Chris Hamady

A Breath of Fresh "Air."

by Chris Hamady

A Review of the 11 inch MacBook Air  CLICK FOR IMAGES

After a two year wait, my dreams of an ultra-portable Macintosh notebook have finally been answered. Enter the 11 inch MacBook Air! At just 2.3 pounds, this computer manufactured from a solid piece of aluminum really lives up to its name.

I bought this computer from the Ann Arbor Briarwood Apple store to replace a 15 inch MacBook Pro that I take to and from work, as well as a 13 inch MacBook that I travel with to do presentations. Both of these computers are fantastic in their own right, but the weight of them tends to wear one down after walking for tens of minutes through airports or across long parking lots. 

My day to day needs are fairly complex but shouldn't be hampered even by the specs of the entry level MacBook Air:

Mac OS X 10.6.4

iLife '11

1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

2 GB SDRAM

64 GB Flash Storage

NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics with 256MB shared SDRAM

11.6 inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen

Two USB 2.0 ports

One Mini DisplayPort

Headphone jack with support for iPhone-type headphones/mic 

Integrated omnidirectional microphone

I use my laptop day to day to:

Use productivity tools (word processing, presentations, spreadsheets)

Browse the web

Check email

Use Apple Remote Desktop to remotely administer computers and servers

iChat (video conference and IM) with colleagues, friends and family

Do light video editing and simple graphic design

Do podcasting

Watch gobs of streaming video in both H.264 and Flash formats

The first thing I did when arriving at the Apple store was ask the salesperson if he would mind installing Adobe's Flash Player on the display model. He was very courteous and agreed to do so after checking with one of his superiors. Once installed, I loaded up the Blender open source movie, Sintel, in 1080p via YouTube and was blown away by: 1. how quickly the movie began to play 2. how smoothly and flawlessly the MacBook Air delivered this incredible video experience in full screen to the viewer.

I wanted to see if this was just an anomaly of the Apple store having a fast internet connection. I clicked on the icon for iMovie and was flabbergasted to see iMovie instantly open up with a number of video projects loaded into it. My only explanation for the incredible performance of this computer is that the solid state drive feeds the processor in a much more efficient manner than a mechanical hard drive can. I'm really only just now starting to realize the performance bottleneck that we have all been hampered with when using hard drives based upon spinning platters of data and moving read/write heads.

I have yet to do anything on this computer where the experience has felt slower or less productive than when using my 2.66 GHz MacBook Pro but I'm sure that applications and tasks requiring a lot of processing horsepower would be severely limited on a machine based on such a modest processor speed.

So far I've tested and confirmed excellent performance with:

All of the iLife '11 apps

Firefox

Safari

Mail

Netflix/Silverlight

YouTube/Adobe Flash player

Open Office

iChat

FaceTime for Mac

Apple Remote Desktop

Adobe Photoshop

The 11.6 inch screen of this new MacBook is just the right size. When sitting with the computer on my lap in my living room chair, the MacBook Air's screen has a larger viewable perspective than the 52 inch television 6 feet in front of me. Clearly this is "large enough" to work comfortably on. Now that I'm officially "middle-aged," and my vision is beginning to change, I did however, have to bump all of the default font sizes up one or two points in both the OS and my apps. Not a big deal as far as I am concerned. 

The keyboard feels identical to the size and response that one would get from using the Apple wireless bluetooth keyboard. I typed this review on it with ease and did not encounter any difficulties. 

Lastly, since the Air does not have an optical drive, it does not ship with a restore DVD. It includes a tiny USB stick that contains all of the software that ships on the computer should you need to reinstall it. Simply insert the USB stick into one of the two USB ports on the computer, reboot holding down the "C" key on the computer keyboard, and you will soon see the familiar Mac OS X installer. By switching away from the old "remote DVD or CD sharing" manner of reinstallation, Apple might attract more "first time" computer buyers who do not currently have a computer in their home.

If you are in the market for a new ultra portable laptop, do yourself a favor and check out the new 11 inch MacBook Air at an Apple store near you. Try it out and then lift it up off of the counter. You will see for yourself why Apple calls it "Air."

CLICK FOR IMAGES

CH