Marco Arment: The new MacBook Air

After several generations of netbooks, people are still pining for optical drives for the one or two times a year you wish you had one? I'd much rather the smaller form factor and a USB key for data transfer.

"""<p>It has a few huge improvements:<p>* Much higher resolution: 1440x900, up from 1280x800. This brings it from the 13” class to the 15” class. I’ve always wanted a light 13” notebook with a 15”-class screen resolution, and Apple just released one.<p>* SSDs only. The old Air base-model’s 1.8” hard drives were unbearably slow. SSDs have always been the only sensible option for the Air, and it’s nice that they’re now the only option.<p>* Two USB ports instead of one. This matters more than you’d think.<p>* An SD-card reader (13” only). Useful if you often needed that USB port for a card reader, although this isn’t a great photo-management computer.<p>* Ports that are perpendicular to the desk and aren’t behind a flip-down door. So you can probably use any square-ended MagSafe adapter you already own to charge it without hanging the corner off the desk like with the old MacBook Air.<p>"""<p>My Lenovo x200s from like two years ago has a 12.1" 1440x900 screen, an SSD (option when I bought it, I did not, but the option was there), three USB ports (though I tried to plug in a bus-powered external drive today and the two plugs it had did not reach the spread of the ports on the laptop, thankfully it worked fine without the second plugged in), and an SD card reader. Just sayin'.

The new Airs are nice but I still don't fully get the appeal. I still have to rave about my Sony Vaio VGN-TZ390 for the ultimate portable workhorse.<p>Core 2 Duo U7700 @ 1.33Ghz, 1366x768 11.1" WXGA LCD, 128 Gig SSD, 2 Gig RAM, 2 USB, a/b/g/n WiFi, Sprint Mobile Broadband, BlueTooth, DVD±RW DL, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Firewire, V.90 Modem, VGA out, ExpressCard, Memory Stick, and SD slots, 1.3Mp Camera, Fingerprint reader, 10+ hours actual use on medium size battery, carbon fiber body, less than 1 inch thick and 2.7 pounds. Also has 'instant on' to watch DVDs, music, or photos without booting the OS.<p>It may be 2 years old but is still only 0.4 pounds heavier than the Mini-Air and 0.13 inches thicker. And it offers a LOT more features wise.

I disagree with his opinion of the MacBook Pro glass screen. I think it looks great, it's very easy to clean, and it simply doesn't scratch. It's one of the main reasons I went with a MacBook Pro.<p>Between the all-aluminum enclosure and the glass screen, you'll have a laptop that will always look almost as good as the day you bought it, and that means great things for resale value.<p>On the other hand, my original plastic MacBook looked very aged after two years of heavy use.

I bought the first generation macbook air (with SSD) when it first hit the stores and it was almost worth it just for the "wow" factor at conferences. I put it on the table at a meeting and an EA exec yelled "hey, why don't you just slam your huge elephant dick on the table?". That was worth $10 right there.<p>Anyhow I always found it to be unbearably slow - particularly when browsing to a new web server in a session. As if the dns lookup was.... thrashing somehow. I figured I was too dimwitted to figure out the problem after doing a bit of research, so it's rotting on the shelf.<p>Also, Marco is right - it's way too big to use in coach when the person in front leans back. Thankfully.... Ipad for air travel. Be curious to see what the 11" is like.

"The battery life, while not terrible, isn’t as good as a 13” or 15” MacBook Pro."<p>Actually, the battery life is measured using a more real world benchmark now. Jobs mentioned it has improved quite a bit compared to the macbook pro.

You know how Apple has been gobbling up share in the the university market over the last few years? I have a feeling the Air is going accelerate that growth and become the notebook of choice on college campuses.

"Jobs mistakenly said that the new 13” Air had more pixels than the 15”. That’s wrong: the 15” is the same by default, at 1440x900, and has a $100 option to raise it to 1680x1050. For reference, 1680x1050 is similar to many standalone 20” LCDs. ↩"<p>I think here that Jobs was referring to pixel density.

The new MBA does look fantastic, but I'm still pretty happy with my MBPro and iPad combination. I reserve the Pro for development work and intentionally keep all distracting applications and sites off of it (I block sites so I'm not tempted). I then use the iPad for travel and for most of my computing needs in the evenings or weekends such as browsing, reading, videos, games, etc. The MBA could fill the role well, but since I already have an iPad, I don't see myself switching or having both.

Why did they remove the keyboard light? That is an essential feature for me. I guess I'm gonna cling to my current MBA until it dies instead of upgrading for better hardware :(

I think the logical next step is to replace the physical keyboard part of the Macbook with an iPad, which is okay to type on, and the keyboard can go away and become one big touch surface on demand, with graphics.<p>This also introduces a new class of touch-input aware Mac apps, which Apple can channel through its new App store.

<i>Ideally I’d weigh a glass 15” on my scale to compare more fairly, but I don’t have one, and I don’t yet have the balls to walk into an Apple store with my kitchen scale.</i><p>I've walked into the Houston Galleria Apple Store with a hand truck. Sure, some smarmy guy made some comment like, "What is, this, Walmart?" but who cares? I have a bad back, FFS. Anyone who'd make a comment like that is most assuredly lamer than an empiricist who does whatever it takes.

The iPad and the Macbook Air need to basically become the same product.<p>Kind of like the tablet laptops Toshiba was shipping about 7 years ago. You open the laptop and it's a Macbook with touchscreen display and keyboard. You swivel the screen flat onto the keyboard and it's an iPad. Maybe some apps work in only one mode or the other, but your files will be available to both kinds of apps, X and iOS.

I don't seem to understand Apple's move with the huge price drop in the Air. I feel like the Air is a much better alternative to the iPad, and this causes Apple to compete with its own product.<p>People make a big deal about tablets. Personally, I don't see them as the next big thing. Do you think Apple is straying away from them, given their somewhat underwhelming sales?

If these had ethernet, I think it would be the most perfect laptop for me, ever. I'm still tempted though, but can't help think that the next Macbook Pro revision will be even more exciting.<p>Steve specifically said he saw these as the future Macbook. They have higher resolution screens than the 13 inch Macbook Pro and have flash drives standard. Also, mentioning the no optical drive as the future if I remember correctly. It makes me super excited about the next Macbook Pro, especially the 13 inch (the 15 inch and 17 inch are way to big in my opinion).

Hopefully they will further expand the new Air lineup with a 15" model boasting 1680x1050 screen (as available for the current 15" MBP). That would be the ultimate all-around Mac workstation for me.

I'd recently discovered 5Ghz wireless, which gives OK speeds to my Time Capsule, no need for ethernet - which I've been using for transferring big files, 720/1080p video.

The camera is now called a "FaceTime camera" unlike all the other Apple laptops which have "iSight camera." I wonder if there is a significance to the name change.

Does it run Linux?

Congratulations Apple! You've finally put a netbook on the market and figured out how to charge 3x for it by removing all of the USB ports and putting a better screen in it!