Goodbye, MacBook Pro. The New MacBook Air Is That Good.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/13-inch-macbook-air-review/

by _pius • 16 years ago

99 199 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

duck• 16 years ago

What exactly is that picture at the bottom of the article?

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

I think, from context, it's a 13.3" mba on top of a 15" mbp.

angstrom• 16 years ago

Appears to be the smaller MBA on top of the Pro.

JofArnold3• 16 years ago

Right now this device's lack of RAM is a killer (I regularly run out of 8GB on my MBP). Buuuut... when OSX 10.7 comes out with app resume functionality, opening and closing apps will be fast (thanks to the OS and the rapid drive these things carry)... so more than 4GB will not be needed for me.

So I'm thinking that iOS's desktop legacy might be a bit bigger than just weird scroll bars and a cool app launcher.

Qz2• 16 years ago

Am I crazy for still only running 2GB on my desktop?

JofArnold3• 16 years ago

Crazy, no. Amazing, yes! :)

cubicle67• 16 years ago

ha! I'm running Snow Leopard here on a 4.5 year old 32 bit (pre Core 2 Duo) iMac with 512Mb ram (double the original amount)

I'd like to get a new machine, but this one's as good as new apart from the drive which I replaced with a 1Tb one earlier this year

matwood• 16 years ago

Depends on what you use it for. I have 8GB in my MBP, but that's mainly because of VMware.

wazoox2• 16 years ago

My laptop (macbook uni 13") has 2 GB of RAM; my desktop (slackware 13.1) 768 MB... but it's showing its age, 5 years :) I mostly use the macbook as an X terminal to the desktop, actually :)

aphexairlines2• 16 years ago

That's ok, you can just add some more RAM when you nee... oh.

mironathetin2• 16 years ago

I personally want an optical drive. Am I old fashioned? I don't trust these movie and music download stuff and prefer hardware in my drawer.

For my last business trip, I quickly copied my iTunes library to my business Macbook (in a hurry, the evening before). On the remote site I switched on the audio book that I recently started and got the message: this computer is not authorized ...

Get my point?

robin_reala2• 16 years ago

Right, but are you carrying the media with you all the time? If not then a small external drive is a decent compromise - if you think you’ll need it you can chuck it in the bag as well and you can at least not take it if you think you won‘t.

mironathetin2• 16 years ago

Well, in terms of movies: you break the law, if you extract them to the harddrive.

For the rest, you are right, it is possible to carry a drive. But then we are back to the clutter on the desk that we had in the 80s and 90s and just got rid of. This is progress? Without an optical drive works only properly, if you download the data or get them on non optical media.

I would be fine though, if I could download movies and music to an external storage and the DRM would be on that storage, not on a computer. A storage with at least the same possibilities that we have with CDs and DVDs today (import to iTunes without DRM!). As long as that is not possible, the Macbook Air remains a pretty good second computer IMHO.

Qz2• 16 years ago

That's a DRM issue, not a optical drive issue. Guess who suffers from it? Not pirates...

vdm2• 16 years ago

The optical drive on Mac's is region locked, which means I use it even less than never.

Handbrake FTW

zackattack2• 16 years ago

god, disqus is so unreliable. are the comments not loading for anyone else?

bradendouglass3• 16 years ago

same here, I was excited to see the extra amount of anti Apple folks drinking haterade but, Disqus is robbing me at the very moment.

zackattack2• 16 years ago

i just wanted to comment and offer to buy the dude's laptop

confuzatron• 16 years ago

PT;MG (probably trolling;MG Siegler)

"Thanks largely to Apple themselves, we live in a world where we have digital music, photos, movies, and TV shows that take up dozens, if not hundreds of gigabytes of storage."

Ah nope. Fawning, not trolling.

He forgot to add indoor plumbing, the internal combustion engine, modern medicine, etc, to the list.

bl4k3• 16 years ago

He is so fixated and focused on Apple that off course they are responsible for everything. No other tech company exists, or is worthy, in his mind.

He demonstrates ignorance in that article, by first mistaking his personal experience with technology for the experience of everybody else in the world.

And second by mistaking his own ability to pay $200 more for an Air over a Macbook for the ability of everybody else in the world to afford the extra money.

(It reminds me of the Reagan "If I listen to Dukakis long enough" quote - except it is "If I read MG long enough, I would be convinced that Apple..")

