Apple's 2010 MacBook Air (11 & 13 inch) Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 26, 2010 10:08 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Air
- Laptops
The 11
While both models are extremely light, the 11-inch MacBook Air is portable perfection. It’s the closest thing to an iPad with a keyboard (short of an iPad with an actual keyboard). I’m afraid that’s where the comparison ends. Despite what Apple would have you feel, the new MacBook Air is no more an iPad than its predecessor. The size and form factor is really nice however.
Apple won’t call it a netbook, but that’s exactly what the 11.6 inch MacBook Air is: a netbook with much better hardware. You get a full sized keyboard, an old but faster-than-Atom processor and a great screen. If you’re a writer, the 11-inch MacBook Air is the perfect tool just at an imperfect price.
While $999 is much more affordable than the previous generation MacBook Air, it’s at least $400 more than you would expect to pay for a notebook with these hardware specs. We’re talking about 2GB of memory, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU with 3MB L2 cache and an NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated graphics chipset.
Using the 11-inch MacBook Air is great. Closed it’s small enough to painlessly carry around and open it’s functional enough to get real work done on. The keyboard is mostly unchanged from the rest of Apple’s lineup.
You do make three sacrifices with the 11-inch’s keyboard: thinner function keys across the top, a not-as-tall trackpad and not as much wrist-rest area. Overall they are worthy tradeoffs as none of them impact typing speed. Despite the smaller than normal trackpad, it’s still much larger than what you get on most similarly sized notebooks from other vendors.
Build quality is of course excellent. The MacBook Air employs Apple’s unibody construction. There’s a removable plate at the bottom of the machine that covers the internals, but the typing/mousing surface is carved out of a single piece of aluminum and is solid.
The weakest link in the design is the hinge, which I feel is actually a bit looser than the hinges in other Apple notebooks. While the display is far from floppy, the hinge isn’t strong enough to keep the display from opening/closing more when faced with sudden movements of the notebook. Picking it up from a desk without closing the lid would sometimes cause the lid to tilt back . I didn’t have the problem of the lid auto closing due to gravity when I used the 11-inch Air while laying down, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that developed over time. In the quest for weight savings sacrifices have to be made. While the rest of the construction is flawless, the hinge isn’t.
The screen is an odd (for Apple) 16:9 ratio 1366 x 768 panel glossy, LED backlit panel. You don’t get the glass bezel from the standard MacBook Pro and as a result the display doesn’t seem quite as glossy. Reflections indoors were minimal at worst, but it’s not a matte screen.
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dsee15 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Great thanks. Until then as a technical site, does anyone have a sense what the faster proc and additional 2GB mem do to performance? For example, it should run 20% faster for cpu intense apps, etc.Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Well if you're spending money on any of these crapple concraptions then you are either not being productive or simply getting paid too much. Like those retired public employees who get paid 6 figure pensions for doing nothing. I dont know when that crap will stop, but I imagine it will be at around the same time apple flirts with bankruptcy.michael2k - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
They have more cash than Microsoft. So after Microsoft flirts with bankruptcy?Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
They do have a lot of cash. But I can easily see them burning up half of it buying back their own stock once it starts tanking. And the other half could be burned up by just one or two flops. And that can easily happen once most apple lovers realize we are in fact in a depression and there is just no place for a company like apple in a depression.ShepherdH - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
they just gave you more RAM and a larger hard drive at them. Same with most other Apple products.iwodo - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
When Apple gets SandyBridge, i suspect 32nm, SandyBridge 1.8Ghz could do so within the same 1.4Ghz C2D Power envelop. But will be much more powerful. The only trouble is Apple wants CPU to be CPU, not a CPU with GPU built in.khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
im not sure about that. they might just be looking for a sweet spot with CPU and GPU performance. in which case AMD's APU chips should be an intresting prospect since it gives you modern architecture on both sides in one chip.where intel took two dies and just slaped them together,AMD made it so the CPU and GPU can actualy talk to each other, also if AMD is to be beleaved this core would be retasked in the presance of another AMD card so the video chip on the CPU dosent become dead weight like the intel solution which just shuts down entirely in the presence of another card. (at least thats what i read)
personaly i think apple should get back into building there own hardware just like the g4 days. but that would require building there own OS, and seeing as mac hasent built an OS from the ground up for a long time (last time being os9? check out something called OpenStep) it might not be in there best intrest with win 7 getting so much traction and the failings of there previous Operating Systems it might not be good for the company to build something there not good at creating.
khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
actually i dont think thats the case. there looking for a balanced system, and to this day intel has not released anything that can run a modern title (that i know of) if intel had a half way descent architecture on there vid cards i could see apple using it.however as things stand intel does not have a descent processer, and thats the reason why they have to use an nvidia video card. being that these notebooks use intergrated memory i can see that apple is looking for a specific perfomance point for there systems.
with that in mind i dont see why they wouldent consider AMD's soon to releas offerings. these chips has better gpu/cpu intergration then intel's options and sports the latest DX11 video architecture AMD has. I dont think theres anything in intel's arsinal that would be able to but heads with these chips from a graphic stand point, the only rogue facter in this is the new CPU architecture, since it has to yet be released.
Speaking of which... when can we expect to see reviews of the amd APU offerings from Anand? i would love to see how well it ticks, and a review to better define what makes it so differant from the intel chips that are comming out... perhaps an architetual comparison sometime in the future???
khimera2000 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
wow... i didnt know my first post went through for this response.. sorry about that. my connection hickuped. Love the sight keep up the good work :Dblufire - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
You stated that the software restore drive is not write-protected, but Apple states that it is read-only. Who's right?http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4399
Thanks for the review!