Once.Upon.a.Air

Essentially The MacBook Air is advertised as and displayed as the sleekest in computing technology and the thinnest and most portable computer to date. In the “guided tour” the viewers are exposed to all of the great features such as the “optional” slate drive, the backlit keyboard keys, track pad gestures, the hidden ports and so on. Basically they are selling the a new brand of computers to the consumers, especially with the selling point of “no optical drive” they suggest that renting movies off of iTunes is the way to go, but there is an optional optical drive to buy.    

The MacBook Air is definitely pushing the extreme portability with logical functionality. The notion of “Air” could  deliver the mindset that says “Hey I can use my computer absolutely anywhere” and It is almost as if it feels that Apple understands that there are trends in wireless connectivity and downloading, hence the justification of removing the optical drive. Not only does Apple want to respond to trends but they have a customer in mind; The middle to wealthy class who are fashionable or artists of some sort. This Laptop is so prominently in the news that owning one would be a fashion statement; any user who buys his laptop truly has great taste and they saved or could easily afford such a peripheral as compare to users’ older computing technologies.

The product is meant to be used as, well, any other laptop but with a twist. It is meant to be used anywhere you can show it off, and to be used as the ultimate gateway to the Internet as the iPhone revolution that is starting to change internet cellular connectivity.

The MacBook Air essentially represents a couple of themes. First is that CD’s are going out of style (I don’t care what Blu Ray customers or supporters think).  The fact it has no hard drive and I as a heavy computer user I am, doesn’t feel affected if I were to buy one (without the optical drive), and shows times have changed.  Computing is now taken everywhere. Slowly, but surely, I feel the trend for computing is portability, style, wireless networks. Apple wants to push the idea that computers are apart of our biology. In a way, I feel the trends with laptops are that owners use these devices as if it were apart of them and act as a personalized view of the wild Internet. We can see this trend in social networks, applications and lack of any major offline software except for the yearly office applications and video games.

I guess it makes me wonder, is this manipulation? Or is this a response to users needs? I honestly can’t tell the difference at this point, but I can tell you it is not pure innovation, just evolution.