StavrosK3• 16 years ago

Jesus, that article was ridiculous. I grew suspicious when he talked about speed being partly due to the processor, when we've all known since we got SSDs that the processor has nothing to do with UI latency (when was the last time you saw CPU usage spiking to 100% just by launching programs)?

The disk has always been the bottleneck, Apple was smart enough to put a fast disk in the Air, and now this guy praises it.

This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy. Format the MacBook Pro and it will be just as fast... Sure, the Air might be a great little computer, but for a $999 pricetag, I could get 3 netbooks instead.

joshfinnie3• 16 years ago

Add to the fact that no one is actually buying the $999 version. Every positive review I have read goes like this:

"The new MacBook Air is amazing. It starts at $999 and I have been using the top-of-the-line 13" for a week! (of course not mentioning that it costs $1,599)"

I would love to see a tech person use the $999 version and see their review. The price-point, when actually comparing the usable one, is ridiculous!

scott_s4• 16 years ago

Format the MacBook Pro and it will be just as fast...

Do you have any support for that claim?

Tyrannosaurs10• 16 years ago

> This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy.

Is this some sort of specific SSD fragmentation issue you're referring to? There are SSD issues of that type but I'd be surprised to see them in six months unless you're absolutely caning the drive.

General fragmentation wouldn't cause that sort of problem inside six months though. I've spent four years loading my MacBook with stuff (and uninstalling stuff, reinstalling stuff and so on) with no significant performance degradation. In that time I've never reinstalled the OS, never defragged or done any sort of significant maintenance other than keeping it patched and it's still basically as fast as it was on day one.

My Windows machine on the other hand...

tertius• 16 years ago

The Air has a faster SSD than his older Macbook Pro. It isn't magically faster just because it's different. We aren't in fantasy land.

If you have a faster CPU, more (of the same speed) RAM and a faster SSD then it doesn't make any sense for it to be slower. Given that both are in a 64bit environment.

There is nothing magical happening! Get a new 900MB/s SSD and it'll be faster again, then I guess you'll move back.

pclark2• 16 years ago

What specifically is wrong with that sentence?

Didn't Apple have the first music store? Doesn't apple let you rent movies or TV shows? Didn't Apple create one of the first popular MP3 Players?

icegreentea2• 16 years ago

People had multi gigabyte music and movie and TV show collections long before iTunes made it 'popular' or 'easy'. And I wager that most multi gigabyte movie and TV show collections still have nothing to do with iTunes.

Though yes, Apple did do a huge part for boosting people's music collections. But let's not even pretend for movies and TV shows. That "honour" goes to some completely different groups... cough.

krschultz• 16 years ago

The iPod makes no sense before people had multi-GB collections of music.

Why did I buy a larger clunky gen 1 iPod from Apple when I had a Windows machine? Because I had a pile of music on my computer and the flash player I had before then (a Rio?) fit about 16 songs.

And lets be honest, people have multi-GB collections of music becasue of Napster, Kazaa, and bittorrent, not because of iTunes.

zzleeper• 16 years ago

Who is this MG Siegler? Is he like Gruber but with a not-so-polished writing?

twidlit• 16 years ago

He's the other dog humping Mr. Jobs' other leg. So to speak.

mhd• 16 years ago

I think before I get an Air, I definitely need to improve my social life and/or my coffee intake. Right now, I don't have a personal need for an ultraportable. I switch desks (home, office, abroad), but for that scenario, my current MBP 17" is a pretty ideal solution. Considering that I have (or could have) external monitors at each desk, the Mac Mini probably sounds like a better solution than the MB Air.

If I ever have to attend a lot of meetings/conferences/presentations or finally find the time and money to travel the world, this looks pretty neat. Gives the Thinkpad X Series a run for its money.

bradendouglass3• 16 years ago

I love the new Air but fall into this spot as well. I have an original Uni 17 (replaced optical drive)...what Jan 09 and I adore the heft, and weight of it. Then again, I am young and if I don't need anything of power I tote along the iPad.

I love the Air but need a better reason, than current to pick one up, which is quite difficult every time I find myself playing with them in the Apple store.

Tyrannosaurs10• 16 years ago

I actually don't travel that much but the weight of lugging my current MacBook around on the occasions I do is what has sold the new MacBook Air to me.

I'm not a frequent traveller - maybe once a month - but by the time I add a laptop to all the other stuff I tend to have in a shoulder bag (not to mention the fact that I'd possibly be carrying my 16 month old daughter) and it's pushing what's practical to carry it for any sort of extended period.

