★ Apple’s 11 Inch MacBook Air: First Impressions

This isn’t a full review. I’m just going to post a few thoughts and will follow up with more info later on.

I was pessimistic and downright evil to this little devil when I first heard about it following an Apple announcement last year. I called it “Apple’s 1st netbook” and criticized Apple for the slow clock speed, lack of SD card and screen size. I held onto this belief until I used one for the first time while on a trip to Amsterdam. The Apple Centre near my hotel had one in stock, it was the MBA 11 inch at 1.4Ghz with a stock 2 gigabytes of ram and 64 gb SSD. I was impressed that it could handle YouTube HD videos so well! My 2.13Ghz MacBook Air of last year couldn’t do this. It turns out that new video card Apple is using is pretty zippy and does a great job handling flash videos (even ones encoded in HD).

On Friday, I purchased one of these machines. My mouse was hovering over the 1.4ghz model and the 1.6ghz model. I’d pay close to $400 more for a MacBook Air that had twice as much storage and a 200 megahertz faster processor. I really think the 1.4 to 1.6 ghz model is a waste of money. I also think that 64 gigabytes to 128 is worthless if the MacBook Air isn’t your main machine.

In fact, I’d say to anyone that the 11 inch MacBook Air cannot be your only Mac.

If you get the 13″ model and max it out, that may do but you’d be better off with a 12″ MacBook Pro for that price. It’s completely your call but no one should buy an 11 inch MacBook Air expecting it to be their only computer. You’ll be disappointed. Instead, the 11 inch model is a great complimentary machine to those of us who have iMacs or MacBook Pros that are better off tethered to an external monitor at home. Readers of this blog would call my analysis a bit off screaming at me that only people with disposable income would do that. Well, yeah. Just as people who buy netbooks don’t use them as their only computer. Netbooks are a 2nd computer that’s more portable but not a full productivity machine compared to their “real computer”. I have to say that Apple did a great job cramming so much productivity into an 11 inch package that is half an inch thick.

The 11 inch MacBook Air is only slightly faster than my 2.13Ghz model as far as the boot & load times go. It isn’t hugely different but for anyone going from HDD to SSD, they’ll be blown away. I’m not really impressed but, then again, my last 3 Apple laptops have been powered by SSD ranging from 64 to 256 gigabytes and all around the same in read/write speeds.

The processor is noticeably slower. Just running 5 applications and typing in WordPress and I’m loading between 20-40% onto the CPU constantly. It jumps a bit when I switch applications or MobileMe starts syncing. Loading web pages peaks the CPU but not too bad and mostly when those pesky flash ads pop up.

The battery life at boot was 6 hours but once I launched Mail, Chrome, Twitter, Reeder, Adium and put the brightness at 50%, the battery life became 3.5 hours. I haven’t conditioned the battery yet so this may change.

The keys aren’t as bouncy as the MacBook Pro or previous generation MacBook Air. I haven’t used the new 13″ model but I’m assuming this is a change on both MBAs given the new body style. The keys feel softer with less bounce and it’s making it harder to type with added stress on my wrists from tension. I bought this MacBook because the previous 13″ was the best writing machine I ever owned. It was amazing. I completely dislike writing long-form on my home iMac & Dell notebook. Maybe it’s my posture limitations, larger screens, software or the fact that they’re not as portable but the MacBook Air 13 was a dream and now I’m noticing it was the screen height and keyboard bounce. The 11 inch screen is lower and the keys less bouncy. This may be a dealbreaker for me but I’ll give it a week.

