Bookmaker expert Mickey Richardson, CEO of Bookmaker.com, one of the largest sports odds-making sites in the world, and his team of experts have calculated the likelihood of what we might see at the event.

So what do the pros think will and won’t happen Wednesday?

An 11-inch version of Macbook Air
YES -750 88.5%
NO +150 40%

Updated iWork & iLife
YES -500 15%
NO +100 50%

FaceTime for iChat in new version of OS X
YES -750 88.5%
NO +150 40%

Next version of OS X will be called Lion
YES +150 40%
NO -750 88.5%

Note: For those unfamiliar with sports betting, the +/- Indicates the Return on the wager. The percentage is the likelihood that response will occur. For example: Betting on the candidate least likely to win would earn the most amount of money, should that happen.

Tune in tomorrow for TheAppleBlog’s full coverage.

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• The State of the Smartbook
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I’m happy to report that it seems livelier and more stable than the version 10.62 release, which was already very good. Since the upgrade conveniently runs in the background and allows you to keep doing other things, even surfing, it makes the process easy and painless.

What Opera Offers That Others Don’t

Opera Turbo

Opera offers some unique features, such as Opera Turbo, which uses Opera’s servers and proprietary compression technology to compress webpages, boosting your browsing speed on crowded Wi-Fi hotspots, tethered mobile phones or even dial-up, letting you browse up to 2x faster than its competitors when connected at slower speeds.

Encrypted traffic remains that way around the compression servers, so when you’re on a secure Web site, such as your bank’s, you’re still secure and communicating directly. Turbo can be instantly toggled on and off using a button on the interface window margin, or you can set up Opera Turbo to be enabled automatically when a slow network connection is detected.

Mouse Gestures

Another unique feature of Opera — mouse gestures —  lets you perform common browsing actions with small, quick mouse movements. Gestures can be stacked to perform more complex actions. You can enable or disable mouse gestures in the Opera preferences. There’s even a tutorial to get you started.

Opera Unite

Opera Unite turns your computer into a web server. With Unite, you can share content directly with friends without having to upload anything, stream music, show photo galleries, share files and folders, or even host your own website directly from the browser. It’s a great feature that other browsers don’t really come close to offering, at least not in an all-in-one package.

The Little Things

Opera has a raft of small touches that keep me coming back to it as my most-used browser, such as a very convenient Zoom menu on the interface window that lets you infinitely magnify page content using a slider control to read websites with small text easily, or get an bird’s-eye view of an entire site. Unlike some other browsers, Opera’s zoom resizes all elements of the page, not just the text. You can also toggle images on and off from this menu to improve readability and speed up page loads.

With Opera, you can also search in the address field. Opera uses several keywords to provide quick access to several popular and useful search engines. You can also add any search engine.

Opera’s Closed Tabs button, also on the user interface window, provides a pull-down list of recently closed tabs, so you can easily return to where you left off. Finally, in case you’re concerned about speed, Opera is also very fast, in the same league as the latest versions of Safari, Firefox, and Google’s Chrome browser.

Good for Those Who Appreciate a Fine Vintage

Opera is evidently an acquired taste, with about four percent of global browser market share outside North America, and around 2.4 percent overall, which puts it in fifth place behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. But it’s also one of the dwindling crop of current browsers that still support older Power PC Macs and OS 10.4, although the Opera folks tell me that version 10.6x will be the last with Tiger support, alas. All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts.

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However, former Apple Dashboard developer Todd Ditchendorf’s programmable browser Fake is something genuinely different, a sort of hybrid melding of Safari and Apple’s Automator scripting utility. Fake allows you to drag discrete browser Actions into a graphical Workflow that, once configured, can be saved and run to perform various online tasks automatically.

How it Works and Why It’s Useful

Fake is a useful timesaver, automating tedious tasks like filling out lengthy forms, capturing screenshots, and more. Developers especially can make great use of Fake by graphically configuring automated tests for their web apps.

Fake’s automation features are powered by OS X’s built-in scripting tool AppleScript, so you can incorporate web automation into many OS X scripting tasks.

