John Gruber talks about the MacBook Air’s place in the Mac lineup, and comes the following conclusion:

Here’s the way I see it: the Air is a secondary Mac; MacBook Pros are for use as a primary computer.

[…]

The new MacBook Airs—particularly the 11-inch model—don’t compete against the other MacBooks so much as they do the iPad. It’s like a ‘pro’ solution for the same ‘in between a smartphone and a full-size laptop PC’ market segment that the iPad sits in.

With iOS device sales outpacing Mac sales and the MacBook Air pricing being surprisingly aggressive, it’s looking like 2011 will see an increasing number of ‘second devices’ that rely on a ‘main’ Mac or PC. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone can figure out some way of dispensing with the hub—it’d be great to be able to just have a couple of iPads and a MacBook Air knocking around, relying on some kind of networked storage for holding large files and back-ups. Right now, you can do this with Macs, but not with iOS devices, but I reckon it’s only a matter of time.

TechRadar’s James Rivington on the Galaxy Tab. Some choice cuts:

Is it a phone? No – it makes phone calls, sure, but it’s too big to use as a primary mobile phone.

Is it a tablet? Again, no we don’t think it is one. It’s too small and fiddly and lacking in optimisations. Tablets need to distinguish themselves from smartphones by being bigger, better, more powerful, feature rich and interesting.

The pricing is all wrong, too. Clearly, Samsung needs to avoid undercutting the prices of its own Android smartphones like the Galaxy S. But in doing so, it’s made the Galaxy Tab £100 more expensive than the cheapest iPad – a class-leading product.

The camera, too, is fairly poor. Again, it’s nice to have this feature, but remember this is a £530 gadget. It’s expensive, and so you expect all the features to be top-notch… But they’re not.

It had the potential to deliver a serious blow to Apple’s iPad sales. But in truth, the Galaxy Tab is no match for the iPad. It’s nowhere near as smooth, it’s not as polished and remarkably, it’s not even a match when it comes to value for money.

Other 7″ Android tablets all seem to have similar problems. Personally, I’m very much hoping to see a 10″ Android, webOS or Windows Phone 7 tablet in 2011. I love the iPad, but Apple needs some serious competition to drive it on. It has this in the smartphone space, but right now the iPad remains so far ahead in its field that it’s starting to get a bit depressing.

Scott Rose gets it:

[…] going through 4 time-consuming & manually intensive tasks (double-click the button, swipe with your finger to the right, press the orientation lock, double-click the button again) is a REAL pain in the ass for something that used to be as simple as just touching a button on the side of the iPad.

And if you’re locking the screen orientation 100 times a day, you now have 400 extra tasks that you have to do every single day.

What a pity Steve Jobs doesn’t get it. There really is no excuse for Apple not enabling users to choose how this switch is used. Make mute the default—I don’t care. But wrecking the functionality of a switch millions of iPad users use daily for a function the majority will never need is just bonkers.

A regular criticism of Apple is that the company tends to push aesthetics over functionality. I’ve never entirely agreed with this thinking, believing that—for the most part—Apple advocates usability over everything else, and aesthetics form a major part of how usable something is.

However, two recent reports of upcoming Apple products concern me, since it seems Apple is in some cases sacrificing usability for platform consistency.

The first case is in the iPad, where Steve Jobs has reportedly confirmed via email (9To5Mac) that the iPad screen-rotation lock will become a mute button as of iOS 4.2. This matches the functionality on the iPhone and iPod touch, which is presumably why Apple has made the change. However, it doesn’t seem to take into account how people use the various devices; a rotation lock is far more important on the iPad, since the accelerometer is so sensitive. The iPad is also less likely to be used in scenarios where a mute button will be required, unlike the iPhone and iPod touch.

What grates for me in this scenario is that when asked “Are you planning to make that a changeable option?”, Jobs responded “Nope”. In other words, Apple is changing the functionality of a major hardware component of its device, without providing users with a means to revert, despite the button’s functionality being controlled by software. That there won’t be an option buried in the Settings app suggests Apple cares more for platform consistency than anything else. (Note: I’m aware iOS 4.1+ provides a software-based orientation lock by swiping the apps tray, but this is sub-optimal. Not only is this control awkward to access—and will be more so on the larger iPad—but many users won’t even know it exists.)

MacRumors today reports on some equally concerning aspects of Lion (the next version of Mac OS X). According to a reader, the scrollbars are as per iOS (appearing only when needed and fading when they aren’t). This is idiotic from a user-experience standpoint. One of the biggest issues with iOS is that while it’s mostly intuitive, there’s a lot of ‘mystery meat’ navigation. Users have to ‘discover’ things far too often, since navigation and UI components are regularly hidden. Visible scrollbars provide an indication of a document’s size and your location within it; only showing scrollbars temporarily does not enhance usability—it degrades it; it’s also alien to a desktop operating system.

Both these things point to Apple wanting to merge concepts in iOS and Mac OS X at all costs. Some cross-pollination is undoubtedly a good idea—Mac OS X having system-wise auto-save/app-resumption will be a major productivity boost if implemented properly; but Apple must also remember that what works on one system won’t necessarily work on the other—and it should also realise that some things really don’t work from a usability standpoint on iOS as it is, and so welding such concepts to Mac OS X isn’t a great idea.

Steve Jobs announced yesterday that a Mac equivalent to the iOS App Store is coming soon. Naturally, the tech community has rattled off its usual arguments about ‘control’ and ‘openness’ and ‘Steve is a ninja and therefore cannot be trusted’.

Interestingly, though, most developers are positive about this development. Loren Brichter of Atebits/Twitter perhaps sums up best why the Mac App Store is a good thing over on Cult of Mac:

Find developer website
Click download link
Unarchive
Drag to Applications folder
Launch app
Find registration button
Go to developers website
Click buy
Enter credit card information
Click buy
Wait for email
Open license email
Copy license
Paste license

vs.

Click “Buy”