Apple released the MacBook Air this week, and the internet is going berzerk about it.  Hlaf the 'net is going on about how they want one and it's sexy and so forth, the other is going on about how it will suck because it has no CD drive and whatnot.

I kinda think they're all missing the point.

Apple's not dumb - they never have been.  They are great at taking fairly obvious trends in computing, rolling them into great industrial design, and releasing them with great hoopla.  There were laptops before the first PowerBooks - and yet for a chunk of the 90's the word "Powerbook" became synonymous with "laptop."  There were portable mp3 players before the iPod, but the iPod is the one everybody recognizes.  The iPhone is pretty slick, but there are smartphones that do a lot more...but yet the iPhone is the must-have gadget.

So what's Apple playing at with the MacBook Air?  I have a couple of hypotheses.

(and why am I blogging about this on a music blog?  Because I use a mac for audio production)

1)  Apple is firmly embracing the "wireless world" ideology. This laptop pretty much does everything wirelessly.  It even only has one USB port.  They've set it up so you backup, install, attach, etc without wires.  Is the technology or the infrastructure for such things mature yet?  No, not really.  But by the time it is, and every other manufacturer jumps on the bandwagon, Apple will then be able to say "oh, yeah, we've been doing that for years."  It's a gamble, but if it pays off it'll let them take the technological high road. 

The same is true with the lack of the optical drive - this is aimed at a market-segment that is looking for a road machine, not a desktop replacement.  And how often do most of these people find themselves doing OS upgrades while sitting in an airport?  Few, unless you're Cory Doctorow or somebody.  Apple's taking a stand and saying "look, a lot of you hardly use this stuff, why should your laptop be made heavier by it?  You want it?  Great, it's an option.  But how often do you find yourself looking for that floppy drive that you said you just needed 5 years ago?  Plus, we know you've already got another computer - if you can afford this thing you probably have a few already.  Just use that for CDs and stuff."  Most of the reviewers I've seen so far are dyed-in-the-wool geeks who want their desktop-replacement laptops with 8gb of RAM, 3 card slots and 4 USB ports - but that's not who the user of the Air is supposed to be.  It's like a laptop for the Blackberry addict, without the thumb fatigue.

The only problem is that this sucker is pricy, even for an ultraslim laptop.  This isn't going to make them legions of new converts, people who just gotta have the new 1lb mac, ditching their 1.5lb Lenovos.  This is expensive enough that it's really a trailblazer product, one that people will want to "be seen" with, but likely one that won't take marketshare away from anything other than Apple's other notebook lines.  However, it's going to get a LOT of press along the way, and eventually the tech will trickle down to other machines.  The Air makes assumptions about the market and the trends - if it pays off it'll pay off big long-term.  If it doesn't, well, it will flop spectacularly but that's a risk they always take.

For the professional artist/musician, this might make a good auxiliary machine.  It lacks the horsepower and the drive speed and the expandability of the kind of machine you'd want in your studio or on your drawing table, but I can see people who travel a lot using it as a portable machine.  Like, BT will have 6 of these by next week.  Toss on an all-in-one USB/audio interface and you've got a pretty decent mobile audio sketchpad.  It's not a macbook pro, or even a macbook for audio or graphics, but it fits in an even smaller bag.

2) Apple's trying a show of strength.  Jobs made a point out of showing how closely they worked with Intel, and that Intel made special arrangements to fabricate special new chips and boards to fit in the new machine.  In essence, it's Apple's way of saying "Look, we've got the ear of the #1 PC chip maker around, and they do what we ask them to.  The future is going to be defined by what we say.  Not Dell, Not HP, not IBM - us.  Those other punks aren't going to innovate, so pay attention to us.  Intel does."  That's a lot of subtext to pick up, surely, but this is a pretty new development in the tech market.  Who else does Intel custom-fabricate PC chips for?  Steve is taking aim sqaure at the people who say that PCs are just commodity items, by showing that Apple is special, special enough that a tech-titan will accede to their wishes (because their wishes are just so cool).

3) Press.  Let's face it, nothing's gunna top last year's iPhone release.  If they had just refreshed the MacBook line and put out AppleTV 2.0 this wouldn't be much of a MacWorld Expo keynote.  Even iTunes HD wouldn't get much.  But a supersexy new gadget?  That always gets the press buzzing, and even if it's a sales flop, it's got enough cache right now that Apple's getting coverage unlike that of any other laptop release.  When was the last time CNN covered the latest models by Dell?  This is also a pretty iconic-looking machine, instantly recognizable as an Apple product, so expect Apple's product-placement group to go into overdrive, throwing these into every movie and TV show available. 

Or, you know, it could be a little of all of the above.  It seems to me that both the drooling Apple FanBoys and the Immediate Detractors forget just how shrewd Apple - or at least Apple under Jobs - has always been.  Their motivation is rarely to create and sell a one-size-fits-all device, or to add features to an existing product.  They've always been the kind to tell you that you don't know it yet, but you really want what they're selling, and you want it before everyone else comes along with a knockoff.  And, yeah, mayvbe it's been done before, but Apple is going to try and prove that that's irrelevant because they did it better.  From the GUI to the Air, that's always been their operating procedure, so it might be a bit cynical to say that this isn't really about introducing a new laptop, but it's more likely that this move is calculated for some larger corporate/industry purpose.