Apple MacBook Air (11.6-inch) First Look Review

Apple MacBook Air

Pros

• Small, sleek and light
• Can run games in a pinch
• Best-in-class trackpad
• Full-sized keyboard

Cons

• No Ethernet networking
• No USB 3.0, no SD card slot
• No backlit keyboard

Apple MacBook Air (11.6-inch) First Look Full Review

 

This week Apple finally updated the seemingly forgotten MacBook Air line with new graphics, new looks and an entirely new model. The smallest Apple laptop ever, the new Air promises to pack notebook performance into a netbook form factor. Read on for our first thoughts.

To every season, thin, thin, thin

That’s not quite how the song goes, but it remains apt.  The new MacBook Air is thin.  It makes laptops we thought were previously thin look positively obese. Showing it around to a few other people, some didn’t realize it was a computer - not at first.  Apple claims that the device is 0.68 inches thick at the rear, tapering down to 0.11 inches thick at the front.  

That taper plays a huge role in how thin the MacBook Air feels - after all, the Adamo XPS was actually substantially thinner at its base, but didn’t taper so drastically as the Air does. So it’s true that the new MacBook feels thin, but much of it is a carefully-crafted illusion.

 

Unlike most - but not by any means all - laptops in this more portable category, the MacBook Airs (MacBooks Air?) have exceptional build quality thanks to an entirely metal construction. The only plastic to be found is on a part of the screen hinge and the four bumpers on the bottom.

 

No legacy storage

While the previous generation of MacBook Air laptops omitted an optical drive, the standard configuration still shipped with a slow hard drive.  In this iteration, solid state storage is standard across all configurations.  In an attempt to shave those few extra millimeters, Apple took the flash memory out of any requisite housing and installed it like a stick of RAM. 

 

Despite their marketing attempts otherwise, it really is just a weirdly-shaped SSD, not magical Apple storage technology. Still, having only flash-based storage means two things - one, everything feels snappy despite the relatively old processors being used and two, it allows Apple to optimize the operating system around the SSD.  

Part of this shows in the fact that Apple doesn’t want or expect users to turn the system off unless it’s absolutely necessary.  Many laptop users have gotten used to just putting their computers to sleep over the years, but few have been so blatant about the issue.  In fact, Apple is now providing a “standby time” for their laptops - it’s just the MacBook Air at this point, but it will undoubtedly spread to the rest of their offerings at some point in the future - similar to those doled out by cell phone manufacturers.  

In this case, the standby time is quoted at thirty days, meaning that if the laptop is fully charged and then unplugged and left to sleep, it can manage to go on for a whole month in sleep mode.

 

No upgrades, no sir

Part of the downside to achieving such a thin form factor is the fact that once the computer is built, that’s all she wrote.  No upgrades are really going to be possible.  The processor and memory are soldered to the main board, which makes deciding between the two and four gigabytes of system memory all the more difficult when ordering.

 

The storage seems to be inserted into a slot on the motherboard, though acquiring a compatible replacement part will likely prove difficult enough to render the attempt moot.  The fact that the MacBook Air doesn’t offer any kind of fast transfer medium makes this all the more painful.  In fact, the speediest way of getting data on or off the laptop may very well be via the built-in Wi-Fi.  

 

While a lack of USB 3.0 is lamentable, it’s also understandable.  In a form factor this tight, every chip fights for space, and these Intel chipsets don’t support USB 3.0.  On other computers that’s not so big a deal - manufacturers can drop in a third-party controller and move on, but that’s harder to do when a system has to be so controlled.

It's worth noting that although Steve Jobs kept referring to the built-in webcam as a "FaceTime camera", the spec sheet does list it as an iSight camera, instead.

Processor schmrocessor

Many have argued that the MacBook Air is outdated at launch thanks to the fact that Apple chose to go with a chip like the Core 2 Duo instead of newer options such as Intel’s ULV Core i3 processors.  Even though the processor is old by today’s standards, the notebook feels extremely snappy, buoyed no doubt by the nil-latency flash storage. 

The graphics, too, are worth noting - the NVIDIA GeForce 320M is more than capable of helping with several tasks, including video and Flash decoding, assisting the OS in drawing the user interface and even some light gaming.

 

Gaming? On an 11.6-inch ultralight? 

Oh, yeah. you betcha.  While the performance isn’t likely to beat the standard set by options like the Alienware M11x, which has slightly beefier specifications, it’s perfectly suitable for some light gaming when out and about.  Full benchmarks will have to wait for the full review, but I tossed the OS X version of Left 4 Dead 2 onto the Air and it played fine at native resolution - surprisingly enough, not every setting was at low, either. 

This is despite the fact that the resolution on the new MacBook Air is significantly higher than similar notebooks that Apple has offered in the past.  It's good to see that the company is finally realizing that they need to up their pixel densities.

Final thoughts

Obviously we’ll go further in depth in our full review - including shoehorning Windows on the Air for some comparative benchmarks with similar laptops.  It seems to be that the biggest difficulty in deciding on the Air is its price.  A thousand dollars is a lot of money for a system - even one such as this - that offers these specifications.

That issue is tempered, however, by everything else that the MacBook Air offers.  It is stunningly attractive for a consumer notebook, extremely thin, barely two pounds, snappy despite its low-powered CPU and offers a full-sized keyboard with a best-in-class multitouch trackpad.  It’s what the most vocal critics of the iPad have wanted all along - a netbook-sized Mac laptop with a full version of OS X.  

Is that enough to let it succeed?  Stay tuned for our full review and find out.