Rich Trenholm
Rich Trenholm writes about digital cameras, except when he's writing about films, music and comics. He does not drink tea and never has.
Thursday 24 January 2008, 11:11am
iSmoke and iMirrors
Molly Wood, our glamorously-named counterpart at CNET US, nails the nail on the nail when she compares the MacBook Air to the Apple Cube. If you're stuck in the last century -- or if you have a Kindle -- you may be aware of William Gibson, who writes 'books', generally about 'the future', and is thus hailed among primitive tribes as an 'author'. His 2003 novel Pattern Recognition starts in London, which is awesome, and it's largely spot-on.
Neil Gaiman may be the genius who brought us Sandman (w00t!) and Stardust (whaaat?) -- but when he said about Pattern Recognition that "Gibson casts a master extrapolator's eye on our present, and shows it to us as if for the first time," he wasn't talking about the Apple Cube that features heavily in the novel. The Cube, which may have seemed like the future back then -- in the past -- is a jarring element in what is otherwise a pitch-perfect look at consumer/capitalist society in an uncertain future.
The MacBook Air is the same thing. It's a design devoid of a context. Nobody needs it. But with no new iPod, nothing as big as the iPhone, Steve Jobs wants iHeadlines. He needs an iPod nano, an iMac with a glass screen, an iHeadline without a deadline: iSmoke and iMirrors.
He wants to conjure a laptop from an envelope, so heypresto: a laptop you can conjure from an envelope! Let's call it the MacBook Air. Let's write about it -- a lot -- for the next week, then forget about it. And nobody buys it, and the world keeps spinning.
And I still want one. So what if the Eee PC is a fifth of the price? Dude, he pulled it out of an envelope!
Articles by Rich Trenholm
Creative Vado goes HD, hungover Cravers muster limited excitement
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Internet: The Movie!
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Hands-on the Hitachi DZ-HV564: HD on SD
Photo The camcorder market doesn't know if it's coming or going, with the Hitachi DZ-HV564 parachuting in to combine high definition with expandable memory
Hands-on with the Samsung NV9: Cooler King
Photo There's a number of nifty touches on the slinky 10-megapixel Samsung NV9 that make it cooler than the average compact
Hands on with the 24-megapixel Nikon D3X
Photo We've had our hands on the 24-megapixel behemoth that is the Nikon D3X, and we're impressed. Take a look at our photos, which show an average Crave reader doing some world-class holding
Canon HG21
Review Our main issue with the HG21, Canon's high-class, high-definition camcorder, is that it may be too good for its own good. Now that should tell you something. The HG21 comes with a whopping 120GB hard drive, a vast array of high-end features and produces video that is absolutely breathtaking. If you think you can make use of it all, this one's a winner
Hands-on with the Fujifilm FinePix Z200fd
Photo December is officially here and that can mean only one thing: shop faster! If you're feeling the pinch, the Fujifilm FinePix Z200fd is a stylish 10-megapixel point-and-shoot for a very reasonable price. Now shop!
Photos: Hands-on with the high-definition Canon HG21
Photo The Canon HG21 is a high-class, high-end, high-definition camcorder. Take a look at our pictures and forget the credit crunch
