At first glance, this is a great piece of hardware. Super thin with a decent screen and a full size keyboard. Only $1799.... a little pricey. Dig a little deeper and a lot of compromises were taken.

First, there is no Superdrive. This is OK for people on the go, I mean I hardly use my laptop to watch movies but I do use it to install software or rip music. If you want to have a Superdrive, you have to purchase a separate accessory for another $100 that plugs into the USB port. Now, you would think that you could use this Superdrive on other Macs or PCs. Well, you would be wrong. It only works on the Macbook Air, why?? Because the USB port on the Macbook Air is special and it is the only way to supply power to the Superdrive. The standard USB ports don't have enough juice to power it. And given there is no external adapter, you are stuck using it on the Macbook Air.

This is not too bad, since there is something called Remote Disk. This allows you to share the DVD drive on another computer so the Macbook Air can access it. Since it is my belief that this is not your main computer you probably have another computer with a DVD drive. This allows you to install software or copy files from the remote disk. Unfortunately, you cannot watch DVDs from it or install Windows if you are so inclined.

So the main purpose of the Macbook Air is a secondary computer used for on-the-go people. It is light and thin, and if you only want to type up a presentation and listen to some music you are fine. But if you want to watch movies, you either have to purchase or rent them from the iTunes Music Store or rip them yourself (I suggest Handbrake). I really like this computer, but it is $1799 for the base model and over $3000 for the solid state memory one... eek!! You cannot replace the battery without taking out like 20 little screws, but Apple will gladly take it for a couple of days and charge you $129 to replace it.

Overall it is a good computer, but fits a very tiny market. And given the compromises, it doesn't seem to fit the Apple mentality. It isn't easier to use, it is harder. You want a DVD drive? You either have to have another computer with software installed on it, or purchase the Superdrive from Apple that only works on the Air. You want to watch a DVD on the plane? Either rip the DVD which can take an hour or two, or purchase/rent the movie.

It pains me to say that this may not be the hit that Apple was hoping for. Granted, it is the first rev of hardware and things may change in the second revision, since there has been a lot of talk about it. There are laptops that are lighter, a little thicker AND have a DVD drive. But it is the whole Apple experience they are banking on. But after all the iPhone hullabulloo, I think Apple needs to take a step down and "Think Different" again.