The Japanese trash-talk the MacBookAir
 

original article here

So, I'll give you the run down how I think about it, as a point from both American and Japanese consumer stand point:

Are the Japanese media prejudice / too critical against foreign manufactures?
You betcha.

Are the Japanese manufactures/ technicians snobbish elitists?
Absolutely.

Do they have the right to be?
They like to compare their shit to how much *other* foreign-made products are inferior, so long as they can back it up, I guess you can't put that against them for being cocky about it. (And I'll be honest with you, where size matters, they have no grounds to be cocky about, so I guess it's just compensation by at least trying to make man-made things better than everyone else.)

Anyother questions spawning from reading this article, feel free to ask.

oh, and one last thing:
So why hasn't the manufactures already come up with something better than or as good as the MacBook Air?
When they've got cell phones better and smaller than the iPhone (with twice as much battery life) that has just as good as capability as a small laptop notebook, why would they bother?

The Macbook Air looks spiffy, but its WAY too expensive. Even if its a new product.

Still, I figured the Japanese would like the Macs more because Apple is a competitor with Microsoft, who is of course tanking in Japan with the 360. Oh well.

They just heavily support their own locally-made goods and whatnot. And speaking of "they can back their shit up", look at Japanese-brand cars.

Just a strong pride with their own goods, I suppose.

That's a retarded argument. I mean it's swell that phones have similar capabilities to laptops but that's not the point, that's just fluff and fun. I mean you can draw similar comparisons to laptops vs desktops but the argument is still spurious.

also it sounds like those japanese companies are just butthurt, business as usual.

I have a tiny Sony Vaio TX model that, while not quite as small and light as the Macbook Air, is still very tiny, light, and functional. And it has a built-in dvd burner. The optical drive issue is a "to each his own", but I like the flexibility of having one. So the Japs aren't exactly slacking too terribly in the tiny laptop department. I still kind of want one of these tiny Macs though.

The Japanese are stereotyped as advanced techies, maybe they want to protect that image or something.

True. I'm comparing apples and oranges a little bit, but my point is that most computing needs for people in Japan are already taken care of by their cell phone services. And if you're able to watch live television news while on your commute in the subway train...I mean compare that to your cell phone in the States; I probably wouldn't need a laptop either if my phone can do that on top of all the web stuff it already has (that and also if I wasn't so addicted to online gaming as well).

This is also true and I have no arguments against it. Like I said, they are a bunch of elitist techno-geeks and if it hurts their pride they got beat, that's just what it is. Only problem is that the high-end spiffy laptop isn't quite as marketable in Japan as it is here. Give them a few years, I'm sure they can come up with something better like they promised.

I don't think any of us have sufficient knowledge of the Japanese technology press to understand why they are panning the MacBook Air.

Hell, plenty of people in the US technology press, including Walt "Steve Jobs Touched Me There" Mossberg, have panned it. Nobody's been able to come up with a convincing answer for that either.

Believe me, as someone who makes his money from the tiny scraps that Apple throws to third party developers, the whole Air backlash thing is baffling everyone.

(I can posts links to a bunch of reviews, but I doubt anyone would care)

Why didn't the japanese made something similar to macbook air?
Maybe because they don't need a computer as thin as a sheet of paper?

C'mon guys, no matter how AWESOME it is, it still is an extremelly overpriced commom notebook.

Because they don't need to. Anything already on the market right now is better than that piece of shit.

And yet a design like the Playstation 3 was approved.

Christ trying to talk about technology on Gamingforce is impossible.

What's so good about a piece of shit laptop that breaks when you drop it 2 meters?

fixed for you good sir http://spcows.ae2t.net/kareha/src/1180417162312.gif

Where the hell do you people come from? Did you read anything I wrote? A 2 meter drop would have a significant chance of breaking most other subnotebooks, hell, most computers that aren't specially hardened against drops.

This also flies blatantly in the face of what numerous Air owners have written, which is that the case feels sturdier than the case on the MacBook Pro (perhaps because it's curvy? No optical drive? Unclear).

