A response to all those Macbook Air skeptics

Something was in the air, indeed, in Apple’s 2008 Keynote. Oooos and Aaaaas mainly, as Steve Jobs revealed to an agog audience iPhone’s record market shares, free iTunes-related updates and the extraterrestrial Time Capsule. — 8Ok, now I can rent a movie on iTunes and watch it on my iPod, but hey! Steve, come on, enough of that, what’s in the air? — Even watching the podcast at home, I could actually feel the atmosphere getting more and more electric as the show went on and on and on… and then… — A Macbook Air? In an envelope? This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen! Wait a minute, where’s the CD drive? Outside? Outside how? And the ethernet port? Outside too? Ok, so it must be cheap then? No? — And the frantic cheering turned progressively into diffident scattered claps. — Are they out of their mind? Who’s gonna buy that? Not me! — Exactly! Not you! But don’t get frustrated, you are not the target, that’s all!

The post-Keynote reaction has been quite harsh too, and everywhere on forums aggrieved mac fans are showing their fears and frustrations. — Steve Jobs promised us the moon, and all he gives us is this deficient piece of junk! Not for me, thanks! — But hey, let’s stop acting like deprived three-year-olds who were refused a chocolate ice-cream and try to think about what Apple is trying to do here. During the last few years, Apple’s strategy has clearly been to expand their grasp to peripheral markets: portable media players with the iPod, mobile terminals with the iPhone, HD TV with the Apple TV, etc… all of them carefully crafted and integrated to Apple’s set of cool products. And this is awfully clever! For 2 reasons:

• If you buy one of Apple’s products (because it’s so cool!… and the user-experience is so incredible!…), then you will immediately find yourself literally craving for the rest of Apple’s suite. Because, hey, if you have an iPod, you get iTunes, and if you have iTunes you want Coverflow, and you end up with a new Macbook with Leopard, and then soon enough you’ll want an Apple TV… or Time Capsule, etc… In the end, you just want to buy everything on the Apple Store! And your friends too. And your friends’ friends too. But it’s okay, why? Because they are at least one year ahead of the competition and, hell, you just love it!
• Apple is slowly moving with the flow and positioning itself onto the growing market of digital terminals. The future of personal computers is, in my opinion, in utility computing (or Grid Computing, or Cloud Computing, or whatever you call it). You want something? Well tap into the network and rent what you need for a few hours. You can already read your mails, store your pictures, watch movies online, and much more… All you need is a terminal to access those resources. A CD drive? What for?!

In the light of what I just pointed out, Apple’s new move with its Macbook Air is not surprising. Although targeting a very limited public (professionals on the move – seriously if all you need is an internet access, a retro keyboard for notes taking, a webcam for video-conferences and a port for video-projected presentations, this is the greatest!), the MB Air demonstrates Apple’s technological superiority, and if proven a success, could lead the market toward a new area of distributed resources.