By 4ColorTheorem -(CA)
This review is from: Apple MacBook Air MD224LL/A 11.6-Inch Laptop (OLD VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I upgraded from an MC375LL/A mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro to a MC224LL/A mid-2012 11.6" MacBook Air, and the difference is like night and day. My new MBA takes 5 - 7 seconds from pressing the power button to login screen versus about two minutes with my old MBP. The main hardware differences are: Core i5 vs. Core 2 Duo, 1600MHz vs 1067MHz RAM memory, and (very important) SSD vs. mechanical HDD secondary storage. My new MBA doesn't even feel warm when playing Civilization V whereas my old MBP became very hot within minutes, and the graphics performance is at least twice as fast. As for the ergonomics, the keyboard really is full size, and the display is not noticeably smaller than the 13" MBP, yet the 11.6" display has more pixels. Most importantly to me, my MBA weighs less than half of my old MBP. I really am very happy with this 11.6" MacBook Air.
By MWebb (Berkeley, CA)
This review is from: Apple MacBook Air MD224LL/A 11.6-Inch Laptop (OLD VERSION) (Personal Computers)
There is no "absolute" scale of greatness. In the human condition, you either get great price, or you get great gear, but both? As rare as a unicorn.
That having been said, the current iDevices and Air Books represent great value. Apple has completely transformed itself from a company that offered high design, mediocre performance, and high prices to a company that also includes high performance - and market-leading designs, not just "pretty" designs. They charge a premium price - but they also offer premium gear with a premium experience, and the ratio of "premium experience" to "premium cost" keeps getting better for us, the consumer. Look how they revolutionized the phone industry with the iPhone - before the iPhone, none of us dreamed how "smart" a "smartphone" could be.
Now, look at the Windows Ultrabooks - bald-faced MacBook Air "clones." They came out priced HIGHER than Apple Air Books for comparable specs, while still offering sub-par experiences (touchpad problems anybody? not on Airs; how about viewing angles on screens and the video quality experience? Apple 10, opposition 1). Now that prices have dropped, they still have dismal market share, and advance press on Microsoft's new "Metro" user interface for Windows 8 (coming soon) has been very negative.
Kudos to Tim Cook for the many, many years of hard work he spent turning Apple's "supply side contracting" into the power house it is today. Apple has such a lock up on future production, that what's left over for other manufacturers is priced relatively high. And margins are SO thin in the hardware world of Windows (caught between Intel's aggressive chip pricing and Microsoft's Windows licensing fees, actual hardware manufacturers are picking at bones) that the manufacturers have very limited design teams, nothing to compare to Apple, which is a design MACHINE as we all know. For that matter, Windows used to roll out the latest chips from Intel. Now its Apple.
In short, unless you absolutely, positively have to run Windows, or are still running Windows XP (you know the millions and millions of you out there!) and dread the learning curve in switching to Windows 7 (grateful that you skipped Vista altogether!), or need to buy a new netbook every few months to see if the _finally_ deliver on their early promise, just bite the bullet and buy a Mac.
And particularly if you are using this for real world stuff - hauling it to your favorite coffee shop or wifi hotspot. Using it on your lap at home.
My 11.6" MacBook Air fits in a SLIP case that looks like it was designed for an iPad! Slipped into my daypack, it feels like it isn't there! When I use it, the keyboard is FULL SIZED. If it's dark, no problem, no headlamp required to see the keyboard - it's backlighted. Wait, I don't have a lapdesk. No problem - no air vents on the bottom that I will block by placing it on my lap, and it doesn't run hot (what a concept - a laptop you can actually place ON YOUR LAP).
Here are the pluses and minuses:
+ Large enough screen for basic HD video (720p, but not 1080p; it can output 1080p to your external screen, but it can't display it all in a single glance on the smaller built in screen).
+ Large enough screen so that websites display properly when your browser is "max size" (you can even easily "full screen" it). (I recommend setting your "dock" or "app bar" to hide itself until you bump the cursor on that edge of the screen - that way you get the most of your limited screen real estate.)
+ MagSafe Connector for safety - MagSafe breaks free before dragging laptop off table.
- New design of MagSafe has problems reported by Pogue - sometimes disconnects itself during normal laptop shifting. Mine seems very tight, so tight I worry that given the light weigh of the Air and the slick feet on its bottom surface, it will get dragged of the table if someone's foot catches my power cord.
+ Slick feet on the bottom of the case let the unit slide smoothly into the snug slip case I got from Rickshaw Bags.
- Slick feet on the bottom of the case let the unit slide around on my desk, at the coffee shop on their table, at the library etc. Won't even stay put on a rubber surfaced lapdesk.
