We’ve finally got our hands on the 2011 model MacBook Air and have discovered that no matter what Apple does, it’s all part of the plan.
By Leo Stiles
When Apple first introduced the MacBook Air in 2008, many gasped at the design and cooed at the audacity of a company that thought they could get away with a notebook that didn’t include a DVD drive.
The rest of us got one taste of the poor performance and battery life and simply wrote it off as another Cupertino curio like the Apple TV, and left it at that. We also, it must be said, missed the significance of the ultra-light laptop that now looks to be where the future is all along.
The 2011 model is the perfect expression of what Apple was trying to do three years ago and what seemed like madness in 2008, now looks like the logical evolution of the laptop in an age where tablet computers are eating into a once bulletproof market.
Hitting the power button has the machine spring to life almost immediately, a feature that doesn’t sound like it is all that sexy but is magical to anyone who has waited up to two minutes or more for a Windows machineto to boot up
The new Air looks identical in most respects to the well received update from last year which shrunk the form factor down to the lightest laptop configuration we had ever seen, whilst still retaining the Apple standards of build quality and ease of use. The big additions this year are a serious amount of horsepower courtesy of Intel’s SandyBridge CPU and the forward looking addition of the proprietary high speed I/O interface, Thunderbolt.
The 11-inch model that we tested lacks the card reader of its lager 13-inch cousin but its hardly a deal breaker. Two USB posts, a standard webcam (no HD) and a headphone jack rounds out the external features while the native resolution of the screen coming in at 1366×76 – perfect for viewing HD graphics and video.
Hitting the power button has the machine spring to life almost immediately, a feature that doesn’t sound like it is all that sexy but is magical to anyone who has waited up to two minutes or more for a Windows machineto to boot up. Again this speed is wholly attributable to the use of SSD for storage rather than your usual hard drive configuration.
The machine is pre-loaded with the shiny new OSX Lion operating system and from the get-go, it’s obvious that the MacBook Air was designed with Lion in mind. Everything from finding and launching apps to navigating web pages can be done using the fantastic multi-touch trackpad. Navigating is intuitive and a joy thanks to his feature and along with the reintroduction of a backlit keyboard, makes the experience of using a laptop a fresh and efficient once more. Many apps now run in a full-screen mode which makes up for the small display size and switching between then is a simple three fingered swipe of the track pad.
The keyboard itself is the standard Apple affair but we have yet to use a better one with the keys superbly placed and with an excellent springy feel that isn’t at all cramped – no mean feat in a machine of this size.
Power to the people
Even with all the bells and whistles, if Apple hadn’t addressed the line’s serious performance deficiencies then this review would be nosediving now but the introduction of Intel’s multicore processors has dramatically improved the Air.
Everything is fast from opening applications to multitasking and even with Photoshop and InDesign CS5 running together with Pages and an HD video, the Air barely missed a beat. Full 1080p resolution movies are also handled with ease and the only time that we saw the Air struggle was with games and Final Cut X.
This is down to the fact that the Air now comes with Intel’s integrated graphics solution rather than the dedicated GPUs of older models, something that puts the MacBook Air out in the cold as far as gaming goes. This is less important than you might think because like everything Apple, the Air comes with a premium price and if you are thinking of dropping a grand on a laptop for games then there are a number of laptops out there that would give you a lot more bang for your buck.
High end application users might want to plump for the MacBook Pro if you are looking for a proper content creation machine. For everyone else the performance of the Air is perfect and a real step up for the traditional MacBook line that the Airs have now replaced.
One step back and two forward
Before we get to the verdict, we have to touch on the biggest new hardware feature and the biggest hardware omission.
The inclusion of the Thunderbolt port is a welcome addition to a machine which lacks an optical drive and there is no doubt that the high speed port will come into its own in time but the scarcity of peripherals that support the I/O is frustrating and the ones that do exist are horrendously expensive.
If I had to point out some negatives, then it would be the battery life and the price
The continuing lack of a DVD drive is now, no longer an odd design decision as the machine owes much of its design excellence and some of its performance to the omission of the once standard feature. Truth be told, I never really used my laptop for DVDs and I haven’t once felt the lack of the drive. While I understand that not everyone will feel this way, I would point to the the launch of the Mac App Store which now seems like it was built for an optical drive-less future more than an imitation of the iOS ecosystem. Apps are now accessible immediately and are kept up to date within the App store. As for viewing DVDs? Well, it’s hard to make a case for them in a digital world of downloadable and higher definition alternatives but if you have to have it, there is always the option to spend €79 on an external Super Drive.
If I had to point out some negatives, then it would be the battery life and the price. The battery lasts an average of three hours, less if using heavy applications and this is a strange way for the Air to trip up as highly portable power would seem to be its biggest selling point. Whichever way you want to cut it, the fact remains that if you are bringing the Air on a journey longer than four hours, you’re going to need a power source.
Price is the eternal Apple product gripe and even with the unbeatable build quality, we all know that the margin on these machines for Apple is massive. But it’s not like there is an alternative to compare it to yet as the nearest Windows based alternative are slated to emerge early in 2012 and reports seem to indicate that manufacturers are struggling to price these new ultra-portables beneath the level Apple is charging for the MacBook Air.
Verdict
MacBooks have always been a pleasure to use and without wanting to delve deep into fanboy territory, I’d say that this is most exciting laptop I’ve used in a long time – and I’ve traditionally been a Windows man. The speed, the performance, the ease of use and the sheer size of the machine all feed into an excellent piece of technology and at long last I finally get the idea of the ultra-light laptop, because the world has finally caught up with it – me included.
The MacBook Air is available from authorised Apple resellers and the Apple Store. Prices start from €999.
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