How are you people capable of using a computer, much less breathing? Please exit.

Them crazy Japanese engineers should stop bitching about it and should just start making them Gundams.

Whatever, it's not like most Apple/Mac fans aren't just as obnoxiously cocky, snobbish and elitist as you'd have us believe these Japanese engineers are.

God help us if Apple ever does achieve true acceptance in Japan. We'll have a bunch of Japanese people running around from 2chan posting on the glories of Mac >_> In beautiful ASCII art nonetheless.

It's just about protecting domestic interests in my view. Sure, there might be a bias slightly towards Japanese made products, probably because there is subtle pressure to not lose anymore ground in the Japanese economy to more foreign imports. This probably has had a hand in the slow taking of the 360 there and probably why I didn't see masses of people with an IPod in Japan (but Sony Minidiscs? Porque?).

The question now is if you think the article is unfair. True, you wouldn't ask your direct competitor for their "unbiased" opinion on your product. So, from that standpoint, the article might not be all that great. (This just in, Microsoft says Apple products give you cancer! Eventually...)

lol. This is also very true. :tpg:

You just can't win, though. In the eyes of everyone on the net you're either a snobby, overpaid, collar-proppin' elitist for using a Mac, or a bandwagon-jumpin', know-nuthin', mainstream corporate sponsor for using a PC. You could just use Linux and plead the middle ground, but then people accuse you of trying too hard to be different. My advice: use Amiga - it's the only way.

Buuuuuut when it comes to the Air I have two big hang-ups: The price ($1,800 retail US, which in no way conforms to its performance), and that it has almost no user-replaceable parts. The entire thing from the hard drive to the sound card is integrated, which means the few pieces you can actually replace or upgrade would cost another arm and a leg. It looks awesome, and I can say that I've seriously considered other size gimmicky things like the Mac Mini in the past, but I just can't pull myself from these two drawbacks. Japan's got an image to maintain with their own companies, and a very competitive PC market that would be very difficult for something like Mac, let alone the Airbook, to enter.

You are a retard. There are other similar products from Lenovo (Thinkpad X300) and Sony (Vaio TZ). This is not a gaming rig. You sacrifice processor performance for portability and battery life. Stop talking out of your ass.

Neither does the iPod. Neither do many of the other Macs that Apple sells. If you're shocked that Apple makes a machine you can't open up and swap parts, then you are one of the most ignorant people on the internet. Let me guess, next you're going to be shocked to learn that we didn't actually find WMD in Iraq.


For the interested, here's an article about the X300 that includes comparisons to the Air and Vaio TZ, among others. Via Engadget.

Woah, woah, hold the phone Rama-lama! I'm not trying to trying to launch a Mac Attack, I 'm just telling you why I won't personally buy one. I know what Apple's all about when it comes to hardware integration, and I realize the market appeal for something like this, but I'm just saying why I won't buy one. It's a matter of preference - do I want easy of use and simplistic design (Mac) or do I want expandability (Somethin' else). Truth be known most laptops have simialar setups, but then again I'm not really a laptop kind of guy, so it kind of goes against my likes anyway.

So, I read the original article, and all I can say is, wow Shorty, you did a shit-ass job, along with CNet, summarizing what the article is even talking about.

The real point of the original article was a criticism that Apple does not, and in the case of the Air, did not, do any means of cost reduction in the production of the Macbook Air. What they're saying is that Apple could have done the internal design better, using much better ways of holding it together, with less screws, and could have reduced the cost of production, which (in traditional theory,) means a lower cost to the consumer.

Not to mention the CNet article is terrible because it's basically an opinion article of an opinion article, and he goes wherever the fuck with it because he is, at the very least, a moron.

Sure, some of it may be "Japanese think they're so superior," but I bet there are engineers in every country who can agree with their ideas.

Merv, you read the original article? What the fuck is wrong with you.

Most people criticise the Air purely beacuse of the fact that it's an Apple product.
Like me.

