These days, $1,000 buys a lot of computer, or maybe very little. From Apple, your thousand bucks will get you a sliver of aluminum so thin you could lose it among the papers in your briefcase. The company’s newest MacBook Air is as sleek a laptop as I’ve ever seen. At less than 3 pounds and two-thirds of an inch at its thickest, it’s
even trimmer than the original version of two years ago.
even trimmer than the original version of two years ago.
Like the low-cost netbooks that have sold so well in recent years, the MacBook Air has been stripped of certain luxuries, such as the DVD drive and the Ethernet port. Instead, Apple has stuffed the luxury items under the hood — a more powerful processor, a superthin LCD screen, a glass touchpad with multitouch controls, solid state flash memory instead of a noisy, power-chomping hard drive, and a whole lot of batteries. The result reminds me of a classic British sports car: not the fastest thing out there, but nimble and a pleasure to use.
Apple lent me the 11-inch MacBook Air, which sells for $999 and comes with 64 gigabytes of data storage; you’d pay $1,199 for 128 gigs. A traditional hard drive could hold a lot more data at lower cost, but how much does a laptop user really need? Besides, Apple says it’s the use of flash that enables the MacBook Air to boot up so quickly. Apple engineers were aiming for the kind of quick response they’ve built into the iPad tablet computer, and they’ve just about managed it. The Mac operating system fired up in less than 20 seconds. The Air doesn’t do badly with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 7, either. It was easy to install a
copy on the Air, and then launch it in about 30 seconds.
copy on the Air, and then launch it in about 30 seconds.
Low-end PC netbooks generally run Intel Corp.’s Atom processor, but Apple went for the beefier Intel Core 2 Duo running at 1.4 gigahertz. Still, this is far from state of the art. The entry-level standard MacBook, much thicker and heavier than the Air, also costs $999, but features a 2.4-gigahertz processor. Not to worry — the Air’s got plenty of power for everyday tasks.
Instead of the cheap “integrated graphics’’ processors found on budget machines, Apple went with a higher-quality graphics chip from Nvidia Corp.However, the chip shares the same memory as the main processor, so you won’t get world-class performance. I saw this for myself by running Windows 7 on the Mac and playing the high-end video game Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The graphics looked decent, but moving images were often halting and
jerky enough to get me killed in a few gun battles.
jerky enough to get me killed in a few gun battles.
You probably saw the report this week that heat from laptops could pose health risks for male users. If so, the MacBook Air is a computer for real men, and does not get nearly as hot as many other machines. Its full-size keyboard makes for comfortable typing, too. And you’ve got to like the touchpad-mouse. Apple has hidden the mouse buttons below a touchpad that flexes when you push it.
It’s also got the same multitouch capability found on the iPhone. To enlarge or shrink a Web page, just “pinch’’ the touchpad with forefinger and thumb.
Apple boasts that it shrank all the Air’s electronics onto a tiny motherboard, and filled the rest of its aluminum case with rechargeable batteries. The company claims you should see about seven hours of ordinary use. Sounds plausible. I got about five out of it, including a lot of data transfers through the Wi-Fi networking chip, which tends to drain batteries. I also tried streaming movies via Netflix, again using Wi-Fi. Even at high resolution, the show went on for a respectable three hours.
Of course, the Air’s minimalist styling imposes the usual nuisances. It’s harder to install software without a DVD drive, or hook up to a corporate network without Ethernet. Instead of a VGA port for attaching a large monitor or video projector, you get a jack that uses the newer Mini DisplayPort standard. You’ll need a special adapter to connect older video gear. And shouldn’t there be a place to insert SD memory cards, or an HDMI port for plugging the Air into a high-def television?
Well, maybe not. Most of us would want every conceivable option for our thousand bucks. But if you spend the money on a MacBook Air, you’ll get perhaps the best option of all: simplicity.
Article Thanks To: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/11/11/macbook_air_breathes_new_life_into_laptop_design/
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