Apple's new laptop, the MacBook Air, may not be the true ultraportable that many had hoped for, but it still easily breaks new ground for small laptops. Mimicking the 13-inch silhouette of the current MacBook line, it's only 19mm thick at its thickest part, and Apple calls it the "world's thinnest notebook".
Some nitpickers say an obscure Mitsubishi laptop from 1997 was a hair thinner, but two of the smallest current ultraportable laptops, the 11-inch Sony Vaio TZ series and the 12-inch Toshiba Portege R500, are both slightly thicker, and neither tapers to 4mm as the Air does along its front edge.
As we've come to expect from Apple, the design and engineering that went into the MacBook Air is extraordinary, but it's certainly a much more specialised product than the standard 13-inch MacBook and won't be as universally useful as that popular system.
The biggest compromises, which have been well-documented, come in its connectivity: the MacBook Air finds room for only one USB port and doesn't include a built-in optical drive, FireWire, Ethernet or mobile broadband. And as with its other laptops, Apple refuses to outfit the Air with a media-card reader or an expansion card slot. Offsetting its sparse connectivity are genuinely useful new features including new touchpad gesture controls and the ability to wirelessly 'borrow' another system's optical drive.
Choosing the Air over the cheaper, faster standard 13-inch MacBook, or the comparably priced MacBook Pro, will depend on your needs. Travellers who want minimum weight but maximum screen real estate, and who live their lives via Wi-Fi hot spots, with little need for wired connectivity, will find the £1,199 starting price a reasonable investment for owning one of the world's premier bits of high-tech eye candy.
And while the MacBook Air's specs are inferior to those found on the cheaper MacBook, they compare more favourably when you look at other ultraportables, where a price premium is always exacted. For instance, the base model Sony Vaio TZ costs £100 more than the basic MacBook Air, while the basic Toshiba Portege R500 costs only slightly less at £1,173 -- and those models offer only 1GB RAM and slower processors.
Design
Although it shares a desktop footprint with the standard black and white MacBooks, the first thing you notice about the Air is its aluminium chassis -- similar to the one found on the MacBook Pro, and much more fingerprint-resistant than the standard MacBooks. Picking it up, the MacBook Air feels a little heavier than you'd expect from looking at it, even though it's only 1.4kg.
At the same time, it feels very sturdy and solid, thanks in part to the aluminium construction, and we'd have no qualms about carting it around with us all day. By way of comparison, the Vaio TZ series features an 11.1-inch screen and weighs only 200g lighter than the Air, and the Portege R500 is 600g lighter than the Air with a 12.1-inch screen.
The MacBook Air includes an iSight camera and mic, and an LED backlit display that works with an ambient light sensor to adjust the screen brightness in response to the light in the room. The keyboard -- the same full-size version found in other MacBooks -- has backlit keys that are also controlled by the ambient light sensor, although we really had to adjust the room lighting a good deal to see any difference.
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swanson 9 November 2010
Good: boot up, shut down speed are incredible, its quick than my £800 1 year old desktop
Bad: limited storage
Comment: I've had this for a couple of weeks now and so far it is so much better than my £800 desktop computer everything on it is about 4 times as quick and my desktop is less than a year old. This is the perfect laptop for doing so many everyday thing e.g. FM 2011, internet, watching videos, editing photos and so much more, i really could rave on about this all day and i think have to my friends. But imo what makes this laptop even more exciting this that the mac app store and lion are out next year and i think with the app store this laptop will be fantastic. I would recommend a few accessory to go with this though, firstly a Wireless modem e.g. a 3 mifi so you can get internet anywhere, secondly a portable external hard drive to store you film and in my case photos (ive got millions), lastly a external dvd drive just so you can upload games and software. With these thing it really is the only computer you need and to anyone who calls it a netbook i would really suggest they use it for a day or so because this is nothing like any netbook there has ever been so please dont call it one because this is most defiantly a notebook and a brilliant one at that.
Simon Philpott 21 August 2010
Good: Thin, light, well built and it doesn't run Windows.
Bad: The price.
Comment: Thin, light, well built and with the ultra smooth Apple OS this machine is excellent. It's not super fast but I use mine for business and always have multiple MS Office/Mac application open at the same time and it does a fine job. I replaced a much more expensive Dell XPS with a huge amount of memory and a 500GB disk drive but have not suffered. There is no comparison as the Air has much more reliable hardware, operating system and software.
mace 23 April 2008
Good: Design
Bad: Price
Comment: This is a beautiful laptop but it could do with being cheaper.
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