MacBook Air or WMD?

It seems that airport security is not quite up to speed on the latest technology. A man was recently stopped after security scanners didn’t believe his MacBook Air was a real computer. Macuser.com had the story:

Programmer Michael Nygard travels a lot—for business, you see. He’s got his routine down to a science, from airport to hotel, and so he was surprised and dismayed to suddenly find himself in an airport security holding area while TSA agents cautiously inspected his suspicious laptop.

“‘There’s no drive,’ one says. ‘And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,’ she continues….”

Holy bomb-in-a-laptop, Batman!

It seems like TSA agents aren’t trained in keeping up to date with technology. It wasn’t until a younger agent who’s familiar with these crazy new-fangled gadgets came onto the scene and explained to his clueless colleagues that this was in fact a real laptop, but with a sold state hard drive instead of a disc. Oh, and that MacBook Airs don’t in fact have optical drives.

Of course by this time, poor Michael had already missed his flight. So let this be a lesson to all you solid-state hard drive MacBook Air travelers. Get to the airport extra early with that crazy suspicious laptop of yours!

This totally doesn’t surprise me.

First, it’s a cool computer. It looks like it’s from the future. After seeing millions of bulky PCs, the airport security workers were probably shocked to see something light and sleek.

Second, airport security are generally disinterested morons who get off on their own power… at least in most my experiences. I once went through security in Baltimore only to have the guard sexually harass me and tell me I couldn’t get to my flight until I told him if I had a boyfriend and gave him my number. I’m so glad horny fucktards like that douche are our grand line of defense against terrorist attacks!

Anyway, it’s an amusing news story for technology geeks like myself.