Fake’s user interface is derivative of the Automator UI, with a side panel containing a library of configurable “actions” that can be employed as an easy alternative to writing AppleScript code from scratch. Tasks available include clicking checkboxes or links, filling out and submitting forms, navigating to URLs, opening and closing browser tabs, and so on.

Sample Workflow

Here’s a simple example of how Fake works. You probably wouldn’t find this particular workflow especially useful unless you’re obsessed with visiting the Apple Store’s iPad pages, but it gets the basic idea across.

You begin with a “Load URL” action, dragging it from the Action Library to the Workflow pane in the Fake UI.

Once your webpage or form appears, you can drag other actions into the workflow pane to navigate, set values and otherwise configure tasks that you point actions to, such as clicking on an element link:

Or clicking an html button:

When you’ve composed the full workflow sequence, click the Run button in the Workflow pane toolbar.

Which will run your automated workflow and take you where you want to go:

This is a simplified example for the sake of clarity. You can do so much more with Fake, but the best way to find out is to get in there and try for yourself. You might also want to check out this screencast at WebWorkerDaily for another example.

A Browser Apart

Fake’s browser component is based on the open source tech used in the OS X Site Specific Browser (SSB) app Fluid. In a nutshell, Fluid technology provides Fake with an array of powerful features that developers like to have in a browser, such as userscript and userstyle support. Fake also taps into Apple’s WebKit to provide element-level analysis of Web pages.

One other difference with Fake is that unlike mainstream Web browsers these days, it’s for-fee demoware, costing $29.95 for a license. However, if browsers are a tool of your livelihood, or you just have better things to do with your time than repeat mundane tasks on the web, Fake could pay for itself pretty quickly. Fake Version 1.4.2 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

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My Pismos are both substantially tricked out, with G4 processor upgrades, 8X SuperDrive DVD burner optical drive modules, maxed-out RAM, larger capacity hard drives, and more, which is a big part of why at more than a decade old they’re still going strong as useful work computers. It’s the degree of component modularity incorporated in the Pismo’s design that’s kept it in the game as a decent-performing tool much longer than will be the case with any subsequent Mac laptop design, including my MacBook.

Long Service Life

The superb reliability and amazingly long service life I’ve experienced with my Pismos have convinced me beyond doubt that if I could design my ideal computer it would be easy to take apart, upgrade, and repair, and composed of modular components as much as possible. The Pismo is not 100 percent perfect, but it comes closer than any other Mac laptop has before or since. From hard drive to RAM to expansion, it’s truly a hardware geek’s dream.

But the long life comes with a price for Apple: less frequent notebook replacement, which means fewer sales. Hence a deliberate move away from modularity.

Deliberately Difficult to Work on and Upgrade?

In my ideal laptop, not only the hard drive, but all of the major circuit board components would be modular and easy to replace. Apple has at times seemed to at least partially embrace the idea of modular components, but has evidently lost interest in this sensible and value-enhancing way of doing things. Recently, Apple seems bent on making Macs and its other hardware difficult to work on or upgrade beyond adding memory and storage capacity: CPUs hard-soldered to the logic board, lack of expansion bays (other than ExpressCard and/or SD Card slots), and the switch to built-in batteries are all cases in point.

The G3 Series PowerBooks have their CPUs and RAM mounted on an easy-to-remove daughterboard that facilitates easy upgrades. My ideal laptop would definitely have a processor daughterboard, as well as a slide-in/out motherboard, easily removable and replaceable video cards, sound cards, and power manager units — all user serviceable. Video RAM would be upgradable too, a feature no Apple laptop has ever supported to date.

Removable Device Expansion Bays

My dream MacBook would also have a removable device expansion bay, even two, like The Wall Street G3 PowerBooks did (the Wall Street supported batteries as well as 3.5″ removable devices like optical drives or hard drives in its left bay, and both 3.5″ and 5.25″ devices in its right bay).

