Compromises Limit Appeal of Apple's MacBook Air Laptop

Sidekick or Mainstay?

With its reduced hard-drive size and lack of speed, the MacBook Air may be looked upon by users with high standards as a product that's not worthy of being any user's primary Mac. And I've received numerous e-mails on that point, from Mac users who assume that Apple has intended the MacBook Air to be a sidekick to another, more powerful Mac at the true center of one's life.

But in making the MacBook Air a full-fledged MacBook and marketing it as such, Apple has given no hint that it views this system as anything more than a tiny version of the other MacBooks in its product line. Beyond the necessary release of Remote Disc, there's a disappointing lack of innovation from Apple in the area of easily syncing any MacBook back to a desktop Mac.

Yes, there are plenty of clever strategies you can use to make this process better, including .Mac synchronization or sync utilities such as Econ Technologies' Chronosync. But Apple could have chosen to create software that made the MacBook Air as much of an easy-to-use companion piece to a desktop system as an iPod or an iPhone. Instead, MacBook Air users will face the same synchronization issues as every other person who uses a MacBook as a secondary system.

Then there will be those who, small drive and slow processor be damned, will adopt the MacBook Air as their primary Mac--simply because they're laptop--only users who want that laptop to be as small as possible.

For those users, the biggest issue with the MacBook Air will be the size of its hard drive. Data pack rats will need to change their file-archiving strategy, migrating certain documents to an external hard drive. Media fans might consider packing an iPod rather than storing a copy of their music and video library on the MacBook Air's drive.