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Apple is one of those companies that always tries to push for new technologies in hopes of seeing them become standard.
That’s not to say that Apple invents those technologies, but they certainly like to adopt technologies they see as as up-and-coming. Sometimes it works. Right now, Apple is aiming for a handful of ideas that have yet to become standard in computers, and Uncle Steve said it himself, “We think all notebooks are going to be like this someday.” When he said that, he was of course referring to the MacBook Air. Let’s assume Stevie P. is right, what are some of the forward-looking design choices that were made before all notebooks became like the MacBook Air?
5) Goodbye Optical Drives
Optical drives are already somewhat a thing of the past. We actually can’t remember the last time we used an optical drive. It’s there, but there has been very little need for it, if any. We’ve all moved to other forms of saving and transferring our work such as cloud-based storage and USB flash drives. The larger MacBook Air makes use of an SD card slot as well. Rather than having to worry about a software reinstall disc, Apple has packed in a small USB stick called the “Software Reinstall Drive.” Which is pictured below:
4) Farewell Spinning Harddrives! Hello Flash-based Storage…
Spinning harddrives are slower, and clunkier than what is available now. The data can become corrupt very easily, and with tiny moving parts, there is always the risk of something going wrong. Remember what happened if you jogged too much with that old iPod? It was possible for it to skip, and every so often you would hear the drive inside spin as some of the data was committed to memory for the anti-skip mechanism. It didn’t always help though. When iPods started using flash-based storage, skipping was no longer an issue.
Flash-based storage is much more portable, which makes it a great choice for laptops. It’s faster than a spinning drive, and it’s also much more durable if dropped. Accidents happen, and laptops get dropped. Dropping a laptop equipped with a traditional harddrive could spell disaster for your data. Flash storage may be better protected when this happens. It’s a reasonable design choice for a laptop.
3) FaceTime is the New Way to Chat
Apple is going full-force with FaceTime. They introduced it with the iPhone 4, it became part of the iPod Touch and now it’s on the Mac. All that’s left is the iPad. The FaceTime branding is becoming such an important push for Apple that they have gone so far as to rebrand their iSight cameras as FaceTime cameras. At this point, all of their computers come with an iSigh–uh, FaceTime camera built-in (The Mac Mini is an exception, but it doesn’t come with a display). Also worth noting is that there is less and less emphasis on their traditional chat clients such as iChat. It’s become more about unifying a user experience across various devices. Now you can call your friend on their iPhone while on your Mac, or call your friend’s Mac with your iPhone or iPod Touch. The contact list is the same, so you don’t necessarily need to get every bit of someone’s contact information to talk to them on different machines.
We found FaceTime for Mac rather interesting, and put together a quick guide for using it: Here. We also have a little more on FaceTime for iPhone and FaceTime for iPod Touch.
It can be downloaded here. But please, don’t use it on a public computer thanks to this security flaw.
2) Easy Software Purchases
The App Store has changed the way we shop for content. This is the case on the iPhone and on the iPad. We have one central location to pick up a variety of useful applications. In the past, you’d probably Google “photo resize for OS X” and try to find something that worked or was free, and this was partly because you didn’t know who you were buying from. Now, it may all be available on the App Store. We understand that some users may not like this, but the internet still exists as it is and those applications will always be downloadable. However, more casual users, say Mom and Dad, can easily head over to the App Store and find a simple application that will suit their needs. They don’t mind paying a bit, and they feel safe buying it from a source they trust, the App Store.
1) Instant On
The new Air is ready to go when you are. (Wow, that totally sounded like PR speak…shoot me) Lame PR pitches aside, the truth is that it’s convenient to have a laptop around that you simply open to use. It’s what makes our smartphones and iPads and sleepmode so useful. It’s a pain to wait for any device to startup, especially when you are traveling and just need to use your laptop at an airport or rest area. The iPad became perfect for that, because it was always on, but in standby mode. The MacBook Air will be similar in this respect.
The Future of Notebooks
We can’t know what the future holds for any of our portable devices. Even devices like the iPad may have seemed a little hard to swallow when they came. It took holding it in our hands while kicking back on the recliner to really see it for what it was. Some of these other features may need for consumers to use them in a real-world scenario to truly enjoy them for what they are.
We hope to see at least a few of these ideas become part of future notebooks, both PC and Mac.
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Some very interesting points there. I agree about 1 and 5, but am not sure about 2. It seems to suggest that software will become monopolistic, directed only through known and trusted sellers. Which might be good for non-techy types, but there are enough nerds looking for the latest/best programs to suggest it would become standard practise. I could be wrong of course!
i Think a centralized software store is great, so long as you still have options to download, buy, or install programs that aren’t included in the Centralized store.. You should have a choice.
The SSD is also great, however the MBA version doesn’t allow for upgrading the size.. This is a NO-NO.
I’m hoping Apple releases an iMac with a smaller SSD drive for the OS and apps and a larger built in HDD for your documents and media.
3, 4, and 5 were things the rest of the industry was already doing. Apple was just playing catchup on them and for some reason its now revolutionary. Skype has had video chat on all platforms, including over cellular networks on phones. Flash memory is already an option on most laptops (I haven’t ordered a spinning drive for any laptop in my company for over two years). Netbooks ditched optical drives years ago in addition to most computers now just having a recovery partition instead of discs. As for the software store, it wouldn’t shock me if this is the first step to Apple locking down the Mac platform like they did with iOS. It’s a nice option as long as it doesn’t become the only option. As for instant on, now that is just a great idea that people have been promising for years…so it’s nice that someone finally delivered.
