Steve Jobs unveiled the ultra thin laptop that has been rumored since (or as early as) last July, and it has a nice name: MacBook Air. What an amazing coincidence (if you noticed my blog name)! Anyway, let’s take a look at its specifications first.
- Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
- Weight: 3.0 lbs (1.36 kg)
- Price: $ 1,799/3,098
- 1.6/1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo
- 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM onboard
- 80GB 4200-rpm PATA hard disk drive/64GB solid-state drive
- Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor
- 13.3-inch glossy screen
- Optional external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive ($99)
- Optional Apple USB Ethernet Adaptor ($29)
- Trackpad with multi-touch gesture support
- 802.11n & Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- 1 Micro-DVI
- 1 USB 2.0 port
- 1 Audio out (analog)
- Built-in mono speaker and omnidirectional microphone
- 5 hours wireless productivity (built-in battery is also not user accessible)
It indeed took Apple quite a lot effort to squeeze so much content into an envelope-size laptop, pushing the limit to the extreme. One of the biggest steps toward achieving the ultra slimness is the 60% smaller CPU. Giving up the optical drive is also a common practice to reduce both height and weight. The elimination of ethernet port was a surprise at first, but became reasonable when I realized that the port alone is of certain height and wireless access is much more ubiquitous now. Furthermore, having an iPhone more or less has led me to appreciate the joy among the fingertips. Simply put, the design of MacBook Air is so gorgeous that I wouldn’t want to take my hands off if I ever touch one.
But as the name implies, it is not for the pros (as in MacBook Pro). It is suitable only for those who are rich and like to show off, those who travel a lot, and last but not least, girls. First of all, I think Apple made 1.8-inch 4200-rpm hard drive as a standard option because it needs a relatively cheaper solution. Portability, performance and price, you always have to give up one of them. I have a ThinkPad X41 and a couple of my friends use X40, the 1.8-inch hard drives were giving us horrendous experience. However, I am curious to see how they perform under OS X because I am willing to believe that there are noticeable improvement but the problem is how much. Solid-state drives, although extremely fast, give the MacBook Air a whopping price tag. Note that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard so there is no space for an upgrade. Another annoying fact is that it only provides one USB port. Perhaps Apple is so confident with the trackpad that a mouse is considered unnecessary, or perhaps it is encouraging the use of Bluetooth mouse, or is it just me not getting enough USB ports? Also, analog audio out and mono speaker (comparing with the optical digital output and stereo speakers on both MacBook and MacBook Pros) may be simply the compromise to meet the design requirement, which is solely portability. Thus, if you are a serious programmer/designer, do not buy the MBA. Nonetheless if you do have (a lot) money to spare, getting one for your girlfriend or yourself is not a bad idea.
One more thing to mention, Jobs’ claim of the MBA being “the world’s thinnest notebook” is in fact arguable. I saw some post mentioning Sony VAIO X505 to be thinner than the MBA, but found out that it is really hard to tell after re-examine the specs of X505 (0.3-0.75 inch). It (1.85 lbs) is however, lighter than the MBA regardless of the difference in screen size (10.4 versus 13.3).
Jobs also announced 1.1.3 firmware upgrade for the iPhone in his keynote. I had the plan to update until I came across some early adopters’ posts reporting various problems and errors. iPhone owners shall be patient and wait for official solutions.
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