Apple's Macbook Air: But Will it Play Games?
The rumors are swirling, the media's swarming, the hype is...well, it's hyperbolizing. All surrounding Apple very probably jumping into the ultraportable laptop market at the Macworld Expo which begins tomorrow. Does anyone care? Sure they do, because Apple draws attention for the same reason Andy Warhol can make us gawk at rows of Campbell's soup cans. Apple exudes cool, and if you're not cool, you're Dilbert, and getting Dilbert calendars for your birthday because your friends see you as That Guy isn't the same as getting Whoawuzzat?'s when you pull an Apple product out of your backpack.
That said, and assuming all the pundits aren't embarrassingly wide of the mark by assuming the ballyhoo's over at least some kind of laptop, I have to ask: but will it play games?
Yeah yeah, I can already anticipate the "but that's not what an ultraportable's designed to..." schtick, and I can see that point and occupy that space for all of two seconds. Otherwise, not buying it. People game on iPods. On cell phones. They've found ways to game on the iPhone despite Apple's reticence toward goofing around between flashing the thing at passerby to incite fits of fashion envy. 2007 was the biggest year for gaming yet. Designers -- even hip-to-be-contrarian designers like Apple -- ignore gaming at their peril.
Been reading the design speculation? If you have, you'll know that the so-called "Macbook Air" may:
- Be really, really slim. Well duh, if it's called a "Macbook Air" or "Air Mac" you'd expect it to either be lighter than air and capable of levitation (hey, don't put it past these guys) or, more likely, in the vicinity of "two pounds or less." If they've also somehow managed to mitigate the crazy-insane-bonkers heat issues the Macbooks and Macbook Pros have when employed as game rigs that rest in your lap, count as a major plus for gaming on the go. *
- Include a Solid State drive, i.e. no moving parts, i.e. dramatically mitigated seek time and latency and all-around more reliable. Next to the GPU, the hard drive is one of the biggest bottlenecks in a laptop when it comes to gaming, so count as a plus.
- Employ a collapsible ethernet jack. Okay, color me a little less than "woo-woo" over this, since I've been enjoying the benefits of Megahertz's XJACK (variously) for nearly a decade. If the collapsible bit's true, why we haven't seen this in ultraportable laptops already seems a little "missed the boat" to me.
- Come bundled with an external optical drive, i.e. DVD spindle. It's been a long time since I've seen "optical on the outside," so I'm not holding my breath that it's actually true. But if it is, it'll be bad news for gamers who want to play games that -- inanely, to be sure -- require the disc be present in a connected drive. In any case, say it with me now: Better Be Inline Powered.
- Ship with a Macbook-sized 13.3-inch screen. Hey, not bad. you can comfortably do 1280x800 on a screen that size -- plenty big for anything you'd expect to throw at a compromised compact. Which brings me to...
The Invariable Caveats:
1. Integrated GPU. You can almost count on an ultraportable to cut this corner in order to save space and minimize heat by going integrated, which means perfectly brilliant 2D performance but utterly abysmal 3D output. Stop by these Civilization forums some time if you want to read about the pain basic Macbook owners get to experience trying to play Aspyr's Civilization IV port at more than a dozen frames per second on even the lowest graphical settings. Don't blame the port, blame the feeble 3D power of Intel's GMA parts lineup.
2. Watered down CPU. I.e. Battery Life Is King. Right, I know, cheers to all you power business "keep those icky games away from me" users. Enjoy. As for the rest of us? Expect low voltage, low clock speed, and low performance in general when it comes to 3D gaming.
As always, assuming I haven't just wasted a longish post criticizing an as-yet fictional and entirely hypothetical product, I'd absolutely love-love-love to be proven wrong on any of my criticisms. Imagine playing Crysis at decent speeds on an ultraportable Macbook running Boot Camp. I know, I can't either, but I can always hope.
* Apple likes to somewhat disingenuously claim their Macbook and Macbook Pro models are "notebooks," not "laptops." Why? To put off users complaining of leg burns (the one thing Apple manages quite badly in their mobile computing space is heat). Can they get away with restricting an ultraportable as such? Unlikely. It'd pretty much defeat the entire purpose of the "air" moniker.
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FINALLY! someone who sees it my way! apple sucks at computers, they should stick to what they are good at, which is ipods and phones and stop trying to hold us back with feable and uber expensive technology! i mean this hunk of junk is going to cotst at LEAST $2,000 more than a decent laptop which could run at 3 times the speed and actually do something more than surf the net and send emails... if i wanted to pay 3-4 thousand for an internet browser, then i give everyone permission to shoot me down over stupidity.
FINALLY! someone who sees it my way! apple sucks at computers, they should stick to what they are good at, which is ipods and phones and stop trying to hold us back with feable and uber expensive technology! i mean this hunk of junk is going to cotst at LEAST $2,000 more than a decent laptop which could run at 3 times the speed and actually do something more than surf the net and send emails... if i wanted to pay 3-4 thousand for an internet browser, then i give everyone permission to shoot me down over stupidity.
hmmm...yea good point. apple is good at animation and a bit in looks when it comes to hardware. but ill stick with windows OS coz no matter what you do theres a big thing about compatibility issues and softwares that supports mac is so little. lets face the fact that apple is not really into the computer side and ei if apple really want to be competitive try not to monopolize the products that they have....vistas surpassing linux and mac OS thats a good sign that no matter what they do they cant put a great company(microsoft) down!