My Win7 machine has Instant On and SSD, I bought it last year. My 2001 Sony laptop had no optical drives.
Apple isn’t pioneering anything here. Oh, by the way, did you know that Steve Jobs invented the light bulb?
Hibernate is pretty much instant on.
The title is retarded, these things are nothing unique, they are common features, they have already succeeded
That isn’t true instant on, that is standby that is using power, all laptops can do that, it isn’t instant on, it’s always on, fail?
5,4,3 and 1 are nothing new.
and if 2 is implemented the same way it is on their other devices, it’s a bad thing. Also they didn’t invent number 2, they just made it a lot more mainstream.
This isn’t forward thinking, this is just using the same stuff the competition uses. Facetime isn’t new or obscure, it’s re-branded Skype, lol.
Sigh.
But to the people that use macs it is all new and invented by apple.
They are not aware of anything else in the world of computers because they wait for apple to “invent” things. The things that apple gained from the linux open source side they attributed to apple creating. Living life with blinders on and have become what apple fought against in the beginning.
well then hibernate isn’t instant off.
This.
Apple may not be ” inventing” these things, as you say, but they do it better:)
But if they’re doing it better, why would people say that these things are going to fail as the article suggests. The only thing that I can remember people saying anything negative about was the lack of optical drives. This article wasn’t very well thought out…
#2 isn’t new for computers either. Ubuntu has the Ubuntu Software Center (in addition to the package manager). It is free, though, and you can always download from other sources.
This again, PCs and MAC’s alike have been doing this stuff for years.
I would also say that Apple makes the experience better than Skype, netbooks, etc. That is why its revolutionary. They execute the User Experience perfectly and people embrace the experience. A tool is only useful if someone knows how to use it.
Why so salty!? I think the point is Apple more than any other company is real hard headed when it comes to pushing for something.. They felt everyone should have had CDROMs so they did it, people at the time thought it was a bad idea. Then moved to “super drives” to name 2 examples. Granted they aren’t “Pioneering” anything but sometimes it’s not who does it 1st but who is 1st so agree with the idea and run with it, and Apple is real good at doing that..
So why isn’t everyone using Skype? Or more companies using SSDs.. Sure you can do all this by yourself, which is something I’m sure most of our computerphiles have done. What other major computer manufactor will take that step? HP, Dell? Also instant on and ready mode are 2 different things when it comes down to it. I have instant on because of additional flash memory I have plugged into my computer. This is something that is going to just work, you won’t have to explain to your grandma what aisle she can find the USB flash drives for puter..
The same reason why people said Thomas John Watson, Sr. there would only be a worldwide market for 5 computers.. What’s conventional now may not always been that away, it’s hard to think of there never being optical drives, but the way I see it this whole format war at this point in time is moot. Discs, of any kind are antiquated. Seriously, do we REALLY need CD/DVD roms anymore with 16gig USB drives runnig at about 10-25 bucks? Please no argument about blu-ray either.. Optical disc are an aging dinosaur..
Now explain to He-haw in louisana how to do it.. It’s a great YOU can do it, but the problem is the masses don’t and contrary to everyone’s perception, just because very few people can do it doesn’t make it any cooler, just less funded and accessible. These are cool things that do make computers better but most people don’t know about it. I don’t think apple trying to take credit for inventing the wheel but I’m sure if it was an Unbuntu saying the same thing, those same detractors would say the same thing, maybe with less finese too, like bone headed states like “This is why Unbuntu is less than .01% of the market”
this is a trollish statement if there ever was one. we apple fans are not clueless, like windows users like to pretend. we know the tech is out there — apple just excels at seeing which way the wind is blowing, then taking something and making it BETTER. more intuitive, better design. you can deny it all you want, but the proof is in their sales.
Great point about Ubuntu Software Center we gonna do a featured story about it. Thanks for reminding us.
I do not think FaceTime is the new way to chat. I like the multi-tasking freedom that the phone or texting offers. I can see FaceTime being useful for family members that are away for extended periods of time, but that’s not common enough to make FaceTime suddenly revolutionary. Video conferencing phones have existed for a long time. If there was demand for it, it would have caught on by now.
People just do not need to see each other face-to-face for a 2 minute phone conversation.
+1
This would be a great feature, even leave a spare SATA slot so those that want to can upgrade.
I don’t remember anyone saying that these ideas will fail. What I have seen lots of is people simply stating that Apple didn’t come up with them first. Thankfully, the article agrees.
Video conferencing phones have existed for a long time. If there was demand for it, it would have caught on by now.”
It’s a chicken and egg thing – who wants a video phone if no one else has one? All of a sudden, literally millions of people will have compatible, consumer grade (ie, dead simply, no IT admin required) video conferencing. That’s big. Know why so many people use a mouse nowadays?
I had a video phone 3 or 4 years ago it was fun and awesome when I was away from my girlfriend for two weeks and then the novelty wore off and we never used it again. It was nice to know it was always there ‘just in case’ but it was a one time use kind of thing.
Well. I have gotten rid of all my PC and I am now a true blue apple Fan. Long Live Apple
. I shall live and die by you!!!!!!!!
That was probably a stupid decision. I have a Mac and a Win7 machine. Why? Because as much as I wish it were so, several things like presentations, etc. don’t translate exactly to Windows machines. Why do I care? Because I have to send out presentations to business associates that complain about text looking funny, etc.
Yes, I know I can use PowerPoint on Mac, and I do. It still doesn’t look exactly the same in a lot of cases.
So until the rest of the business universe adopts Apple, I’m going to keep a Windows 7 box.