The skinny on the Air
07/04/08 23:15 Filed in: Hardware
The MacBook Air is slim and sexy,
but is it enough laptop?
In my first note on this blog, I went on and on about how valuable I found portability in a Mac and how much I'd come to value compactness and reduced weight.
I got a chance to find out just how far I'd be willing to go in that direction when a friend offered me "first fondle" of her brand new MacBook Air.
When I got my first Titanium PowerBook, my wife dubbed it Gwyneth for its pale thin beauty. The MacBook Air makes that laptop look fat and bloated. Photographs and even the video don't do it justice.
When I took the Air out of its box (itself a design confection in black, shaped plastic and foam that recalls nothing more than expensive chocolate), I couldn't help but feel that something was missing. It seemed impossible that a fully functional laptop, one that was more powerful, with more RAM and disk space than all but a few of my old systems, could be so insanely insubstantial.
I worked on the system for a few hours, and the design illusion of ethereal slimness is almost inverted when you have the laptop up and running. For working, it just feels like a silver MacBook, sporting pretty much the same overall dimensions in height and width, a slightly more impressive version of the same screen and in a bit of MacBook one-upmanship, a lighted keyboard with contrasting black keys that accent the aluminium finish quite nicely.
Pick up the Air and you're brought back to Apple's reality, the laptop doesn't seem to be all there, it feels surreally light and thin, the portable computing equivalent of hugging someone who is mortally frail.
It's going to be interesting to see how this portable Mac makes its way in the world, where casual brutality can take a heavy tool on computers on the go.
Working with the Air for a day, I can suggest a few things you're going to need if you decide to buy one.
First off, get the external SuperDrive. Apple has done some interesting software cleverness that makes it possible to use another optical drive in a Mac or PC, but I didn't feel moved to get involved in doing any of that just to do a few installations. There were a couple of installs I couldn't do because I didn't have a large enough flash drive.
To extend that USB port when you're working in your favorite space, get a USB 2 hub and if you're going to be doing a fair amount of work at your desk, get one that's powered, because you're eventually going to jack a lot of things into that hub.
So after going on and on about how much I now value light and powerful, I've got to admit that the Air is both too much light and too little powerful for my tastes.
I jack a bunch of stuff into my MacBook when I work at my desk, a high-speed optical drive, a JBOD box with twin 500GB disks, a 23 inch LCD, mouse, numeric keypad and two printers.
I can't work the way I like to with an Air, but for hardcore roadwarriors who like a bit of polish and a lighter bag, this new Mac is going to be a tempting option.
Finder
Apple MacBook Air US$1,799 - 3,098