Expansion bays on all of the G3 Series PowerBooks also support loading up two batteries for long computing sessions (I can get 10 hours plus on two extended life batteries with my Pismos) away from plug-in power, and you can carry spares. Unfortunately, battery flexibility is the polar opposite of Apple’s apparent notebook power trajectory.

More Commodified — Almost Disposable

Now, to be fair, my originally 500 MHz G3 Pismos sold new for $3,499, or $1,200 more than even the most expensive current Mac notebook model, the 17″ MacBook Pro, so that has to be considered when making overall value comparisons. The $999 MacBook far outclasses even my hot-rodded-to-the-limit Pismos in performance. Notebook computers have become a lot more commodified over the past decade, and at the lower-to-medium end of the price spectrum are now almost “disposable” products — cheaper to replace than repair.

Personally, I still find the concept of things that are built to last tremendously appealing. How about you? Would more modularity, expandability, and upgradability justify higher laptop purchase prices?

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In a mailing list posting on Tuesday, Mozilla’s Firefox honcho Mike Beltzner affirmed: “I am gathering data on the number of PPC users we have, but the likely outcome is that we will not be supporting PPC [PowerPC] for Firefox 4.”

Mozilla has already cut off Firefox support for Mac OS X 10.4 after version 3.6, and the new SeaMonkey 2.1 Alpha released yesterday (SeaMonkey is based on the Firefox browser engine) also dumped support for OS 10.4.

Feeling The Pain

These developments were inevitable, and the proverbial writing has been on the wall for some time for Tiger support especially, but looming termination of all PPC support is a splash of cold water for legions of holdout users. With two old 550 MHz G4 Pismo PowerBooks running OS 10.4 Tiger still in daily service, I’m definitely feeling the pain of constricting browser support. At present, I’m using SeaMonkey 2.0.6 (current stable release), Opera 10.01, and iCab 4.8 on the Pismos along with old Netscape Navigator 9.

Indeed, in many respects, Navigator 9 remains the most satisfactory all-round browser on low-powered Power PC machines, although its security profile is woefully out of date, so I wouldn’t recommend it for visiting your online banking site, or anywhere else that security is a particular concern. You can still download Navigator 9 here.

SeaMonkey: The Best Compromise?

SeaMonkey 2.0.6 is probably the best compromise at this point between performance, reliability, and security, and I was disappointed when I downloaded the version 2.1 Alpha 3 build, which features some interesting interface upgrades, only to discover that the system requirements cited on MacUpdate were in error, and it doesn’t support OS 10.4.

iCab 4.8 still fully supports Tiger, and I don’t anticipate that it will be dropping it anytime soon, since they still offer a browser on their download page that supports 68k Macs running System 7.1, but the latest 64-bit version of iCab 4.8, of course, requires Snow Leopard, and it’s doubtful that legacy versions get much security updating, if any.

The latest version 10.6 of Opera nominally supports Power PC Macs running Tiger as well, but in practice, I’ve found that it’s slow and unstable on the old Pismos, with lots of spinning beachball time. The last build that works well on those machines is version 10.01 (c. October 2009).

Curtain Dropping On Power PC

Consequently, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the curtain is dropping on Power PC Macs. I’ll not be giving up on my beloved Pismo PowerBooks any time soon, and hope to continue using them for years to come, but I’ll do any security-sensitive web stuff on my MacBook and whatever supersedes it. Opera 10.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 4, and Safari 5 all offer a superb browsing experience for Intel Mac users.

It’s interesting that Web browsers seem to have emerged as the tipping point of practical computer obsolescence. Are you feeling the pinch?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: What Does The Future Hold For Browsers?

However, it looks like Apple may soon have an even more technologically avant-garde device enclosure technology. CrunchGear reports that an SEC filing reveals that Apple Inc. has concluded a deal to access all the intellectual property of LiquidMetal Technologies regarding a CalTech-developed, amorphous, non-crystalline, metal alloy with unique atomic structures that can be used to create products that are stronger, lighter, and harder than is possible with alloys of titanium or aluminum. Not only is this material resistant to wear and corrosion, it’s easily and economically formable, somewhat like plastic.

