CNET defends Macbook Air pricing

APPLE'S TAME HACKS at CNET have wasted bandwidth explaining to punters that Apple's latest Air offering is not a wee bit overpriced as many people would think.

CNET used to be one of Apple's chums and would turn up at Jobs' Mob's rallys to praise whatever he said. However, lately CNET has been decidedly realistic about Apple and clearly is not getting its share of free Apple goodies.

So to remedy the fact it has launched into a yarn in which it says that the Macbook Air is not the most outrageously overpriced piece of aluminium on the market since a contractor charged NASA $150 for a single screw for the shuttle.

The hacks admit that $2,499 for a laptop is a lot of money, so it seems to have hatched out a cunning plan that enable them to defend the price tag.

The secret of course is to stick the Air into a product category of Apple's own choosing. CNet said that the Air is not a laptop it is an ultraportable. This means that it is not necessarily overpriced if you stick it against much better laptops. You can say that they are not 'thin' or 'ultraportable'.

To help you out Cnet compared it to Dell's Latitude E4200 which is about the same price. Dell's machine is 12.1-inch configured with a 128GB solid state drive, 2GB of memory, an Intel Core 2 Duo ULV SU9400 processor running at 1.4GHz, the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, and a 6-cell battery.

The Air also includes a 128GB solid state drive and 2GB of memory and is thinner but has a more-powerful 1.86GHz Intel processor and Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics. "This is a crucial difference for some users who want the portability but need more horsepower," CNet enthuses.

While we agree that the graphics card would be a bit better on the Apple, the heat and power consumption on the Air is also much higher. For some reason Apple did not think it wise to use the latest ultra-low-voltage Intel processors.

Cnet points out that the Air has a bigger screen, but hey aren’t we in the ultraportable range? Why do you want a bigger screen?

According to Cnet Apple balances the screen needs with the ultraportable tag. Yup, they are making it up as they go along.

The Dell comes with an external media drive, which the Apple doesn't and likewise the Air doesn't have any ports or docking station. The E4200 has an 1394, VGA, RJ-45, USB, and eSATA/USB Combo ports. And a docking connector.

So in short it is a different league from the Apple Air. It is what we call a laptop and has all the gubbins and is not an overpriced, nice-looking toy.

Still defences like this will get you back in with the Apple press office, if that is what you want. µ

L'Inq
Cnet