An Imaginary Review of an Apple Netbook
Update: I want extend apologies to Jason Snell for the inappropriate attack in the first paragraph of this post (marked below by ‘*‘). His article really angried up the blood, so to speak. I have enjoyed Snell’s Macworld articles in the past and however much I feel that his recent post was poorly conceived, such personal and emotionally motivated statements are uncalled for and only obscure the issue at hand. Please see the comments for Snell’s proportionate response to my criticisms and perhaps a clearer critique of Snell’s article on my part.
Macworld’s Jason Snell just wrote up an apparently damning critique of OS X netbook hacks. For someone quite happily running OS X on an MSI Wind this piece absolutely comes off as *one half arrogance and one half ignorance.* Here are a few annotated excerpts from his post.
Netbooks are cheap for a reason. The specs of my MSI Wind U100 are the very definition of “inferior”—a single-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 120 GB hard drive, a limited-capacity battery, a tiny 10-inch screen, a shrunken keyboard, and no optical drive. In Mac terms, its closest cousin might be a 2005-vintage iBook G4.
Remind me again how much a 2005 iBook G4 cost?
The 10-inch display (1024 by 600 pixels) is cramped, although I didn’t feel as miserable using it as I thought I would.
It’s painfully obvious Snell is going into this ‘experiment’ with his conclusion already formed.
The Wind, being thicker but smaller, carries like a hardcover book. In contrast, carrying the Air—wide but thin—feels more like you’re toting a rigid manila folder or a portfolio.
It’s almost like you understand here, but in the end you miss how important this point is. The Wind is ultra-portable, not just thin.
But after spending quite a bit of time with the Wind, I’ve come to appreciate much about Apple’s hardware design.
Yes. I love my MacBook Pro. It cost me over 2,000 USD and I’d buy it again in a heartbeat. Ditto the MSI Wind.
While the Wind is not a terrible laptop, it most definitely feels cheap.
Yes, Jason. And it is cheap.
Apple’s Aluminum-clad laptops all feel solid, and even the white plastic MacBook feels sturdy.
I owned a plastic white MacBook. It’s the computer on which I first experienced the Mac platform. ‘Sturdy’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe its feel. Also, my Wind is not turning yellow on the palm rests. No cracks in the casing either. Moreover, the thing runs cool. I sold the white MacBook within a year due to its cheapish feel.
And I realize now why someone at Apple demands full-sized keyboards for all the company’s laptops: the Wind’s compact (or, to use Tim Cook’s word, “cramped”) keyboard and its too-small keys make my hands grow weary after spending almost any time typing on the Wind.
How big are your hands, Jason? I do most of my typing on an aluminum wireless Apple keyboard, but I don’t “grow weary” when typing on the Wind.
The Wind also made me appreciate my MacBook Air’s trackpad more. The Wind’s trackpad button is mushy and hard to click, and there’s no support for the multi-finger gestures that I’ve come to rely on (most especially two-finger scrolling, which I use all the time) on my Mac.
The Wind’s trackpad, frankly, sucks. But you can enable 2 finger scrolling. And seriously, you’re criticizing the Wind for not implementing hardware features that Apple has only released within the last year? Give your head a shake.
Then there’s the raw speed of the thing. The Wind’s 1.6GHz Atom processor is a low-power chip that only offers a single processing core and just can’t measure up to the performance of Intel’s Core Duo line. And the Wind’s 1GB of RAM doesn’t help matters any.
Again, it’s a netbook, Jason. Safari is fast, MS Office runs perfectly and Skype video chats are crisp. This isn’t a gaming rig. And you’d like to edit videos on a 9 inch screen?
Snell now goes on to complain some more that the Wind isn’t a plug and play Apple experience:
My Wind runs a hacked version of OS X, but with an Apple laptop you’d get the real thing. That’s not just a nicety, either—using the Wind has reminded me just how good we Mac users have it, since Apple makes sure that OS X contains every driver necessary for every component used in its computers.
Yes, the Wind did not come out of Cupertino, which you acknowledge, and so I can’t understand why you’re complaining that things don’t “just work.” This is a Hackintosh.
If you pull back and consider the bigger picture, the laptop I’ve been using cost just over $300. Apple doesn’t need to make a $300 laptop. Since when has Apple played the same game as other PC-makers? If the company made a $500 laptop, that model would still be half the price of its current low-end MacBook.