Cheaper, But With Superior Material Qualities

The relatively easy formability of LiquidMetal alloys would presumably facilitate much faster and cheaper production of device enclosures than the current aluminum unibody process, possibly rendering superior materials characteristics as well.

A Third Industrial Revolution

Noting that Sir Henry Bessemer’s 19th Century invention of a process to mass-produce steel inexpensively was crucial to the modern industrial revolution, while the invention of thermo-plastics dramatically reduced the cost of manufacturing by using one mold for thousands of parts, the LiquidMetal folks suggest that its technology developed in cooperation with scientists at CalTech combines more than twice the strength of titanium with the processing efficiency of plastics to create a third industrial revolution.

Smaller, Thinner, Lighter, More Durable

LiquidMetal alloys enable smaller, thinner and more durable electronic device enclosure designs, helping facilitate the requirement for larger LCD screens, thinner wall sections and pure metallic surface finishes. With approximately 2.5 times the strength of titanium alloy and 1.5 times the hardness of stainless steel, LiquidMetal alloys enable thinner, more compact device designs while providing greater protection for their internal components.

Using a process called precision net-shape casting, the alloys can be fashioned into intricate, innovative form-factors incorporating advantages like:

• Excellent durability
• High Scratch and corrosion resistance
• Non-reactivity
• High Yield Strength
• High Hardness
• Superior Strength/Weight Ratio
• Superior Elastic Limit
• Unique Acoustical Properties

Not much wonder that Apple glommed on to this. I can hardly wait to see what it does with it.

I keep trying to upgrade to Snow Leopard, but always end up back with Leopard. I have both operating systems installed, using separate partitions of my MacBook’s hard drive, and keep thanking myself that I didn’t cut the umbilical cord to Leopard when I installed Snow Leopard late at OS 10.6.3.

My procrastination about installing Snow Leopard had much to do with there being no really “gotta have it” new features in 10.6, but I’ve discovered that there are lots of small tweaks that I like and appreciate using. Unfortunately, it’s just been too buggy to make it worth my time.

The Bugs

Even at OS 10.6.4, Snow Leopard is still as buggy as a flophouse mattress. Here are some of the issues I (and others) have encountered.

Spaces support keeps crapping out, taking keyboard response with it, requiring endless Dock quits and reboots in order to get things working again. See here, here, here, here and here for examples, discussions, and workarounds pertaining to this bug. Less monotonously aggravating, but occurring frequently enough to be tedious, I’ve found that keyboard input also sometimes dies randomly independent of the Spaces issue, and in those instances doesn’t respond to quitting and restarting the Dock. I’m left with just the trackpad or mouse to shut things down in a reasonably civilized manner and reboot the system.

My MacBook will randomly wake up from sleep unbidden in Snow Leopard. More discussion of this bug here and here.

The Heat

Adding insult to injury, my MacBook (2.0 GHz, 4 GB RAM) runs some 15° to 20°C hotter in Snow Leopard than it does in Leopard, with the same suite of applications in play. I absolutely hate fan noise, but it’s nearly constant background accompaniment in Snow Leopard. And I thought OS X .6 was supposed to be leaner and more efficient, imposing lower overhead demands on hardware? Discussion links here and here.

I can only tolerate three or four days of this before losing my patience and booting back into the serenity and stability of Leopard space. I guess I should be thankful that Leopard continues to do such a fine job, and I am, but the problem is that more and more applications are requiring 10.6 and later for their latest updates. MacSpeech Scribe, for instance, requires OS 10.6. The proverbial writing is on the wall.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that an OS 10.6.5 update  will squash some of this bugginess, but I have to say that it’s not a very lively hope, given that the problems cited here were evident in OS 10.6.0, and four revisions later they’re still with us.

And yes, I don’t doubt that there are lots of users out there getting excellent service from Snow Leopard. I’m happy for them, but that hasn’t been my experience with this cat species, nor the experience of others who echo my complaints. Leopard, and Tiger before it, are proof that Apple can do better.

