MacBook Air Review [15 Feb 2008|12:30pm] [ mood | accomplished ] Originally Posted on JimmyHasABlog.com When Steve first announced the MacBook Air at MacWorld '08 I thought it was, "an overpriced piece of shit." Even to this day I still feel some of that initial thought it true. Of course now after having used it consistently for a week, some of my thoughts have changed and I've managed to come to a more finalized and in-depth conclusion. So how come I initially thought of the MacBook Air in such a negative way? Firstly Steve touted how wonderfully light and small this notebook computer was, 'the lightest notebook in the world'. I for one had actually been predicting that Steve would announce a slim notebook and indeed he did, for $1800. I was hoping for $1200-$1500. Not only was it costly but a lot of features I used were missing and it seemed quite under powered. For $1800 it really did seem like an 'over priced piece of shit'. Steve was all about talking down on other companies for how they 'compromised features' instead of size and weight...I found it to be pretty funny how hard he was pushing that when the product he was shoving down our throats was lacking many things like Firewire, almost no customization options (unless you want to bump the price tag up to $3,000), no optical drive, poor processing power, lousy video card, single USB port, no audio-in, a single not really that great sounding speaker, no Ethernet port, and a new type of MagSafe adapter. As for the optical drive and missing Ethernet, Steve provided us with a few options most of which aren't that great. For the optical drive you can purchase the external USB SuperDrive which is sort of nice. But isn't the point of the MacBook Air to be traveling light? That just means it's another thing you have sitting on your desk or in your bag while on the go. Definitely not as nice as an internal solution could be but it's nice that we're given the option...and for a mere $99 too! You'd think you'd be able to connect this external SuperDrive to say your MacBook or MacBook Pro if your drive dies in either of those units, nope. Apple only lets this drive connect to the MacBook Air. If paying $99 for a drive doesn't sound good you can use a new piece of software called Remote Disk which installs on say your iMac or even a PC running Windows and lets you share it's optical drive to the MacBook Air. Sounds pretty cool huh? It really isn't, the only thing that you can do with Remote Disk is install applications. No listening to audio CDs or watching DVDs. At least Remote Disk is "free" and included with the MacBook Air's software disks. How about that Ethernet port. Apple came up with a nice USB solution for $29. Of course that means your only USB port is now in use. It hasn't been made clear to me (through the description on the Apple Online Store) as to whether or not it works with a USB hub. For $29 it's not that bad, but being that it takes up the only USB port on the Air and it's not Gigabit, it may not seem like that wonderful of a solution after all. The Air isn't all that bad though. It is really slim and light. I definitely enjoy carrying this around more then my MacBook or PowerBook. I find it a lot easier to just pull out and start using. What about all those missing features? I really miss having firewire, but honestly that's about it. Ethernet isn't such an issue, I haven't found myself transferring large files over the network (I generally used to encode videos but because of the low processing power in the Air I no longer can do this). I also have a new aluminum iMac which I now use for encoding video, Photoshop and anything that get to be CPU intensive. The last time I can remember using a piece of optical media was probably 2-3 years ago and that was to import a audio disk into iTunes. Now I just get everything as a download in digital format. I generally install all my software from a disk image (DMG) or the software I use is available for download from various developers. The MacBook Air comes with a micro-DVI port and it comes with 2 adapters; one for VGA and one for DVI. When I am at home I usually have it connected to my 23" Apple Cinema Display and allows me to spread out my work and get some 'real' work done. When I am in this 'mode' I generally have 3-4 Safari windows open with 5-6 tabs each, TextMate, Coda, iTunes, iChat, and Apple Remote Desktop all running and I notice little to no slow down in the system. It handles my workload actually quite well, much better then I initially thought it would be able to. My good friend Morgan runs about 20 Safari windows with about 104 tabs total on his MacBook Pro, and I tested that out on the MacBook Air and it completed the task, but after a few minutes the fans turned on and the machine started to get pretty hot. I had expected that though, but none the less I could switch between the windows and tabs and there wasn't much delay if any at all. Because the MacBook Air is so 'limited', I've been able to really concentrate on the work I need to complete and on the applications I use to do the work. As much as I love playing a game or two, or burning a DVD, or tweaking photos in Photoshop or Aperture, I plan to only use this notebook computer for web coding, listening to music while I do so, administrating my servers (through the Server Admin tools Apple provides), email, studying Japanese, and surfing the web. Being that it limits the amounts of things that I do, it keeps me productive and allows me to work on non-computer tasks. It means that I have to use another computer (specifically my Intel iMac), to complete higher processing power tasks, and to be honest, I am too lazy to go into the other room, boot up the other machine unless it's really important. I almost want to say I appreciate the fact that it limits the amount of things I can do, because we all know that there's more to life then just plugging away at work on a computer! In closing, I admit that my initial impression of the MacBook Air was shallow and completely based on seeing what Steve Jobs showed us. I hadn't even laid my hands on it to actually use it. Fortunately I was able to get my hands on one and use it just as I would any other laptop and have come to a better and much more well formed opinion of the MacBook Air. Over all I am impressed with it, although there are a few things that I would like to see in 'take 2'. I would definitely like to see a Firewire port and possibly a built-in Ethernet port. It also wouldn't hurt to bump up the processing speeds without having to pay an arm and a leg. While I have no doubt in my mind that Apple will drop the price I do wish it wasn't so pricey to begin with. Even at $1500 it would sound more reasonable. If you're looking for a slim notebook that doesn't need to be lugged around, or just a wonderful travel notebook that you can write up documents, send emails and surf the web while at the Airport or cafe, the MacBook Air is something that should definitely be considered. Of course the beautiful and slim design comes with a pretty hefty price tag -- an $1800 starting price. Ouch. 7 comments|post comment

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