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.

“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.

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.