When I was looking at the possibility of replacing my current 4 year old MacBook I asked myself what had irritated me about the current machine that I would change. The performance is still basically fine (I code a bit, edit a bit of video and the odd photo but nothing where the performance is really getting to me) and I came to the conclusion it was weight and start up time which means that the MacBook Air rather than a new MacBook or MacBook Pro was the logical choice.

kamechan5• 16 years ago

i have a newer 17mbp. can't say i've used the optical, but i like having it there. i would probably move towards a 15" mba if it had their 1680x1050 screen and more battery life. the 8GB ram thing doesn't really get to me tho. i do all my dev work in vim.

the thing i can't stand is how people are perceiving the dump of the optical drive as something revolutionary. a) the old macbook air didn't have one (a gripe for many) and b) neither do netbooks.

a little off-topic but one thing that really kills me about apple is how they're seemingly refusing to add a blu-ray option even though the standard is well-established. i would really like to have one in my mbp17. not just because i have a res (1920x1200) on the lappy that supports it, but because i also have a 27" panel that i hook my laptop into.

and this move towards "no optical drives" (likely so they can sell more HD content) is only going to solidify that among their lines in my assessment.

hmmmph.

jokull• 16 years ago

I guess they'd like you to buy movies in the iTunes store instead.

qjz2• 16 years ago

I thoroughly dislike optical drives, regardless of the platform, and see their demise as a good thing. In laptops, they add weight and draw excessive power. Elsewhere, only commercial manufacturing provides reliable storage, but even this is extremely vulnerable to wear and tear from heavy use. At the consumer level, I've had better luck archiving data on floppy disks than any optical media (I've yet to see a CD-RW allow reuse without data corruption). As far as I'm concerned, USB ports make built-in optical drives obsolete.

kamechan5• 16 years ago

the problem is that some movies can't be easily [legally] downloaded/distributed. take "tears of the black tiger" for example. one of the best films ever made, but nearly impossible to get from blockbuster, netflix (only recently could one watch online), or apple movie store in any other medium than DVD. how many more movies are there like this? my wife and i pick up japanese films from tokyo all the time that we can't get elsewhere.

i would wager there are plenty more films available on DVD than on downloadable format. sure the reasons for this may be stupid ... but they're reasons nonetheless [for now].

dualboot6• 16 years ago

I would hardly call BluRay a well established standard. It's the lone HD physical media for consumers at this point but most people are still using DVD.

kamechan5• 16 years ago

i meant standard in the sense that it's fully specified as a technology, and is the only large capacity optical disk in the mainstream consumer market. yes, DVD is much more prevalent.

Tyrannosaurs10• 16 years ago

The no Blu-ray is supposedly because they see Blu-ray as the mini-disc of video - that essentially most people will happily go from DVD to download without the interim step.

kamechan5• 16 years ago

this may or may not be true. it depends on the level of quality that all these folks spending thousands of dollars on high end panels/plasmas are willing to tolerate. i watch most of my films on a 27" computer display, and mostly over netflix streaming. but if i had a higher end system, no doubt i'd want to have the best quality i could get. and even on a 30Mb/s internet connection, i still can't top the quality of blu-ray.

but your analogy is well-founded. convenience usually wins. and after all, laserdiscs looked much better than their competitors and still didn't survive.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

Does this mean the price of getting an article on TC just went up ;) ?

Joking aside, it's a very nice little machine, but I could not imagine developing software on it without hooking it up to a full sized keyboard and screen which would defeat most of the purpose of owning one in the first place.

The mac Air series is so thin that when I saw one the first time I couldn't believe it was a real functional computer until they turned it on for me!

newman3142• 16 years ago

I believe the Air is supposed to have a full sized keyboard and trackpad.

cmelbye• 16 years ago

I saw one in the store, and the trackpad is at least "full sized" (compared to Macbook Pros) if not larger.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

Full size to me means separate cursor block, numpad and a key travel of more than a few mm. I am probably more partial to the keyboard I'm using than to any other aspect of my computer.

scott_s4• 16 years ago

That's actually exactly how I use my current, 13" MBP [1]. I spend about half my week on a 21" monitor with keyboard and mouse with the MB in clamshell mode, and the other half in coffee shops. I have no problems developing in either environment. (I'm a vi and command line guy, which might help.)