Here again I can’t say more than that Snell just doesn’t get it. He goes on to laud the prospect of a iPod Touch Pro running the iPhone OS and so on and so forth. Fine. But it’s not the same. Jason, you’re really out of touch here.
Sent from my MSI Wind.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Forgive me for not writing a love letter to the Wind, but I have to laugh at some of the statements I make that you have taken to be attacks, when they’re not remotely intended to be. It’s amusing that accuse me of being half arrogant and half ignorant, yet your piece appears to do exactly what you accuse me of doing: proceed under a foregone conclusion even when the facts don’t back it up.
Here’s a simple example. You attack my statement that the Wind feels like a hardcover book and the Air feels like I’m carrying around a rigid manila folder. “It’s almost like you understand here, but in the end you miss how important this point is. The Wind is ultra-portable, not just thin.” But here’s the thing — I was praising the Wind. The Wind feels better than the air. It’s easier to carry around a book than it is to carry around a manila folder.
In fact, you specifically omitted the phrase, “I found carrying around the tiny Wind to be a joy.” So basically, in accusing me of being disingenuous, you have _removed my praise for the Wind_ because it doesn’t fit your thesis, which is that I’m a clueless and arrogant netbook basher.
You also accuse me of going into my article with preconceptions — which of course I did, everyone has _expectations_ — but the line you quote as proof is one in which I say that the Wind exceeded my expectations! Hardly proof that my piece is intended as a bashing.
You complain that I mention that the Atom processor is slow, as evidence that I’m clueless about how you’d use a Netbook, while omitting the fact that I said the Wind worked just fine for writing, web, and e-mail.
(I appreciate that you can enable two-finger scrolling on the Wind, theoretically — however, I could never get it to work. All of my attempts to install the driver you linked to failed, utterly, requiring me to run an external mouse and fix the damage.)
Perhaps you were looking for uncritical praise of netbooks. I admit my piece didn’t give you that. It was intended to inform Mac users who have never used a netbook what it might be like to run one — the positives AND negatives. For me, that tiny keyboard is a deal-killer for all but the most basic of uses. I appreciate that you may have a different perspective, but my opinion is not wrong — it’s my opinion. I am as free to have one as you are.
Finally, you say “I just don’t get it” when I say Apple won’t make a netbook. This isn’t my personal opinion that there _shouldn’t_ be one, it’s my knowledge as someone who has covered Apple for more than a decade, saying that I can’t see that Apple _would_ make one! And once again you omit the fact that WROTE I’d like to see Apple make a small, low-cost laptop in line with the 12-inch PowerBook, because what’s the point in quoting all the parts of my article that essentially agree with you?
Or to put it another way, if you’re going to accuse me of arrogance and ignorance you might want to stop using my article as a straw man and actually read the entire thing, the positives AND the negatives.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:10 am
I read Jason’s original article and this response.
I think Jason’s reaction is pretty spot-on. Cherry-picked negative remarks and passed over praise with a lot of snark thrown in for good measure. Straw man indeed.
I’ve owned several G4 Powerbooks and currently own a white plastic MacBook along with a MacBook Pro. I’d probably give the whole netbook hackintosh thing a try if I could find a use for it that isn’t already filled by my MacBook. I’d love the XL iPod Touch device people keep talking about.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:09 am
I’d have to say I agree with Jason on most points…. I love the portability of the Wind but find the keyboard cramped too.
Not quite sure why this post is so vitriolic?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Wow, this post is so full of crap I don’t know where to begin. First time I’ve ever heard of this site. Last time I’ll visit.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
@Jason Snell
Thank you for responding to the post. I’m sorry that I couldn’t respond to your comments sooner.
I take exception to the article insofar as the thesis is that the MSI Wind, a 300 dollar laptop with a nine inch screen, doesn’t measure up to either the MacBook Air or the white MacBook. I have no problem with the assertion that Apple is unlikely to make a netbook in the near future. In fact, I think the article makes a strong case against it. An Apple netbook wouldn’t have the high return margins that Apple is accustomed to and there are many tradeoffs that I’m not certain Apple would be willing to make.
