Sony bites back at Apple


With a doubt, Steve Jobs latest wonder, the Macbook Air, got the tech world all abuzz once more, and his comparison to Sony’s own pride and joy, the VAIO TZ ultra portable, during his Keynote got the company’s attention. Now, it’s Sony’s turn to share their thoughts on the Macbook Air.

Right design, wrong time

The senior vice president of VAIO product marketing, Mike Abary, commended Apple for creating an engineering marvel with the Macbook Air, but quickly followed it up with the results of their own research done way back in 2004 which revealed that thinness is not the key in winning the hearts of consumers. Back then, they had the X505, a 0.16-inch laptop that had a carbon fiber body minus the optical drive. A lot thinner than the MB Air, but obviously not as well-received.

Thin is in the Air

Unfortunately, their vision back then wasn’t quite apt for the time. Four years ago, people couldn’t imagine computers without optical drives. Considering how technology works today, users can do away with the optical drive and live happily ever after with flash drives and Wifi. Apple, of course, provided a solution for those who just can’t live without optical media with the Remote Disc feature. If Sony was able to come up with a similar feature back in 2004, maybe the x505 would have been a succes, but then again, the technology wasn’t there yet for the development of such a feature.

I guess Sony was years ahead of Apple in conceptualizing a slim laptop, but it was a case of having the right idea at the wrong time. Apple, for their part, is on a roll with the success of one hit product after another.

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January 21st, 2008
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
elgarak
Posted on:
1/21/2008 at 12:24 pm

The X505 was not only thin; it only had a 10.5″ screen.

If you had closely listened to Steve Jobs Keynote, you knew that this was one of the key parameters he was not willing to compromise on.

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Luis
Posted on:
1/21/2008 at 8:32 pm

Marketing is the key! X505 doesn’t look as exciting as MacBook Pro. Sony needs a Steve Jobs ;)

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Uriel
Posted on:
1/22/2008 at 1:23 am

Basically I disagree. Optical media are even today required for most software installations, specially those used in a Mac, and which are not small pieces of software, mostly used in PCs. What the market has shown till now is that consumers which don’t care about portability are concerned about slimness, but it is not needed, them, to bee silmmer than enough to be kept in a shelfbox, just to hidden it of to keeping it safer, I mean, than on top of the table. Then, if you are a globetrotter and rich enought, you care about being compact (which means small) but robust (which when being slim you loose the tough look) and LIGHT. And, if you loook for extreme portability, yo look for 1,2 kilos or less. Which is just one Vaio model, or maybe one Dell, sometimes one Samsung or one LF model (it depends on the seans’ collection), and one ultralight Portegé from Toshiba which is rougly one kilo. Probably the new MBook will succeed because it has the flavour and the success image of Apple. But what the market has been looking for, and still is, is ultra-ultra-light portable computers (and slim, but not particularly ultra-slim)… of course, if you can afford the price.

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
Stacey Augmen
Posted on:
1/22/2008 at 5:14 am

“Apple, for their part, is on a roll with the success of one hit product after another.”

…. Rrrrrrcchhhhhhh (is that brakes I hear?)

I think Apple will be in for a surprise, just like Sony doscovered, that their new Air machine is just that - full of hot air. Without being a total turbo nerd, I would like to see how many Apple consumers would be able to re-install their Air OS if the HD were ever to crash/malfunction. Remember, without the hard drive, you cannot run RemoteDisc. So you either pray that your computer never fails, learn how to set your computer to boot from the USB via some bootmanger that can handle an .ISO file of some sort, or you buy an external optical drive, which defeats the whole purpose in the first place.

Until the OS is free of the hard drive, I would stay away from any machine that is optical drive free (unless your a TN).

Cheers,
S.A.

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
Allan David Reyes
Posted on:
1/23/2008 at 9:20 pm

The Macbook Air isn’t meant to conquer the entire laptop market, but it is expected to stand out and take a share out of it, particularly those who wish to own an ultra-portable machine.

While we can not completely remove the optical drive out of the picture, its usage is fast becoming limited as more and more users prefer USB flash drives for portable storage.

That’s where the external optical drive comes in. It will set you back a couple of bucks, but for those who think they can live without it, then they can save their hard earned cash for a rainy day (or another peripheral/gadget).