This is the ultimate travel computer simply because it’s so small. Many of my colleagues in the tech world have forgone their MacBooks for their iPad w/ 3G for weekend trips. They were able to get most tasks done with an iPad and iPhone 4. I feel like I’ll be taking my MacBook Air for sure because I prefer a notebook to an iPad (as you all know from my previous articles). One concern I got from a few readers is that I may be choosing between iPad or MacBook Air given that their screens are only 1 inch different and that they both have similar use cases. I disagree but only time will tell. The iPad is far less productive. This is a fact. Multitasking with iOS 4.2 did not solve the issues I had with iPad. It’s a phenomenal lean-back reading machine but it is not a work tool. One off music or art projects that the other Apple fanboys link to have not done a good job convincing me otherwise. The iPad is for reading & consumption. The MacBook Air has Reeder (a well designed RSS reader), Kindle for Mac, Twitter, Flickr uploader, CameraBag, Photoshop CS5, Chrome (with real tabs), Adium and the trusty OSX Terminal. IT’s a truu multitasking machine with the tried and true keyboard. Oh and it has a built in iSight with real USB ports. Anyone that tells you the MBA 11″ & iPad compete is full of shit and just wants to start an argument. Punch them in the face for me.

The weight of this thing is phenomenal. It does not compare to any laptop I’ve ever used.

The new style function keys are throwing me off. I like a dedicated power button.

The lack of a backlit keyboard is killing me. I’m going to be honest and say that if the MacBook Air 11 & 13″ were the same or slower than the old models, I’d buy a used 13″ MacBook Air (previous generation). Unfortunately, the SSDs are faster, the ram is faster, the video cards are very much improved and the build quality has been improved significantly. Let’s also remember that the pixels of the 11″ are the same as the old 13″ and the 13″ is the same as the current 15″ MacBook Pro. I can fit the same”stuff” on the 11″ screen as I did on the previous gen 13″ MacBook Air. These factors make me very happy, enough that I’ll ignore the lack of a backlit keyboard and possibility that the keys aren’t as bouncy.

The single biggest improvement on both size MacBook Airs is that we finally have access to 4 gigabytes of ram for only $100 more. This is not user upgradeable. If you don’t add the ram at the time of purchase, you wont’ get it. PC weenies who complain about this, I have an answer for you. This isn’t Apple kicking you in the butt. There is simply no space in the MBA for a ram slot and SODIMM connectors. The memory is a part of the logic board (motherboard) and if they made it upgradeable, the MacBook Air wouldn’t be as thin, light or beautiful. The same goes for CPU upgrades, replaceable batteries and other overclocking features. It’s completely locked down but the machine is strikingly beautiful. If you want user upgradeable parts, get an Alienware 17″ “portable computer” that weighs 15 pounds and you can upgrade everything in there. I think you can even put liquid cooling in there and drag it behind you to the nearest LAN party. It also has enough USB Ports to power dozens of USB coffee cup warmers. Be my guest!

The screen is ultra bright but the hit it has on the battery is huge. My 3.5 hours became 1.75 hours when I went full brightness. This makes me sad. Luckily, planes, cafes and my house isn’t too bright and those are the three places I’ll be using this. If I decide to edit photos while I’m in Miami by going to the pool, then I’ll have to crank the brightness up and yes, I’ll take a huge battery hit. Also, if I’m at a pool in Miami with my MacBook Air, can someone please punch me in the face for being a nerd? Thanks.

Finally, Apple made this so simple. I’m not storing documents on this. It’s going to be a cloud computer. I create data on this (photos, text, video, audio) to be immediately sent to the cloud and synced via SugarSync to my iMac at home. With that said, I didn’t do a time machine restore from any previous computer. Here was my setup process:

• Create user account
• Run software updates
• Add my MobileMe info (sync – replace all info on this computer)
• Download applications that I like and use the most
• Download chrome (login to Google and watch all extensions, favorites and saved passwords load into Chrome)
• Launch App Store, check previous purchases and re-download all apps for free to this computer
• Restart
• Get work done

I was up and running in 25 minutes without ever plugging in an external drive. Thanks to the web’s embrace of cloud computing, this machine was up and running instantly. MobileMe even syncs /Library/Application Support/ Preferences so when I installed applications like Twitter, Reeder & Adium, all of the accounts I added to them was already ready after a MobileMe Sync (just check preferences syncing under System Preferences –> MobileMe –> Sync).

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I want to do a full review soon but this was my first impressions of Apple’s 1st Generation 11 Inch MacBook Pro. Thanks for reading!