Apple MacBook Air

And Then There Was Air

What happens when one of the most prolific and enigmatic icons in the tech industry pulls a notebook out of a standard office envelope? Ruckus ensues, time stands still and hell freezes over...well, maybe not, but it was something to behold nonetheless. The Apple MacBook Air probably broke all kinds of records that haven't even been set yet by being the prettiest and thinnest notebook in the world measuring in at a mere 0.16-inches at its thinnest point, which puts even the slim 0.31-inch iPod touch to shame.

However, once the euphoria died down, we began looking at what the MacBook Air was actually capable of as a notebook. While it does feature decent hardware specifications for its category, the MacBook Air heavily compromises on features in an extreme case of form over function. Can the MacBook Air live solely on sex appeal alone? That's what we intended to find out when we set upon reviewing Apple's latest toy.

Since we've covered the MacBook Air's launch over at earlier this year, so you should already know the basics of what the MacBook Air offers. In this review, we'll head right into its physical aspects, usability and user experience.

If Looks Could Kill

If there's one thing that Apple can do extremely well, it is designing products that look good. The MacBook Air is undoubtedly one of the sexiest notebooks we've ever laid eyes on, and this is a sentiment we don't think anyone, even Apple haters would care to deny. Being incredibly thin and light is only part of the equation of why the MacBook Air seems so appealing. While most - if not all - notebooks share a generic trait of being rectangular and flat edged, the MacBook Air features curved edges that are responsible for its paper thin illusion. Looking around the notebook, we also found that there were no unsightly removable compartments; its silver aluminum chassis retaining a smooth single piece countenance all over.

At this point, we're sure a couple of red flags would have popped up. Firstly, there is a reason why notebooks have flat edges, and this is to accommodate the various connectivity and expansion ports. The MacBook Air, as you would have noticed from the images above, has nothing. It does feature a small flip-out connectivity panel on its right, which has all of its three connectors: One headphone jack, one USB 2.0 port and one micro DVI port that requires the use of a dongle for standard VGA/DVI connection. If you want Video Out, it's through the same port, but the Composite and S-Video adapter are separate, and optional items. That's it, there are no other connection or expansion possibilities on the MacBook Air. No FireWire, No Ethernet (No Ethernet!), No memory card reader, No ExpressCard slots even and ultimately, no optical drive.

To be fair, the MacBook Air features something called Remote Disc, which allows you to use an optical drive on a networked PC. Of course, you will still need to have permission to use the said drive (if it is not your own machine), and physical access (how are you going to put in any discs otherwise?). Remote Disc is also not a full fledged drive replacement, as there are a lot of restrictions placed on what you can do, such as ripping or burning CDs. Basically all you can do is read data CDs and install software.

Now, what happens when you're on the road, traveling, and have no network access? Apple offers two accessories to solve this problem. First there is the USB Ethernet Adapter, which allows you to connect to LAN at areas where WiFi is unavailable. Secondly, there is the proprietary external USB SuperDrive. If you're sharp, you'd have noticed that both peripherals mentioned are USB based. Problem is the MacBook Air only has one USB port! Yes we understand that not everyone needs to use both devices together. You can also get yourself a USB hub. But, in all scenarios, it just means more hassle, and a lot more baggage (mostly the little knickknacks) to carry along. We also used the word 'proprietary' to describe the SuperDrive, because even though it plugs into a standard USB port, it can only be used with the MacBook Air.

The curved design of the MacBook Air calls for a different MagSafe power adapter too, which is smaller, lighter and has an angled connection point. The MacBook Air's MagSafe adapter is cross-compatible with regular Macbooks and vice versa. However, while you can use a regular MacBook's MagSafe to charge up the Air, the downward angle of its connector means that you cannot use it in all situations, such as on a flat table top, where it will snap away.

 

On the topic of the MacBook Air's only connectivity panel, we've seen and heard of complaints that there isn't enough headroom to accommodate larger USB devices, or even some 3.5mm headphones/speaker jacks. While this may be true, we've actually had no problem utilizing the ports with our equipment. Even the large Patriot Xporter XT Boost 32GB USB flash drive managed to fit in properly. Still, for those with this issue, the only way out would be to obtain cable extenders.

The MacBook Air also doesn't have any upgradeable components. Its battery is integrated and RAM chips are soldered onto its logic board. With maybe an exception of the HDD, the specifications that you get when you buy the MacBook Air is what you'll have to live with till it dies on you.

Hands-On!