[1] Since it's a first-gen metallic unibody, it's technically a Macbook, but they now call this machine a Macbook Pro.

fleitz• 16 years ago

Yes, it went up, way up, now you have to buy ads on AOL.

tjogin2• 16 years ago

All MacBooks have the same size keyboard. From the 11" MacBook Air to the 17" MacBook Pro. Same size keyboard.

The size of the keyboard has never been an issue for me, IMHO it comes down to screen real estate -- which is why my last machine isn't a MacBook at all, but an iMac 27" (my iPad provides most of the portability I need).

etherael2• 16 years ago

I hate my cynicism, I wanted to be impressed and yet when I opened the article it forced me to look at the author and the rest was history.

weego• 16 years ago

I got a bit further to be fair. Infact to here:

"My i7 iMac with 8 GB of RAM takes something like 2 minutes. My i7 MacBook Pro takes at least 30-45 seconds, and it has an SSD drive."

and then realised that anything further on was a waste of my time.

Summary: man who spends more on upgrading to latest macs than I can afford to spend on IT equipment in 10 years think the Air is awesome.

modoc2• 16 years ago

A guy who's clearly into the latest and greatest hardware, and can give a good comparison against the fastest other machines out there is a waste of your time when reading a laptop review? That makes no sense. Hopefully this isn't a "he's rich so I don't care what he says" thing?

steilpass2• 16 years ago

Be sure to check this HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824563 (Ask HN: anyone using the new MacBook Air as your main development machine?)

drats4• 16 years ago

I will refer to my earlier comment on these machines, they are only worth it if you have to be, or want to be, in OS X land. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1812730

Outside of Apple PCs you can get a far better quality machine, and for my purposes a far better operating system in the form of Ubuntu. Quicksilver/Gnome-do, Safari/Chrome, Flash/Flash, nice fonts/nice fonts it's all even or Ubuntu with a slight edge until you get to apt-get which just slaughters OS X. Then there is freedom to tinker, the price difference and matching deployment/server OS. The reason apt-get is so far ahead of OS X is that OS X only has a tiny community, and for good reason considering how they have often treated it and that many of them are more focused on "striking gold" with an iPhone app. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but it's a sub-standard system with loads of tinkering instead of the "just works" experience of Linux. Good luck finding blogs/documentation/help when something goes wrong with OS X too. Perhaps Textmate/Ruby-on-Rails has first class support as a stack, but in so many other areas it's a wasteland.

I suppose I am saying that yes fair enough it's a good machine, but just because you haven't used an SSD before and/or are attached to OS X for money don't try to imply, as is usually done, that Apple is lightyears ahead. It's behind in many areas and hardly worth the hype that is attached to the release.

greyman• 16 years ago

> the "just works" experience of Linux

I am sorry to say that, but I never had such an experience (and i had to use Linux quite a lot in the past).

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

I've been carrying around laptop machines since just after the Osborne 1 and in more modern times I've had a succession of Thinkpads running DOS/Windows etc., other laptops running Linux (starting with SuSE and later using Ubuntu) and now I have a variety of MacBooks.

The overall experience on laptops with Linux was horrid. Constant problems with drivers, upgrades and miscellaneous crap. The only truly good experience has been on the Mac with OS X.

I have no trouble using all my familiar unixy tools and installing packages, but I do not spend my time with time wasting activities (oh, why doesn't the network driver work right now?(1)) and spend more on development.

Overall, the Macs have been the most efficient machines I've used.

Here's the thing: I'm not an Apple fan boy, I'm an effectiveness fan boy. The Macs win. Just last night I was programming a GSM/GPS module connected to my MacBook Pro via USB emulating a serial port. Module had to be programmed in Python and communicated with using AT commands. No problem at all using EMACS, Python, Tcl/Expect, make, etc. to get things working.

(1) The usual response to that criticism is that its the hardware manufacturer's fault if there aren't open drivers for their device. As a user who needs to get stuff done, I simply don't care. The machine needs to work. Macs do.