The problem for me is the sub or supporting thesis for the main claim: an MSI Wind running OS X represents a poor computing experience. And even this in itself is an opinion that I can live with. However, the argument supporting it is based partly on comparisons of the Wind with current Apple hardware and partly on a kind of circular logic. To summarize the argument in its broad strokes:
1. The Wind is cheap. It isn’t made to the high standards of the MacBook Air (or the “sturdy” MacBook);
2. The Wind is a netbook. It’s too small (both in terms of screen real-estate and keyboard size);
3. The Wind was not made by Apple and non-Apple hardware can’t satisfy someone grown accustomed to Apple’s industrial standards.
I don’t think this is much of an argument at all. But there’s more to take issue with.
Citing Apple’s “aluminum clad laptops” the article goes on to describe the Wind as a “clock radio or other cheap consumer appliance.” Until the Air, aluminum was reserved only for Apple’s pro machines. And with regard to the comparison with the “strudy” white MacBook, I have owned one. The palm rests turned yellow and began to lift off the enclosure. Later, the enclosure itself cracked. Not something I’d describe as “sturdy.” And the white MacBook costs three times as much as the Wind.
The article states that the Wind follows the “frustrating tendencies” of PC makers, so much so that the writer was set to “return the system back as defective” because he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the Wi-Fi. Personally I don’t see how hitting F11 is anymore difficult than turning Wi-Fi on from the menubar. Moreover I consider this to be a relatively insignificant point and yet it was turned it into a large criticism of PC manufacturers in general.
The Wind’s trackpad is a serious drawback of the machine, I agree. But is it really a “nightmare” to set up? This kind of cautioning to “Prospective Hackintosh Mac-on-Wind types” is completely unnecessary and overboard. I sympathize that the author met with some difficulties, but I didn’t run into any major problems.
And then there’s the overall tone of the article:
“But after spending quite a bit of time with the Wind, I’ve come to appreciate much about Apple’s hardware design.”
“Every time I use the Wind, I am reminded that it most definitely didn’t originate in Cupertino.”
“…using the Wind has reminded me just how good we Mac users have it.”
I love Apple computers too, but I’m not going to let the company dictate to me what is and is not an acceptable computing experience nor limit my choices if I can help it. I am not trying to set up a straw man argument here. Rather, I want those considering a hackintosh not to be dissuaded by what I see as biased criticisms of both the product and the experience.
My comment about ultra-portability was meant to emphasize the relative importance of such a factor in the decision to buy a netbook. Aside from price, portability is the main consideration. The Macworld article didn’t stress this enough, in my opinion, but the burden is on me to make myself clear in my critique and I failed. This misunderstanding is entirely my fault and I regret it.
As far as preconceptions go, the author did state that the Wind exceeded his expectations – expectations that he described as “miserable.” I don’t feel that I can be blamed for saying that the author’s preconceptions were extremely negative.
About the Atom processor: yes, it is slow compared to anything with multiple cores, but that’s an irrelevant point. It’s not designed to run process intensive apps, but then again neither is the MacBook Air, which the author claims is his “main system.” Is the author running Final Cut or Logic on the Air? Where one draws the line for ‘powerful enough’ is entirely subjective and relative to the needs of the user.
“…Apple has, thus far, refused to make any Mac that isn’t a complete computer that can be plausibly used with the full range of Mac software…”
Does this mean that because Apple won’t do it then it shouldn’t be done? I see that a larger thesis is being set up here, but this statement is more or less equavelent to the following:
Apple won’t make a netbook because the MSI Wind won’t run iMovie.
Again, I don’t take issue with the assertion that Apple very probably won’t make a netbook, but how is this a blow against the Wind? It’s not.
A hacked 300 dollar netbook surely won’t measure up to the experience offered by a 1300 dollar Apple designed laptop. But the criticize the former on that account is entirely unfair.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
You say in your response, after, if I’m not mistaken, editing your original post to make it seem like less of an attack, that:
“I take exception to the article insofar as the thesis is that the MSI Wind, a 300 dollar laptop with a nine inch screen, doesn’t measure up to either the MacBook Air or the white MacBook.”
And that may be the core issue here. If you really think the thesis of Jason’s article is that the MSI Wind doesn’t measure up to either the MacBook Air or the white MacBook, I think you’re mistaken.