So far, we've spent quite a lot of time just going through what the MacBook Air doesn't have. But, what does it have?

The MacBook Air features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor clocked at either 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz. Technically, it is still based on the 65nm Merom core and not the newer 45nm Penryns, as evident from its 4MB L2 cache. However, you won't find these models in Intel's standard inventory because Apple commissioned Intel to custom design the MacBook Air CPUs. Compared to a standard Merom, the MacBook Air CPU is around 60% smaller, and features a 20W TDP (35W for the Merom). It also utilizes slightly lower voltage, but from what we understand, the MacBook Air CPUs are designed from the standard Merom core and not the Low Voltage or Ultra Low Voltage versions. This should give the MacBook Air some fighting spirit, but it would also mean that it would be hotter and drain power faster.

Storage options however, are very restrictive, with only a low speed 4200RPM 80GB IDE HDD or 64GB SSD to choose from. Both offer very limited storage capacities, but you do get better power savings and longer lifespan on the upside, even with the HDD option. These are about the only two configurable options available on the MacBook Air. All its other features are fixed on all models, and they include 2GB DDR2-667 memory, Intel GMA X3100 graphics, Apple AirPort Extreme 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 (EDR), an iSight webcam (VGA only mind you) and a 13.3-inch LED backlit WXGA screen.

Our review unit happens to be the 1.6GHz / 80GB HDD variant, which goes for S$2988 (US$1799). If you care to part with S$5088 (US$3098) however, you can get the 1.8GHz / 64GB SDD model. That's a ridiculous sum of S$2100 more for a minor 200MHz bump in processor speed and even smaller storage space.

Technicalities aside, the MacBook Air introduces some innovative features into the MacBook range. The most prominent being the implementation of the multi-touch interface (first seen on the iPhone and iPod touch) on its trackpad. In our tests, it was able to detect one, two and three-finger commands, including pinch, swipe and rotate movements. The accuracy level was amazing, and you can even enable or disable certain gestures if you feel that you will never use them. And believe us, a multi-touch enabled trackpad is a totally different experience. This is the first notebook we can remember using where we actually prefer the trackpad over a mouse.

The other thing you'll come to appreciate about the MacBook Air is its full-sized keyboard that covers the Air edge to edge. The keys are huge, individually spaced, and are great to type on. However, the spacing between each key needs getting used to. When we first tried blind typing on the MacBook Air, we constantly misjudged the spacing, and would either hit two keys, or the edge of one too lightly to register as a keystroke. We actually love the black/silver contrast between the keyboard and chassis as well. Unlike the silver painted plastic keys of the current generation of MacBooks, the MacBook Air is more elegant in presentation.

There is no space on the MacBook Air for speakers, so Apple hid it below the keyboard. You can just about see the speaker perforations under the 'K' and 'L' keys. Here's the kicker though, it is a mono speaker setup, and a tinny one at that, which reminds us of those small perfunctory speakers built into LCD monitors.

The best feature about the MacBook Air is its screen. Its beauty of an LED display delivers sharp, bright and crisp output. Viewing angles are excellent and it works well with images, text and movies. Like the MacBooks, you can enable the ambient light sensor to automatically adjust screen brightness as well, which helps to keep it at a comfortable level. We did notice that its brightness scaling was a little better than a MacBook Pro, being less dull at low brightness levels (50% and below).

Air Exposed

What actually makes the MacBook Air tick? That's a question we've all wanted to know since Steve Jobs pulled his envelop trick and now that we finally got our hands on an actual unit, we couldn't resist taking a peek. The MacBook Air is sealed up pretty tight, with an extremely high component integration level to deter user access and upgrades. But also because of that, it is pretty easy to open up the chassis. As it is one single aluminum piece, unscrewing the screws will remove the entire bottom panel like a car bonnet. In this section, we think we'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Air Testing

Obviously, benchmarking the MacBook Air would be a different affair from our usual Windows notebook reviews. We didn't have enough time with the MacBook Air to Boot Camp it with Windows for extended testing anyway. We were able to run some mac compatible scenarios for some performance indications. However, the only other Mac we have to compare it against is a last generation 2.2GHz MacBook Pro 15-inch (as in the Merom based ones, not the just-launched Penryn models). Due to the gap in specifications, the MacBook Pro will only serve as a gauge as to where the MacBook Air stands.

