The big news from MacWorld Tuesday was the announcement of the new MacBook Air notebook computer. While the kids from the cult of Apple are no doubt rejoicing at the news, a closer examination of the specs makes us, here at What the Deuce, wonder if the MacBook Air wasn’t originally slated for release this time last year, if not earlier. In fact, compared to other computers on the market, the $2000 MacBook Air is so woefully underpowered Apple might be wise to bill it as the new IPod Jumbo, flip-screen edition.

Oh, we get it. The MacBook Air is light and sleek, and shiny, and silver, and all those pleasing aesthetic things that Apple admittedly does so well. I’ve also heard enough and seen enough to know that Leopard is a perfectly fine OS. That said, I can tell you that same holds true for Windows XP and Vista, not to mention Ubuntu and several other perfectly capable flavors of Linux.

If you happen to prefer the Mac OS, more power to you; to each his own. If you truly believe it’s that much better than anything else, you’re probably a helpless victim of the Mac propaganda machine. The truth of the matter is that many of the same features that Apple is toting as (Th)innovative (Time Machine springs to mind) are features that have been available in other operating systems for years. Ignorance is no excuse, but I digress.

As I was saying…if you love Mac we understand that. What we can’t wrap our minds around is this new idea of “Thinnovation”, which, from what we can tell, means “make it thin and light and hope like hell that no one notices that, in terms of actual performance, this thing pretty much blows”.

Please, please, I beg you…before you start the name calling, and the flame wars, and everything that always seems to go hand in hand in the ultra-elitist Mac vs. The World debate, just look at the specs, and compare them to what you can get in a Dell, and HP for half the money, or in an Asus for equal money. Mac fans of the world, I’m afraid this time the joke is on you.

For just under $2000 you get:

• An ultra light-weight (3.0 lbs.) Notebook computer in shiny silver casing
• A 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (remember when Apple was telling everyone how inferior the Intel chip was? Now they’re putting slow Intel chips in their new machines - I’m baffled by this.)
• 2 GB of RAM
• An 80GB PATA hard drive that spins at a blazing 4800RPM (FYI 5400 is considered slow, 4800 is embarrassing)
• 13.3″ widescreen with a max resolution of 1280×800, which Apple calls “no-compromise” - And really, why should you compromise on the display when you’ve already compromised on just about every other meaninful spec?
• “The billiance of multi-touch”. The rest of the world calls this mouse gestures, but if it’s new to you; awesome, just awesome.
• A total package that has 1/3 less power at twice the cost of a resonably equipped notebook.

Seriously, we really do get it. It’s light, it’s shiny, it’s silver, and it has an Apple embossed on it. But it’s also at least $500 over-priced, and all the Thinnovation in the world doesn’t make that a compromise worth making.

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