And I reckon the majority of people cricitise Apple products from the same viewpoint as these Japanese engineers - that Apple aren't doing enough to reduce the cost to the consumer.

But then again, why would they need to?
When you've got loyal fanatics eager to hack off their arms and legs to get funky with 'new technology', then Apple don't need to do a damn thing.
As long as they can make it sexy (and in effect make the USERS look sexy), then everyone's happy.
Customer service? WHATS THAT?

Read this. There's one blogger who won't sleep with anyone unless they're a mac user!!

You can probably tell, I'm an avid mac-user hater.
I don't mind macs, but I hate the people.

UPDATE:

MY FRIEND JUST TOLD ME HE HAS A MACBOOK AIR AND IS BEING A SMUG BITCH ABOUT IT.

Merv, I posted my opinion about the people who wrote the article. I figured I don't need to summarize the article myself so long as I got people to be interested in the topic enough to get talking. If I wanted to just summarize the "original" article by Nikkei Electronics, I would have done it with much more accuracy than CNet did and interpret as it was meant to be. Yet my opinions still stand.

You forget that this is a discussion board Merv. I merely just posted my opinion on an opinion article, aiming to spur conversation from what people might take interest from. Had I presented it neatly / accurately as you might have wanted to be, people would find the post boring and go, "eh, so what" which defeats the purpose of posting to have an actual conversation with you people.

Does Merv have Alzheimer's? :( Get well soon, buddy!

Are you telling me that the japanese by and large have given up on laptops for cellphone use exclusively? seriously? I mean laptops are far more useful than just a vehicle to check email, youtube and myspace.jp.

I mean a power user probably won't use the Air like, say, a macbook pro. It's fairly limited. However the Air does have a proper keyboard and a screen larger than a few inches; it can be used for work, when a cellphone would be awkward to use at best.

The people you think of using laptops are not the type of people Apple is targetting here, in America as well as Japan.

I wouldn't be surprised though.

The cell phones made there are far more advanced then the stuff we get here in the US. Now that the iPhone has set the bar high, most cell phones have been moving on to touch screens, internet access, even high quality cameras. I know of a Nokia model that has a 10 MP camera built into it.

If the Japanese are trying to match up to the iPhone with all those features and then some, I wouldn't see any reason to be lugging around a laptop. At that point, a cell phone is far more convenient.

Do you work from a laptop? I do. I mean, I don't deny that laptops will probably wane as a status accessory but they can't really be replaced by phones. That's all I was getting at.

Also I read somewhere that while jap phones are the shit in terms of gadgets and features, jap people don't use the features very often outside of like internet connectivity and cameras and shit

which makes some sense seeing as though I have no use for many of the features in my phone, but I don't really study this sort of thing so I'm not going to make a call on the topic

Randomly, to play a devil's advocate (I'm not saying where I stand on this conversation)-

But I've seen my father, a doctor, do about 80% of his documentation and stuff on his cell phone... While he usually spends about an hour or so on his laptop at night- this includes his random net browsing. However, he never takes the laptop anywhere.

When he's doing on-call work, or making rounds, he's always using his phone for the information he has on his patients.

On the other hand, I'd love to see an accountant manage an annual budget spreadsheet on a phone.

...or an editor work on putting the next big hollywood film together.

Oh but that one's easy!

"1 dey der was a men who was werkin at depar..de.depertman... kmart and he was big lozer. so he went to another cuntrys kmart for a new begineng and met sumone who was a diffarent nashonality and so crazy becsse he has toast for brekfast but the other guy dosenot!!!!"

*Films a urinal for two hours*

"AWESOME MY PHONE HAS SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, HA HA HA HAUHAUHAHUAUHHUAUHAUHAHUAUHAHUAUHAUHAUHAUHHUAHUAHUAHUUHAHUA"

*Film wins every award possible three months later*

"I'd like to thank.. SONIC THE HEDGEHOG YEEEEEAH BITCHES UHAUHAUHAHUAUHAUHAUHAUHUHAAUHUHAUHAHUAHUAUHAUHAUHAUHAHUAHUAHUAUHA"