Cinebench 10

With a 600MHz gap, the MacBook Air looks pretty slow when compared to the MacBook Pro in terms of Cinbench's CPU scoring. In real time, the gap between the two notebooks was around two minutes for both single and multi-threaded tests. As for the OpenGL graphics benchmark, it is only expected that the GeForce 8600M GT on the MacBook Pro would trounce the onboard Intel GMA X3100.

H.264 Transcoding

For a real world scenario that requires some processing power, we use iTunes to compress and encode a QuickTime movie using the 'Convert Selection for iPod' option. The file chosen for compression was a 197MB H.264 encoded 1080p QuickTime Trailer of Iron Man. The MacBook Air took a 4min 06sec complete the conversion, while the MacBook Pro managed the same conversion in 3min 18sec.

DVD Battery Drain Test

For our usual DVD battery drain tests, we turn monitor brightness and audio down 50%, disable onboard features such as WiFi and Bluetooth, and power saving features to prevent the notebook from shutting down early. For the MacBook Air however, we were unable to run our usual DVD drain test because we were not supplied with a SuperDrive. Instead, we looped a standard definition Quicktime movie from the HDD. While the results are comparable, HDD looping does drain the battery faster. The MacBook Pro's results were collected from a normal DVD drain test.

Compared together, both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro were almost similarly matched. While a three hour run-time for the powerful MacBook Pro is decently impressive, the MacBook Air comes off short. This is much less than Apple's five hour claim, but we do expect battery life to last at least four hours or more with a less intensive usage model, such as surfing the net or office productivity. Still, if you look at the power consumption chart, the MacBook Air sucks less energy on average, but because of its smaller battery size (37 watt-hour) compared to the MacBook Pro (60 watt-hour), we still end up with similar battery performance overall.

Portability Index

The Portability Index is our own little algorithm intended to determine just how 'portable' a notebook is, taking into account details like weight, volume and battery life. Since the Portability Index is a universal calculation, we've also included some recent ultra-portable notebooks we've tested just to put some light as to where the MacBook Air stands as far as being the 'thinnest' notebook in the world.

From the graph below, the MacBook Air is in excellent shape as one of the highest portability ratings we've come across in quite a while. So, while it may seem that you get short changed in battery life compared to a full-fledged MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air is really a much more ideal travel companion, though it is still no match for the .

Blowing Hot Air

We have to admit, we started off this review being very skeptical about the MacBook Air. Having actually used it for a period of time, we've soften up tremendously, all thanks to Apple's impeccable sense of design, and the overall polished feel of the product as a whole. The MacBook Air is a joy to use and very easy to get hooked on. Bring it out with you and it even has powers to turn you into a mini celebrity.

However, we're still convinced that the MacBook Air is too much form and too little function to use it effectively as a full fledged notebook as is. At some point, you'll be getting withdrawal symptoms from the lack of general features that one comes to expect from a notebook, especially one that costs as much as the MacBook Air does. We're not talking about the ASUS Eee PC here, or any of the new MID and Netbook categories Intel has just released. S$3000-S$5000 is really nothing to scoff at. For just S$100 more, you can get yourself a proper 15-inch MacBook Pro. For power users, the MacBook Pro has more performance, and even for the power efficiency minded, the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air both offer almost equal battery mileage. With the recent launch the new 2008 versions of the MacBook Pro that come with Penryn core processors (6MB L2 cache), 256MB GeForce 8600M GT graphics and integrated multi-touch trackpad, the value of the MacBook Air grows ever thinner.

As you begin using the MacBook Air, the list of peripherals required to enable more functionality on the other hand, keeps growing. Depending on your usage patterns, needs and location, the single USB port will have to juggle between an external SuperDrive, Ethernet adapter, mouse and perhaps a USB HSDPA/3G adapter too. In the end, the MacBook Air begins to feel almost cumbersome to have around - just to shave 1kg off the weight from a MacBook Pro. These are the hard facts that you've got to get used to when considering the MacBook Air.

True enough, considering that Apple has the MacBook and MacBook Pro at their disposal, the MacBook Air was never designed to be in contention as a performance notebook. The MacBook Air can be likened to an A4 sized iPod touch. No removable battery, limited connections, non upgradeable components. It's almost a device, not a notebook (just that it bears a notebook form factor).

When you think about it, there are actually plenty of people with high-performance notebooks that really do nothing but surf the Net, watch a movie or two and play Solitaire. This is where the MacBook Air comes in. For a price, you can do all that, and look cooler than your PC friends (begin cue, 'I'm a Mac, you're a PC' jokes).

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