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MacBook Air and Iterative Development

There’s been a lot of whining about the MacBook Air that loses sight of it’s real purpose—and no, I’m not talking about the road warrior audience.

As you probably heard, Apple announced a new super-skinny laptop at this year’s MacWorld expo. Named the MacBook Air, it’s impressively skinny and light-weight, and a few features that move in interesting and new directions:

• No wired internet, wireless only
• Multi-touch trackpad
• Optional 64GB solid state hard drive

The “wireless only” is a natural evolution; with initiatives such as Sprint’s upcoming Xohm service the age of ubiquitous WiFi is just about here. Wired is so 90’s.

The multi-touch ability is a clear progression from the interface on the existing iPhone and iPod Touch devices, but with a twist. Instead of the direct manipulation touch interface you experience on the pocket devices, you’re confined to using the traditional trackpad. It’s not part of the screen.

Then there’s the allure of the solid-state drive. No mechanical wear-and-tear (great for a portable), better battery life (no motors to spin up), and I’m guessing pretty blindingly fast speed. But that’s a hefty $999USD option.

So why did Apple bother to make this Air laptop? It’s an iteration. A middle step from the existing product line to the next.

What we really want is a tablet. Full screen multi-touch, with a large and affordable solid state drive, always connected at broadband speeds, with hassle-free backup over the air. We’re not there yet.

But there are enough road warriors who will probably buy the Air to help drive down production costs for the new bits: the new smaller die Intel chip, perhaps, as well as the solid state drive and whatever other new-fangled goodies they’ve got inside. So you make an interim product such as the Air: it will have it’s audience, and that will pave (and pay) the way for the next iteration. Gives you a chance to work out the bugs, spot new opportunities, see how people use it. That’s what an iteration is all about.

We expect our software customers to embrace iterative development, with increasing features and incremental improvement from one release to the next. Yet I hear a lot of whining about the Air that it’s not perfect, that it’s not what people want, that you’re better off with a MacBook Pro, etc.

It’s an iteration. As with any product, take the pragmatic approach: if it meets your needs now, buy it. If you’re looking at possible future needs, then wait.

And maybe think about what an iteration is all about: feedback.

Textile 2 PDF

Here’s a quick and easy way to generate a decent looking PDF from some simple Textile markup, using TextMate.

1. First, just type up your content in TextMate, using Textile mode. You’ll get syntax highlighting, live spellcheck, all the usual goodies.
2. Next, hit the hot key for Preview (Control-Option-Apple-P)
3. From this window, just print to PDF.

Voilà.

You can always add images and perhaps some CSS to tart it up a bit if you like.

It’s light, it’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s plain text—so you can put it under version control with all the rest of your quick memos, project documentation, and such. Right?

Mac books, Mac authors, Mac World

We've got a bunch of fun and cool new titles in the works (to add to our 45+ titles in print), and since most of us are using Macs these days, we've got a batch of neat Mac-focussed titles coming up as well.

Our own Daniel Steinberg will be at this year's Mac World expo next week. Be sure to track him down and say Hi, especially if you've got an idea for a possible book you'd like to write.

If you're not headed out to Mac World, you can also send us proposals to proposals@pragprog.com.

As for me, I've got my fingers crossed for some cool new laptop announcements :-).