World of Apple

Introduction

At Macworld 2008 Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone West in San Francisco and gave us a mass of new goodies to drool over, of particular interest was an expansion of Apple’s notebook lineup. The addition marks the first serious foray into a new form-factor of notebook for several years, and particular sought after since the demise of the 12-inch PowerBook in 2006.

The MacBook Air was long rumoured prior to its release to be an “ultra-portable”, but when Jobs finally showed off the Air at Macworld it became clear that Apple avoided the niche market of ultra-portables and instead headed fotor the ultra-thin notebook market. The Air lacks the power of the MacBook, has no optical drive and doesn’t contain a removable battery but instead is incredibly thin, features long battery life and has a full-size keyboard.

The Specifics

The MacBook Air comes in a few flavours, two processors are available to choose from, either a 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, all models come with 2GB of soldered RAM, there is also choice between a 80GB 4200rpm ATA drive or a 64GB solid-state drive. 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 are both standard on all models.

Our review model is the 1.6GHz model with a 80GB 4200rpm ATA hard drive.

The MacBook Air is very limited in its expandability containing only a single USB port, a mini-DVI and a headphone socket.

Unlike many other smaller notebooks on the market the MacBook Air packs a full-size backlit keyboard as well as a LED-backlit 13-inch display.

Packaging

In line with Apple’s recent promise to be more green the packaging for the MacBook Air is minimal. The box which the Air comes in measures just 355mm x 255mm x 80mm (14in x 10in x 3in), unlike Apple’s other notebook packaging the MacBook Air box opens by pulling the top lid off the bottom (similar design to the iPhone box).

Once open the MacBook Air sits in a plastic tray covered in a plastic sleeve, there is a card tab to lift the plastic tray and reveal the accessories. Included with the MacBook Air is a Micro-DVI to DVI adapter, Micro-DVI to VGA adapter, Magsafe power adapter (45w), polishing cloth, install DVDs and printed manuals.

---

Weight and ThickThinness

The biggest selling point of the MacBook Air is how thin it is and how light it is. Weighing a mere 1.36kg (3.0 pounds) the Air is noticeably light, particularly compared to the likes of a MacBook Pro (2.45kg, 5.4 pounds). When carried in a bag or simply in the hand it is very much a joy to have such a light notebook.

The MacBook Air is also remarkably thin, just 19.4mm (0.76in) at its thickest point sloping gently to just 40mm (0.16in) at the thinnest point at the front. Compare this to the MacBook Pro which is 25.9mm (1.0in) all the way around.

---

Display

Unlike many other small and light notebooks the MacBook Air is particularly proud that it remains thin and light but still packs a stunning 13.3-inch display. Once again in-line with Apple’s new green policies the display is touted as being mercury free, the display also makes use of LED-backlighting allowing battery efficient brightness and well as it being instant on. When waking the MacBook Air from sleep you’re immediately greeted with a vivid bright display.

The MacBook Air has a glossy display with no option for matte; I personally use a matte display on a MacBook Pro 70-percent of the time and a matte display iMac the rest of the time. After using the glossy display I’d have to say that the vivid colours were noticeable. Some say that lighting behind them is a distraction; this was never an issue in such situations.

When I attempted to use the MacBook Air outside on a sunny day it was particularly difficult, the display became dark and yellow with my head showing as a big black blob in the middle of the display.

Once again comparing to my normal habits using the 13.3-inch display was a struggle, although not much smaller than the 15-inch MacBook Pro display it felt cramped and I found myself making extensive use of Exposé and even dipped my toes into Spaces to see if quadrupling my workspace helped.

The small display was a definite downer for me but frankly this is a notebook built for portability so it is certainly a sacrifice that I’d be willing to make, also worth remembering that this is considered a large display for notebooks in this niche.

Keyboard

The MacBook Air borrows the design of the MacBook keyboard and the newly designed Apple keyboard, using what are known as “chicklet” keys they have space around them and are soft to type on but with a satisfying amount of movement complimented with a “clicky” noise.

Moving from a MacBook Pro keyboard there was a period of adjustment required to be made as the keys are further apart than on the cramped MacBook Pro keyboard but I was soon back to full speed if not a little quicker…

The MacBook Air keyboard is also backlit, users of the MacBook Pro will know the feature well and how it makes typing in the dark much easier. When the room darkens the MacBook Air automatically drops the brightness of its display to prevent glare and turns on the beautiful light-blue glowing backlit keys, a saviour for those midnight typing sessions in bed!

While on the subject of the keyboard it is worth noting the addition of “labelled” function keys along the top row of the Air’s keyboard. Here they all are in order from left to right; display brightness down (F1), display brightness up (F2), Exposé all windows (F3), Dashboard (F4), keyboard brightness down (F5), keyboard brightness up (F6), previous song/scrub back (F7), play/pause (F8), next song/scrub forward (F9), mute (F10), volume down (F11), volume up (F12).

---

Trackpad

A trackpad is just a trackpad, right? Not quite in the case of the MacBook Air, the Air features a large trackpad measuring 100mm x 60mm (4in x 2.5in), with a long yet thin button along the lower edge. Despite my gripes the trackpad button remains a single left-click button only.