OF COURSE it doesn’t measure up to either of those much more expensive machines, nor does Jason or anyone else expect it to.
I would say the thesis of the article is more along the lines of, “Apple, a company known for producing relatively expensive high-margin products is unlikely to try to compete in the NetBook space the way most envision it, and here are a bunch of reasons why.”
Perhaps you would have felt less inclined to blast Jason’s article if he’d picked another netbook, one of which you aren’t an admitted fan(boy), like an Asus or Dell. I got the impression that Jason may well have footed the bill for this netbook himself (I could be wrong – doesn’t really matter) given how he described the purchase. Perhaps if he’d bought a selection of netbooks and given his experience with all of them you also would have seen his statements about them in general to be less damning of the model you’re fond of.
What I took away from this article was much more of a sense that the netbook as currently produced by MSI (and Asus, and Dell, and whoever else makes them) is something that is too low-cost (and consequently, having too low a profit margin), made of too inexpensive materials, giving it a cheap feel, and with too many compromises on issues about which Apple seems to have strong feelings (the full-sized keyboard, for example) for Jason to believe that Apple could reasonably expected to try to play in that niche, at least in the way other companies are playing in it.
Basically, I think you perceived a lot of “blows against the Wind” where none were intended in the manner in which you chose to take them. Is the Wind (or any netbook) a cheap laptop with compromises that may make it less suited for some tasks or to some tastes? Sure it is. My Kia Spectra5 is a cheap car with compromises that make it less suited for some tasks and to some folks’ tastes as well, but it costs a great deal less than a BMW and gets the basic transportation job done that I require.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:18 am
@Mike Stanley
Thanks for this response. I absolutely welcome the criticism.
Firstly, I did alter the post by adding the updated section at the very beginning and also by adding two *s in the first paragraph. Otherwise, I didn’t change a thing. I think that calling Snell ‘ignorant’ and ‘arrogant’ exceeded the bounds of any reasonable conversation, and for that I wanted to apologize to him and readers of MacMembrane. But that was my gut reaction to the Macworld article. It may have been out of line, but it was honest.
But your last comment may have cut more to the heart of the issue:
“Perhaps you would have felt less inclined to blast Jason’s article if he’d picked another netbook, one of which you aren’t an admitted fan(boy)…”
I think this is largely accurate, but to agree fully I’d have to rephrase it slightly. I am a fanboy of the Wind – hacked to run OS X. Running OS X, the Wind gets better battery life than my MacBook Pro. It wakes from sleep and enters sleep in under a second. It fits in the back pocket of a pair of oversized Levis (or, if it’s your thing, a pair of internet pants). This little Mac is a marvel. I felt compelled to defend it against what I see as a biased attack.
What I tried to make clear in my response to Snell’s comment was that the Apple sub-notebook is here now, be it a Wind or a Dell. People are buying nine inch laptops running OS X today. It isn’t important whether or not Apple will itself make one. As I said, Snell makes a strong case that Apple won’t make one. I agree with him here for the most part. But that’s irrelevant. And no matter how many faults Snell finds with the Wind, that’s irrelevant too.
April 28th, 2010 at 10:51 am
the design of the MSI Wind is similar to the basic netbooks you can find around. the price point of this netbook is cheaper than acer or dell netbooks~
October 5th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
there are lots of better alternative to MSI Wind today~”;
January 25th, 2011 at 11:36 am
~”: I am really thankful to this topic because it really gives great information -`;
February 7th, 2011 at 4:04 am
;;. that seems to be a great topic, i really love it `:-
May 3rd, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Heya just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the images aren’t loading correctly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same results.
August 5th, 2011 at 10:30 am
In this awesome scheme of things you secure a B- for effort and hard work. Where exactly you actually lost us was first on the specifics. As as the maxim goes, details make or break the argument.. And it couldn’t be more correct right here. Having said that, let me inform you precisely what did deliver the results. Your authoring is definitely pretty powerful and this is possibly why I am making an effort in order to comment. I do not really make it a regular habit of doing that. Next, whilst I can certainly notice a leaps in logic you make, I am not necessarily convinced of just how you seem to unite the ideas which in turn produce the actual conclusion. For now I shall subscribe to your point however wish in the future you actually link the dots better.