What about you? Nearly a year later, what has your experience with Snow Leopard been?

My learned friend is far from unique in drawing analogies between computer platform affinities and religion. Back in 1994, Italian novelist Umberto Eco (writer of “Foucault’s Pendulum” and “The Name of The Rose”) published a now-legendary, whimsical piece in the Italian news weekly Espresso, contending that the Microsoft/Apple rivalry is “a religious war.” Eco was “firmly of the opinion” that the Macintosh is Catholic; “It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of heaven — the moment in which their document is printed.” He pointed out that with a Mac you deal with simple formulae and sumptuous icons, and “everyone has a right to salvation.”

On the other hand, Eco contended, the (then mostly DOS-based) PC was Protestant, “or even Calvinistic,” demanding difficult decisions and interpretations, taking “for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation.” The PC user “is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.” When the Windows graphical user interface was added to previously command line-only DOS, there came a superficial resemblance to the Macintosh’s “counter-reformist tolerance.” “Sort of like Anglicanism,” said Eco, with “big ceremonies in the cathedral,” but “always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions: When it comes down to it, you can decide to ordain women and gays if you want to.”

Eco’s tongue-in-cheek theological analysis of the computer wars stands up well and is still entertaining 16 years later.

Scholarly Investigations

Recently there’s another flurry of “Apple as religion” in the blogosphere. The Huffington Post’s Skye Jethani writes of “the power of consumer brands to supplant traditional religions in people’s lives,” noting that “new research has shown that Apple has achieved the same impact on the human brain as religion.”

TheAtlantic.com.’s Alexis Madrigal posted a riff noting that scholars seriously study Apple fans as “religious devotees,” one even outlining a framework for assessing Apple’s mystical mythology, contending that the company is founded on at least quasi-religious myths.

A four-myth construct compiled by Texas A&M University media professor Heidi Campbell in her paper “How the iPhone became divine” posits:

• A creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Mac as a transformative moment;
• A hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Steve Jobs as saving users from the corporate domination of the PC world;
• A satanic myth presenting Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;
• A resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company.

Madrigal observes that these narratives aren’t myths in the sense of being untrue, but are archetypal illustrations that help people make sense of their relationship with the world (or at least Apple). He suggests the only element of core Apple fans’ belief system compromised by “Antennagate” is the hero myth, since Jobs didn’t initially live up to his Teflon reputation. However, he thinks the Antennagate press conference followed by robust iPhone sales in Apple’s quarterly financial report not only restored Jobs’ hero status, but refreshed the resurrection myth, citing Campbell observing that “Apple weathered the storm because there is such brand loyalty through the religious narrative.”

“Implicit Religion”

Fox News’s John R. Quain weighs in on Apple as a “new religion,” likewise referencing Texas A&M’s Campbell, who told him “Implicit religion can happen when the use of, say, technology becomes a substitute for belief and behaviours once attached to religion and religious practice,….The religious-like behaviour and language surrounding Apple devotion/fandom is an example of ‘implicit religion’.”

Campbell has cut to the nub of the issue. As a Catholic traditionalist, I have clearly-defined concepts of what I think constitutes bona fide religion, and notwithstanding that I’m a consummate Mac fanboy, I find it impossible to take “Apple as religion” seriously, as more than parody or satire, or more darkly–cultishness.

Apple Products and Traditional Religion

Not that Apple products aren’t having peripheral impact on real, traditional religion. In June, Fr. Paolo Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, launched a free expanded iPad version of his iBreviary app, a daily prayer book for iPhone. iBreviary’s iPad variant, iBreviaryPro, contains the complete Roman missal — all that is said and sung at Mass throughout the liturgical year, plus commentaries, suggestions for homilies, and musical accompaniment, allowing priests to celebrate mass without hard copy Bibles and liturgical missals.

What sets iBreviary apart from other religious apps in the App Store is that it’s the first app with approval of the Vatican. Fr. Padrini has reported some 200,000 downloads of the iPhone version, and expects priests who travel a lot to find the application most useful.