JofArnold3• 16 years ago

+1 and I've used Linux for about 5 years (as my main OS until when I switched to OSX last year)

drats4• 16 years ago

I used to have problems in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but then I did what Apple does with OS X and paid a little attention to the hardware and all the problems went away. Most Linux problems are people fighting against hardware, if you just pick your chipsets sensibly it all works out of the box. Beyond hardware I was simply staggered at how quickly I was up and running with a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10. Everything was in the repository, Flash, Chrome, Gnome-do, codecs... I'd have been running around for an hour or two extra trying to get the same stuff for OS X. And then on the server-side you go to just about any software project and they have the recommended ways to install "sudo apt-get install oursoftware" there, as are copious post-install setup guides. Can't say I found the same experience on OS X (10.4) when I used it for a year and a bit, it was always a clunky struggle to get things installed.

calloc5• 16 years ago

I was installing Ubuntu Linux on a older machine but with a new Nvidia graphics card and Ubuntu because of the new nouveau driver showed me a black screen while installing. I had to find a forum post on the issue only to find out that I had to edit the kernel boot parameters by adding something to the end of the boot line.

That pretty much ended that little escapade into trying to get that working... I don't want to tinker with my machines. I want to set them up and have them go for months if not years. Just set up Boxee on ArchLinux, don't plan on touching that for a long time. It does what it is supposed to do (play movies and tv shows) and that is that.

k7d• 16 years ago

Would you care to point to "far better quality machine" out there? I haven't seen one...

JoachimSchipper• 16 years ago

The linked comments points out the Thinkpad X200. I have no opinion on that laptop, but he did point out another machine.

vtail• 16 years ago

> until you get to apt-get which just slaughters OS X

So what's wrong with macports?

bradendouglass3• 16 years ago

Homebrew in my mind blows away both of these "products." Dominates macports and blows away apt-get

kenneth_reitz• 16 years ago

Macports is horrible. Homebrew, however, is incredible.

Retric• 16 years ago

You gave an example that cost's more 1150 vs 999, and weighs more. Clearly the air is not the best of all possible worlds but if your going to knock a product you might want to consider you are not the target audience. After all cost and weight are at the top of many peoples lists when it comes to laptops.

Tyrannosaurs10• 16 years ago

It also has a worse battery life which is a factor for most laptop users.

b3b0p2• 16 years ago

As others already asked, please point to a better quality machine.

Also, I have never experienced this just works experience on Linux, Ubuntu included.

alec• 16 years ago

The ThinkPad X series. The X201 is similar in size, weight, and price, but can hold a modern CPU and gets an extra several hours of battery life. You can also get mobile internet access, although I'm not sure of what type.

ThinkPad construction stands up to a whole lot, and the keyboard is fantastic. I have a five-year-old X40 that is still chugging along wonderfully - I'd like to get a new laptop, but I just can't justify it.

I have only had one issue running Linux on it: because I use Debian, the non-free wireless firmware must be downloaded separately. I have never had a problem with Ubuntu, even the early versions I tried, because they include it. Intel has put a lot of work into getting all of their stuff supported in Linux, and it shows.

I hear the Sony Z series has a similar story: similar size/weight/price, better hardware and battery life.

rufugee• 16 years ago

Absolutely agree with you. After spending time with both my Macbook Pro and my Lenovo T400s (running Ubuntu), it's the Lenovo I couldn't live without. Ubuntu is simply more developer-friendly. The only thing that OS X ever beats Ubuntu in is plugin support, and one could argue that's really not the fault of Ubuntu/Linux.

zohebv5• 16 years ago

I have been using Ubuntu in a standard VM, VirtualBox and I have to strongly disagree with the simply works statement. At first I attempted to install Ubuntu on VirtualPC and it failed thanks to a keyboard driver issue, that had been first reported 6 months before and still wasn't fixed.

I switched to VirtualBox and ever since, I have been struggling to maintain a resolution of 1650x1080 on Ubuntu, fighting with xrandr, cvt and xorg.conf all the time. Applying any kind of upgrade implies a strong possibility that my screen resolution will be set back to 800x600.

I will admit that with the latest set of patches this month, I was able to fix my resolution back from 800x600 to 1650X1080 relatively painlessly , cvt, xrandr new, xrandr add, unlike previous occasions. However, the mouse integration with th host OS broke for some reason. I might need to re-install the drivers.

A VirtualBox VM is fairly standard piece of virtual hardware and if Ubuntu can't deliver a decent experience on such a standard piece of hardware, it is hard to take statements like "it just works" seriously.

Having said that the hassle free upgrade from version to version and the ease of use of apt-get is certainly unmatched on any other platform.

zohebv5• 16 years ago

I can't believe it, I just booted my VM and the mouse driver fixed itself, but the resolution fell back to 800x600 yet again! And I hadn't even applied any patches!

vdm2• 16 years ago

I agree completely.

