It was just over three months ago that Apple released their smallest notebook ever, the 11 inch MacBook Air. Personally, I was very skeptical being the owner of a MacBook Air 13-inch and seeing the lackluster technical specs compared to other notebooks. So, I waited before jumping in and buying one of these despite the size being an appealing factor. Since we covered the 11-inch launch with a few posts, other blogs and magazines have sounded off and everyone agrees this is a fantastic notebook computer in an ultra small form factor. I agree. My tone has changed quite a bit since a post calling it underwhelming back in October. I said:
I was underwhelmed by today’s announcement, but the MBA was already a good notebook. I was hoping Apple would make it even better. It didn’t. “One more thing” was simply a minor evolutionary product refresh, and that’s too bad.
Oh how I’d love to go back 3 months and smack myself because the world has changed since I bought my first MacBook Air and this is Apple’s best and smallest notebook ever made.
Small yet full featured:
The 11-inch MacBook Air comes equipped with an Intel Core2Duo processor clocked at 1.4Ghz. For $100 more, you can upgrade that processor to 1.6Ghz. The 2 gigabytes of ram that comes standard isn’t quite enough for any power users and, even though 4 gigabytes of ram is an option, you’ll have to buy it at the time of ordering for an extra $100 as the ram isn’t user replaceable down the road. For a select few people, I’d recommend both the processor and ram upgrades but, for many, you can get by with the stock MacBook Air specs. I can’t tell you if a 64 or 128 gigabyte SSD is right for you. Remember, this is an ultra-mobile machine that shouldn’t be expected to do everything so, you may be better off getting an external drive that fits in your bag and storing digital media like photos and music on it.
The addition of an extra USB port is long overdue and I’m happy that an iPhone and my SD Card reader can be used at the same time. Also, the new design abolishes any issues people had with larger headphone and USB plugs in the older MacBook Air. That flip door sometimes didn’t leave enough room for an SD reader and headphones and my Shure phones had a large plug and wouldn’t even fit in the old MBA headphone jack. This is no longer an issue.
Anyone that owns a Revision A-C MacBook Air will be blown away at how much better the speakers sound. Apple’s mono speaker design of last year has been scrapped for two speakers nestled under the keyboard and it’s much louder. While showing off the new machine to colleagues, they were blown away at how thin the FaceTime camera is. Sure, us Mac owners take for granted that FaceTime camera but it’s less than a millimeter thin and that’s remarkable
There are noticeable changes in how fast this machine is simply from the GPU upgrade from an NVIDIA GeForce 9400 to a GeForce 320M. Don’t let the model number fool you, there are twice as many pipelines, pixel shaders and a higher clock speed. I’m no video card geek but I can see a noticeable improvement from my 2.13Ghz MacBook Air (previous-gen) to this 1.4Ghz MacBook Air simply due to the GPU. As Apple continues to improve on offloading various tasks to GPUs, it will become far more important that your video card is fast and your CPU becomes a secondary priority. Trust me, the new GPU makes this machine that much faster.
Solid State Drive:
For many owners of the MacBook Air, this will be their first time using a notebook with a solid state drive because, until now, adding an SSD to a MacBook Pro was pretty expensive. This instant speed boost you get will blow you away. The machine starts up in 5 seconds and shuts down even faster. Mail and Safari each require a bounce in the dock before appearing on screen and copying files is zippy and in the blink of an eye. The fact that the SSD comes standard is great and I’m afraid your top of the line Core i7 iMac will feel slow compared to this machine for many tasks. The truth is, most users don’t need a quad-core 3Ghz Core i7 machine with hyper-threading and 16 gigabytes of ram that the new iMac offers because, anything that’s reading & writing to the hard drive will take a hit at the slow speeds. SSD is the future and I can’t wait to see larger capacity drives for much less. Today’s MacBook Air is truly a taste of what the future has to offer.
Battery Life:
Apple claims 5 hours and with Wi-Fi off and brightness low, I can get 5 hours on a charge. Realistically, I saw 3-4 hours per charge while browsing the web and with the brightness cranked up. I hear if you install Flash, your performance will drop but that hasn’t been fully tested. Considering this notebook is, on average, less than half an inch thin, I’d say a 5 hour battery life is pretty fantastic. You can pick up a HyperMac battery if you need more power on the road.
Design:
Every technical aspect of the MacBook Air is completely overshadowed by the thrill of getting work done on a notebook this small that still has a full size trackpad and keyboard with the screen resolution that surpasses the current 13 inch MacBook Pro and MacBook.