The trackpad is large to allow for multi-touch gestures, borrowed from the iPhone the MacBook Air was the first notebook made by Apple to feature a multi-touch trackpad although the recent refresh of MacBook Pros saw the introduction to the pro line.

---

The multi-touch functions are helpful but for the short time I had the MacBook Air I found it something I had to actively think about before using, unlike for example two-finger scrolling on the MacBook Pro (you only know you do it when you try and use it on another notebook without it).

The multi-touch functions are few and far between but they pop up in all sorts of places, for example the pinch function doesn’t just scale photos in iPhone it also increases and decreases the text size in Safari. Personally pinching, rotating and three-finger swiping are just a novelty and the use of keyboard shortcuts is considerably quicker.

Sound

The speaker on the MacBook Air is somewhat of a sore point, first of all it only has a single mono speaker and that single speaker is quite “tinny”. What is interesting is that the speaker is remarkably loud, in fact a little bit louder than the MacBook Pro’s two speakers.

To make up slightly for the poor built-in speaker the MacBook Air features an audio-out connector for headphones or stereo speakers but is let down by the lack of SPDIF output.

Battery

Another sore point for the MacBook Air is the battery, it has one but you can’t get it out. The battery is rated at 37-watts and Apple quotes the battery life to be five hours under certain conditions.

• Battery Test 1 - Wireless connected to 802.11g, bluetooth off, screen brightness on full. Typing in TextEdit, multiple tabs open in Safari, some sporadic iTunes playback.
• Battery Test 2 - Wireless connected to 802.11g, bluetooth off, display bright on full. Copying 15GB of files via wireless to the MacBook Air from another Mac, at same time gentle web browsing with several tabs open.
• Apple’s 5 Hour - Apple doesn’t list what they tested the MacBook Air on but quotes this figure on their website several times.

I only conducted the tests once so they’re by no means definitive but here are the results:

• Battery Test 1 - 4 hours 22 minutes
• Battery Test 2 - 2 hours 5 minutes

I wasn’t wowed by the Air’s battery life although it is respectable. There is a problem though; the MacBook Air has a sealed battery which means no swapping on the go. This isn’t helped by the fact that charging the battery takes a very long time. The low power 45w charger took up to 5 hours to charge the fully depleted battery.

The slow charging battery and the inability to swap it out really makes this a serious negative point.

CDs? Who needs ‘em?

While we’re on the path of negative lets talk about the optical drive, or lack of.

To get the MacBook Air really thin Apple removed the thickest component, the optical drive, this shocking but not necessarily negative move is made up by Apple offering two solutions. First of all a physical optical drive is available as an optional accessory, it plugs into the USB port and acts as a standard slot load drive.

Secondly Apple has introduced Remote Disc allowing applications to be installed from an optical drive in another computer over a network. The feature also allows the MacBook Air to boot off the included installation DVD.

Both solutions are decent although the USB SuperDrive will set you back $99 (£65).

Personally I very rarely use optical drive on my MacBook Pro but I can see some users will sorely miss the optical drive.

---

Remote Disc

Apart from installing software and transferring files the biggest use of an optical drive is playing CDs and DVDs, so how does Apple’s free optical drive replacement hold up?

In one word - poorly. It is quite capable of installing software and even the Mac OS X install disc can be booted over a network but CDs and DVDs are another matter. Apple openly warns that Remote Disc doesn’t support copy protected media and will display the message “The operation cannot be completed because the original item for cannot be found.”

I found that this applied to many audio CDs, almost all DVDs and even some Mac OS X compatible games.

Benchmarks

Download a PDF of the MacBook Air XBench results.

All machines were freshly booted before running Xbench. Xbench version used was 1.3.

Pros

• Very portable
• Light and thin design
• Reasonable Battery Life
• Space and Earth saving packaging
• Good wireless reception
• Large, Multi-touch trackpad
• Solid build
• Backlit keyboard

Cons

• Price
• Sluggish performance
• One USB port
• Mono speaker
• No optical drive
• No swappable battery
• Long charge times
• No built-in Firewire or Ethernet
• Remote Disc poorly implemented

Verdict

The MacBook Air is an excellent foray into the ultra-thin notebook market for Apple; but is, like most Apple products floored in its initial debut. The lack of expansion and optical drive won’t bother the business person on the go wishing to put together spreadsheets and constantly check mail but the long charging times and mediocre battery life may.

For those that buy a notebook and treat it like a desktop 70% of the time will certainly be disappointed as they’ll be carrying around a kilograms worth of accessories to make the MacBook Air fit every possible outcome.

The MacBook Air will come along leaps and bounds in its next revision but for now, those wishing to buy a MacBook Air should seriously look into their computing needs and even go to an Apple Store and try it out for an hour or so.

Related Content

• Gallery: MacBook Air Unboxing
• Gallery: MacBook Air at Macworld
• Gallery: Macworld 2008 Keynote
• Apple Unveils MacBook Air at Macworld San Francisco