Cult of Mac’s Nicole Martinelli reports that at least one Catholic priest switched to an iPad for officiating at outdoor masses in place of heavy books, commenting to The Apple Lounge (in Italian) that device is really easy to use.

That’s the sort of technology complimenting religion that even religious traditionalists can get behind.

Hybrid?

Hwang and Tsai cite Digitimes Research senior analyst Mingchi Kuo referencing discussions with upstream component makers, suggesting that a 11.6-inch MacBook Air will feature an even slimmer and lighter design than the previous-generation models. Technologies used for the “design and concept” are expected to be broadly used in the company’s other product lines to boost its competitiveness. That phraseology implies something more than a form factor restyling and/or new feature additions, and there is speculation that Apple may be cooking up something like a hybrid machine retaining a basic clamshell laptop form factor, but with a detachable iPad-esque display panel. If that were the case, it begs the question of whether the new-generation Air would run OS X with some iOS touchscreen technology grafted in, or (very long shot I think) the iOS itself.

[inline-ad align="right"]Either way, Kuo expects shipment volumes of the new 11.6-inch MacBook to reach 400,000 units in 2010, which, depending on how late in the year it hits the channels, could be respectable enough.

It seems logical that Apple could have decided that marketing three different 13″ laptops (the others being the white MacBook and the 13″ MacBook Pro) amounts to confusing overlap, and that a downsize would help differentiate the Air from its fuller-featured, more powerful, but thicker and heavier, siblings. However they would presumably want to avoid appearing to embrace the netbook concept, which senior Apple spokespersons like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have famously scorned and dismissed, and which Apple is successfully challenging with the hot-selling iPad.

If the Digitimes rumor proves accurate, it would mark the MacBook Air’s first major makeover since the sleek and diminutive machine was unveiled in January 2008. Although the Air has received a couple of upgrades and refreshes, it really hasn’t changed a whole lot in 2 1/2 years.

Core i3 Power

Digitimes’ projection that the downsized MacBook Air will sport an Intel Core i-series CULV, if accurate, would make it the first Apple laptop to employ Core i3 technology, which on spec seems ideally suited to deployment in this sort of computer, but raises the question of what sort of graphics support it will have — a point not addressed in the Digitimes report. It’s notable that Apple chose to stick with Core 2 Duo CPUs for the 13-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro so it could use NVIDIA’s new, faster 320M integrated GPU. But with an ultraportable machine like the MacBook Air, raw graphics performance isn’t as high a priority. Few users will be inclined to do high-end graphics, video editing, or serious gaming on an Air, and Intel’s in-house HD Graphics GPU would likely prove adequate for most users.

At What Price?

This is obviously all highly speculative at this point. One of the biggest imponderables remains price. The current MacBook Air at $1,499 can be most charitably described as something less than a bargain. For example, you can buy a white, 2.4 GHz MacBook and a base model iPad both for the same money as one base MacBook Air. The operative question: How contented is Apple for the Air to remain the low-volume boutique piece for well-heeled elites it has been up to now, or does it want to address a larger market, taking lower margins but deriving potentially greater overall profit from higher volumes?

I can fantasize about an 11.6″ MacBook Air slotted in price somewhere between the high-end iPad and the 13″ MacBook Pro — logically the psychologically significant $999 of the white MacBook (or less). However, I’m doubtful that Apple will discount the entry-level MacBook Air threshold by 50 percent.

As for an introduction date, we’re almost past the cutoff point for the fall computer-buying spike already, but students have never been the Air’s market focus anyway. More likely Apple would go with mid-fall to catch the Christmas sales wave. That is, provided a new MacBook Air really is coming this year. If so, it’ll be the most exciting and reassuring development in Mac laptops since the aluminum unibodies in October 2008.

Just to refresh our memory, the MacBook Air was last breathed on — mildly — in June 2009, when it received a speed bump to 1.86 GHz and 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, and a price reduction to $1,499 for the base model with a 120 GB hard drive, and $1,799 for the 2.13 GHz high-end model with a 120 GB solid-state drive. Since then, Apple has stood pat with the Air. It would be interesting to know how they’ve been selling lately.

