MacBook Air verdict: Seminal computer, five reasons

The Apple MacBook Air is a seminal computer. There I said it. I'm not going to pretend that my opinion is the final word (or anything close to it) but I will weigh in by saying it's a ground-breaking product. After using it for about two months, here's why.

(Note: I am not a Mac enthusiast. This is the first Apple I've ever owned.)

This is not a CNET review. The CNET review is here.

MacBook Air

(Credit: Apple)

1. Very thin, very light but comparatively fast. That's no mean feat. Subnotebooks I've had in the past (e.g., the Compaq Evo N400c) were thin and light but slow. Usually compromised by an ultra-slow hard disk drive (more on that below). The Air is not a speed demon but it's not slow either. (It uses a full-blown Core 2 Duo 1.8-GHz processor not a slower ultra-low-voltage processor). Granted, this is a subjective evaluation. But day-to-day subjective experience matters too.

2. Solid state drive (SSD): The SSD is revolutionary. At first, I thought the SSD was, at best, a fascinating novelty. But it has turned out to be one of the most practical, useful hardware improvements to a notebook computer since the active-matrix color liquid crystal display, in my opinion. I can't overstate enough that hard drive bottlenecks have been virtually eliminated. I could give a number of examples but here's the most salient: No disk thrashing. On my other (faster, high-end) PC notebook, lots of open applications means lots of disk activity. Which slows everything down. This has not happened on the Air. A blessing.

3. Sturdy. For a sub-one-inch-thin notebook, it feels remarkably solid. Enough said.

4. Battery life. The consensus is that the Air's battery life is bad to awful. I can only compare the battery life against the other PC notebooks I use. The Air beats them all. For what I do on the Air (a lot of open windows, occasional moderate Web development, writing), it lasts anywhere from three to five hours. In this sense, I agree with this post that says using the Air as your main, do-everything computer (which I do not do) is missing the point of what the Air is intended to be (and will result in lousy battery life).

5. Looks. You can't beat the aesthetics. The Starbucks status factor can't be ignored.

Notes. Obviously, the Air has its (well-publicized) shortcomings. I will mention three: It can get hot occasionally, the keyboard is OK but not great, and the high price is off-putting. But I will say this: for a cutting-edge, groundbreaking design, it has surprisingly few faults. (The fact that it has few ports and no optical drive has not fazed me one bit.)

Here's another take at Macworld.

[cyberDJ]

Let's give credit where credit is due.

If it weren't for Intel, there would be no Air.
This thin of a laptop would not have been possible with IBM or Motorola CPUs.

Intel is the ONLY reason Apple finally has the hardware to backup its ridiculous hype.

Apple is finally realizing what PC hobbyist have always known,
if you don't have any ass under the hood, it doesn't matter what the body looks like.

[only_truth]

You list only THREE shortcomings... you can't be serious. Let's try no optical drive, no removable battery, only one USB port, and come on, no ethernet? Everything the Macbook Air lacks the Lonovo X300 makes up for and then some.

Let me tell you something about SSDs too. They are not the end-all devices that free the demand for growth in memory storage. Research is being conducted on many new polymers that can store bits of data in polarized cells. After a few million writes on NAND flash, it will wear out. That's unacceptable for many real-life applications. NAND is not as fast as NOR, nor as cheap as SATA. There will be a day when NAND is outdated.

You called SSD a novelty... take a look at your Air and you'll see a novelty item. It's over-priced and under-functional. Sure it looks pretty, but I got over that in about 5 minutes.

[Mam00th]

Personnaly I dont really like the ultra thin look of the Macbook Air, but again this is my opinion but I find it rather strange that many people are saying that SSD is an advantage for the macbook air. Many laptops out there can have a SSD for a lot less then the 3200$ price tag for the macbook air... SSD are expensive, thats a fact but not 1300 bucks for 64 gb...

[jmpgh]

Credit for using an Intel chip to produce an ultrathin, fully functional computer is due to Apple. Isn't it the case that the other manufacturers have also been able to buy Intel chips and haven't made such excellent use of them?

[Llib Setag]

No Ethernet? Uhm...MBAIR is a road warrior jet set book.
Ethernet on a jet?
USB TO ETHERNET ADAPTOR.
No optical drive?
Uhm...WIRELESS INTERNET BUILT IN.
Movies & music can be downloaded.
Large USB Memory flash sticks instead of CD.
Install info & program before traveling.
Install info or program WIRELESSLY via PC / MAC computer optical drives with software included with AIR.
WHY would a travelor need more than one USB port?

WIRELESS + INTERNET is the power of the MBAIR.

Not for everyone, but not designed for everyone.

[jmo507]

"using the Air as your main, do-everything computer (which I do not do) is missing the point of what the Air is intended to be (and will result in lousy battery life)."

ummmm... for $3k I would be planning on using this for everything. that is quite possibly the stupidest idea I've ever heard... drop $3k on a laptop to use as my secondary device? I guess if you are pretentious enough to spend $3k to look better at starbucks, maybe you do have a $6k computer for the heavy work. ha ha ha. Let's face it, the $1800 air with the slow ipod hd is a joke, and $3k for a SSD is a joke if you can't use it for your primary computer. get the regular macbook for $999 with waaaay better stuff.

If I wanted a secondary computer, I would get an eee pc or something like that for $500, to spend $3k on something to surf the web on.