For starters, I’ve always had a fundamental dislike for netbooks. Aside from the fact they primarily were running crippled operating systems, these machines were low resolution notebooks with ultra small trackpads and keyboards that were 80-90% full size meaning your fingers would have real problems with typing speed if you’ve spent any time typing on a full size keyboard. Apple obviously understands the value of a full size keyboard and trackpad coupled with a high res screen and they haven’t cut any corners.
In the past 12 months, I’ve gone from a 17″ MacBook Pro to a 15″ and then a 13″ Air and now this 11″ Air is my only notebook and I have no regrets. The reason is that the experience of getting work done is only marginally compromised as I am writing, surfing the web and editing photos while enjoying the flexibility of a notebook that is 12 inches across and weighs just over 2 pounds.
The display’s hinge has been greatly improved over the previous generation Air and now resembles the hinge seen in other Apple notebooks. I’m pretty sure that this hinge will perform much better over time than previous models where Apple published docs feasibly allowing screen movement up to x amount of degrees before they would replace the hinge. This isn’t as common on other models and I feel this new design will help those of us who are always opening and closing our notebooks.
I have two complaints that may have been unavoidable given the new size. The first is the ultra small function keys on the MacBook Air. They are full size on the 13 inch model but on the 11-inch, they are literally Pez candy sized and are hard for a guy with big fingers to push. This is most likely a compromise that was made to allow for the larger trackpad and full size keyboard that I was just praising so I’ll leave this one alone. The second complaint has to do with the backlit keyboard which is absent from both the 11 inch and 13 inch models. This was a huge feature that I loved on the Revision A-C model MacBook Air and, now that it’s gone, I can see how much I took this feature for granted. If it was removed from the 11-inch model, I’d be understanding but to be stripped from the 13 as well leaves me thinking that Apple was just saving money or that the new batteries really are that big.
Adobe Flash Optional:
In my weeks running the MacBook Air without Adobe Flash (which is how it arrives from the factory), I’ve had very few issues with browsing the web. I see less advertisements than ever and there aren’t any pages that play voices congratulating me on winning a free iPod. YouTube, Vimeo and other video sites detect that I don’t have flash and deliver h.264 content with a minor delay. YouTube videos that play pre-roll ads don’t seem to work because all of the ads are in Flash. I just keep refreshing the page until it plays the video without the advertisement. RSS apps like Reeder and NetNewsWire assume I have Flash and won’t play embedded clips that are in blogs and I”m forced to open the page in Safari to see the embedded YouTube or other video clip.
Of note, you can also get away with not installing Flash if you use Google Chrome. For now, Chrome has Adobe Flash baked right in so I find myself launching Chrome when it’s time to watch a video that doesn’t have an h.264 version available.
Day to Day Use:
Can the 11-inch MacBook Air be your only notebook? This is the question because, not everyone has the cash to own a 15″ MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air with an iMac siting at home. First, it’s really important that you remember this is not a Core i5/i7 system with a huge amount of storage and ports for every device you can think of. This is an ultra-mobile netbook-esque machine that gets the job done for most people. Video and photo editing are doable but not great. This device excels at rendering web pages, doing office work and writing. It’s been said that this is the perfect writing machine and I agree. This will not do the same work as a MacBook Pro and you shouldn’t expect it to. The good news is that the Mini DisplayPort on the 11-inch Air will power a 30″ monitor which I’ve tested on my 30-inch Dell LCD but the issue with a large monitor is that you begin opening programs and working as if you were on an iMac and the MacBook Air quickly let me know that this wasn’t going to work out for 8 hours a day.
I believe this can be your only notebook assuming you’re not a creative professional or scientist but you have to realize that this is the least powerful notebook Apple has available. Bloggers will love this machine and web surfers will carry it everywhere. I still think you should have an iMac at home for managing your iTunes library, storing photos and video chatting with family especially if you have kids or a spouse. This machine will hardly be a family computer given the small amount of storage and minimal access to raw processing power.
Should You Buy?
If this were an iMac or 15″ MacBook Pro, I’d say sure thing. The price per megahertz measurement (although outdated) is much cheaper on those machines. For this, paying $999 for a 1.4Ghz computer with only 2 gigabytes of ram is a tough choice but when you consider that this will fit in many purses backpacks unnoticed and it’s fast and snappy enough to do most any task, you may think twice.
For me, this is my machine that goes everywhere and can do 90% of my day-to-day activities. I picked up the 1.4Ghz 11-inch MacBook Air and upgraded the ram to 4 gigabytes for an extra $100 and couldn’t be happier. The 13-inch machine is faster, larger and has a larger hard drive but starts at $300 more. I’d recommend a visit to The Apple Store before making the final decision. It’s a great notebook for a great price.