+ Ultra light bottom (keyboard) section. (The screen is light too, of course.)
- The case bottom is so light, that Apple limited the "recline angle" of the screen so it wouldn't tip the whole laptop backwards - this is a non-issue for normal height people at a desk, but if you set the laptop down on a kitchen counter you will probably want to recline the screen back further than you can, for a good review. Still very usable, but a minor niggle.
+ That solid aluminum, satin polished, machined case still impresses. One or two Ultrabooks try to duplicate it, but most throw in some plastic as well.
- That solid, satin polished case is something we all want to keep pristine, so a huge market in covers has emerged. Covers are terrible, though, they maee the Air fat, unwieldly, keep heat in, and get scratched themselves anyway. Net result: Apple will give us all OCD, or teach us to love wear marks!
- The Air case is slippery! Watch your grip! If you pick a slip case (like the looser fitting Tom Bihn) up and accidentally aim the opening down, your Air will eagerly slide out! Some have even complained about how slippery it is in the hands!
+ It now has a USB 3.0, which means an inexpensive Apple compatible USB 3.0 hard drive from Seagate, or a reformatted (not hard to do!) 3.0 hard drive from Western Digital, will produce desktop speeds when you use an external hard drive. Note that the internal SSD in the Air is EVEN FASTER, but who besides Apple runs much SSD in their units? USB 3.0 is about as good as an internal hard drive in most other makers laptops.
+ You can buy an accessory stand that turns the Air into a "docking" laptop, and if you have one of those USB 3.0 external hard drives, performance will be comparable to a Mac Mini.
- No native HDMI port or even Apple-made adapter. BUT a third party adapter is available.
+ HDMI carries sound now too, which makes the Air a potential "home theater" device.
- Type on the screen is small on an 11.6" screen.
+ You DO know that Command + and Command - are like pinch zoom and shrink and will size the text temporarily to make it easier to read?
- Yes but I like touch gestures better and wish the Air had a touch screen!
+ Yes but using the keys keeps fingerprints off the screen. Besides you have an iPad already, right? And you know iPad users are buying external keyboards in droves, right?
+ And if you don't know about it yet, Safari, Apple's default web browser (but I use Google Chrome), has an e-reader function that converts web-laid out text to a nice single column of readable text.
- Flash seems to crash both Safari and Google Chrome more frequently than in Windows.
+ The world is moving away from Flash. And blame Adobe and it's Flash complexity-nightmare, not Apple.
- Google Chrome doesn't seem as stable in Apple as in Windows. Esp. when Mountain Lion came out, Chrome got glitchy.
+ Google releases more updates to its browser than Apple releases updates to its OS X. Besides isn't Chrome still in Beta? (No, there IS a beta distribution line, but Chrome has been "stable" for a long time now).
- OS X isn't Linux.
+ No, it isn't, but it is tightly based on BSD that "other" free Unix distribution, which many uber geeks think is better. But I won't touch THAT topic.
- You can't run Linux on a Mac.
+ Actually you can, but probably not as easily as on Windows hardware. But isn't the "challenge" of installing and running Linux part of the "fun"?d Besides, see "+" above, OS X is based on BSD, but with a REAL WORKING BEAUTIFUL desktop instead of Elf (Gnome?) whose current incarnation has been cursed by the very orginator of Linux, Linus Torvaldis himself.
So in short, allowing for a slight unnecessary excursion into computer humor, the current MacBook Air is an absolutely incredible machine whose design and technology make it worth every farthing paid for it. And unlike products like the Google Nexus 7 tablet (I jut got one! and I do like it very much) if you have a customer service issue or even a Dumb Question you don't have to run an incredible Google search to find an incredibly small amount of help. You just make an online "Genius Bar" appointment at your nearest Apple store, show up, and get helped.
By Tanara - (CA)
This review is from: Apple MacBook Air MD224LL/A 11.6-Inch Laptop (OLD VERSION) (Personal Computers)
I've recently bought this product, thinking about mobility and ease of use, but have been somewhat disappointed.
Yes, the computer is fast. Very fast. It is also lightweighted, but it lacks a core feature I was expecting from such an expensive piece of hardware - a good battery life.
I have not seen my MacBook last more than two hours! Actually, it usually lasts a little less. And I'm not a heavy user - I use WiFi, navigate the web (webmail), some Word or Excel once in a while... nothing out of the ordinary...
For the price I paid (and one of the reasons I paid it was due to the promise of 5 hours of battery life) I think it was not worth it. My old Netbook (a LG X200) which I bought almost two years ago still runs over 3 hours on battery power alone.
For a traveller like me, this has not been a good experience.
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