There have been spurts of rumors about the potential for, say, a 3G MacBook Air, but nothing came of them, and that particular market niche would appear to now be amply covered by the iPad 3G.

Disinterest From Apple

However, MacBook Air fans shouldn’t give up hope just yet. Earlier this month the Mac mini got a major refresh and new lease on life after a long stretch of apparent disinterest from Apple.

I have no inside knowledge, but what I suspect is that Apple wanted to wait and see what sort of market reception the iPad achieved before committing to a MacBook Air upgrade. Of course, the fact that the iPad has been an out-of-the-park home run in sales performance probably hasn’t enhanced the Air’s prospects for survival, but it’s more complicated than that.

For one thing, the two machines occupy widely divergent points on the price spectrum, and in that context don’t compete directly with each other, although it is entirely conceivable that some users who might otherwise have purchased a MacBook Air will now get an iPad to serve as a light, handy, mobile computing device. I expect more than a few will be of that persuasion, bleeding potential sales from an already limited MacBook Air market.

A “Real” Computer

On the other hand, a sizable cohort of users will still want a “real” ultralight laptop computer with a proper keyboard, a trackpad and stand-up display that can run full-fledged Mac OS X production application software. Despite its virtues, which are many, the iPad meets none of those criteria.

Personally, I’ve resisted the 3-pound, 0.76-inch thick MacBook Air mainly on price, but have also objected to its constrained expandability and connectivity. However, compared with the iPad, which hasn’t even a single real USB port to its name, the Air is almost a power-user machine.

One of the MacBook Air’s problems is that it’s always been arbitrarily positioned and priced as something of a carriage trade accessory and arm candy for well-heeled users, rather than as a serious work tool. In terms of practical capability, the 13-inch MacBook Pro has pretty much all of the same bases covered, aside from extreme thinness and light weight, and in a package that’s not grossly thicker, heavier, or larger in footprint, and which manages to look really great doing it while selling at a relatively bargain basement price. Willingness to carry around an extra 1.5 pounds to get the MacBook Pro’s superior performance is a subjective value judgment and benefit trade-off. These things are relative; the MacBook Air weighs twice as much as an iPad.

Get a MacBook and iPad Both for the Price of a MacBook Air

Another way to look at it is that you can buy a white, entry-level MacBook and a base model iPad for exactly the same money as the base MacBook Air, and essentially have your cake and eat it, too, at no greater cost.

Yet another possible stumbling block in the MacBook Air’s upgrade path is Apple’s CPU vs. GPU dilemma. The current Air has, as noted above, Core 2 Duo processor silicon paired with NVIDIA 9600M integrated graphics processing — both categories being previous-generation hardware. Apple chose to stick with Core 2 Duo for the 13-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro so they could use NVIDIA’s new and much faster 320M integrated GPU, which I think was a good and sensible decision for now. But for an ultraportable machine like the MacBook Air, raw graphics performance is not a first-priority attribute. Few users are likely to be doing high-end graphics, video editing or serious gaming on an Air.

Core i3 Power?

Consequently, Intel’s new low-power consumption Core i3 CPU with its own, in-house HD Graphics GPU and Hyper-Threading technology, which enables each processor core to address two tasks at the same time, might arguably be a more sensible alternative. That would make the Air the only Apple system using Core i3 silicon, which is offered in clock speeds ranging from 1.20 GHz to 2.40 GHz, but presumably it won’t be sticking with Core 2 Duo for the 13-inch MacBooks forever, so it could serve as a relatively low–volume engineering trial.

It would help if Intel could relent and license NVIDIA to make graphics chipsets for core CPUs, but odds of that happening are difficult to gauge.

With the iPad’s spectacular sales success, I have to say I’m skeptical about the MacBook Air having a very auspicious future. However, Apple has surprised us before, and it could again. If you really want a MacBook Air, my best guess is that it might be prudent make your move now while they’re still available, but don’t be mad at me if you do and Apple springs a new Air on us.