Installing Ubuntu server or desktop on Virtualbox/Windows was a 2-day nightmare the first time I did it (3 months ago), and reminds me of why I moved to Macs. Clearly this configuration is not being tested.

If I can't install Ubuntu on Virtualbox, there is no way in hell I am going to buy a Thinkpad for Linux instead of a Mac and hope everything will 'simply work'.

vetinari3• 16 years ago

The fighting and tinkering is your problem. You are fighting the wrong enemy.

Virtual machines have their own ideas about graphic hardware, and by default they show generic VESA to guest.

In the VMWare world, there is a "VMWare Guest Daemon", that combined with vmware driver adjusts the guest resolution according to VMWare settings (fit to window, etc).

In VirtualBox world, there should be something similar. Quick googling shows, that VBoxLinuxAdditions provides custom display driver.

Also note, that if a) you install guest tools without package manager and b) these guest tools do not support dkms (though VirtualBox should support it), then you will have rebuild kernel modules after each kernel upgrade! This may be your "integration broke for some reason, I need to re-install". Just use dkms and let the operating system worry about reinstalling drivers.

Regarding VirtualPC, it is broken in it's own, special ways. Sometimes I wonder that it works at all. Microsoft does not support other guest systems than Windows.

Tyrannosaurs10• 16 years ago

> just because you haven't used an SSD before

The article actually mentions that his MacBook Pro (which he's comparing it to) does have an SSD so this isn't really a valid criticism of the article.

qjz2• 16 years ago

I disagree. I've been (and still am) a hard core Linux user for over 10 years, installing it on almost every piece of hardware that's come my way. When it comes to laptops, Apple's offerings in the last few years have been well ahead of the pack and a joy to use. They're worth it for the hardware alone. The Air pushes the envelope further.

As for OS X, it also "just works" and has a strong community, with plenty of high-quality documentation available from multiple sources. Apt-get is brilliant, but Apple's Software Update is also outstanding, and MacPorts can rival apt-get when it comes to managing FLOSS packages.

bigfudge• 16 years ago

try brew... much more reliable than ports, and puts stuff where you want it, although not quite the coverage yet.

ugh• 16 years ago

The ThinkPad X200 looks like an absolutely marvelous machine and I’m sure that it is built like a tank as are all other ThinkPad laptops. (My first laptop was a ≈2003 15" ThinkPad and I liked it very much.)

I will probably not buy a ThinkPad or a comparable other non-Apple laptop in the next few years, though. Many people seem often puzzled by that. Isn’t the ThinkPad cheaper? Sure! Doesn’t it have comparable or better specs? Of course! Why would you …? Because I like the way a MacBook looks and feels!

While that might be a perfectly valid reason for buying the 300€ more expensive coffee table that doesn’t seem to work with computers and I honestly don’t know why. I would have no second thoughts about buying the otherwise identical but 300€ more expensive laptop just because I like how sleek it is.

This comment is in no way intended to refute anything of what you said. I can understand that some people prefer to only look at the specs and they should probably not buy any computer from Apple. I’m like that with some other things, too. It’s just to provide an additional perspective and to explain why I personally (and maybe other people) buy laptops from Apple even though competitors offer cheaper alternatives with better specs.

scott_s4• 16 years ago

Not just the hardware itself, but I prefer the OSX desktop environment. I used a Linux desktop to get work done for four years. Turns out, OSX is what I wanted all along. I develop by sshing into Linux boxes, so what's on my desk doesn't have to be Linux.

tvon• 16 years ago

You pretty much go off into lala land after you mention fonts.

Yaggo2• 16 years ago

With the current Ubuntu & your Air-like better quality machine (what's that by the way?), is it possible to have:

  1) Sleep/suspend/resume
  2) Hardware-accelerated OpenGL
  3) Compiz/fusion or whatever it's called nowadays
  4) Support for external monitor
  5) No random crashes once per week with 1-4 enabled
  6) Hardware-multiplexed sound output in all programs
  7) No two months of tinkering to get 1-6 working

I'm honestly asking this. Between 1998 and 2006, when I used various Linux laptops as my primary machine, I never had all the above issues solved. Maybe things have changed?

mitjak• 16 years ago

I have 10.10 installed on my MacBook Pro, and I can confirm the 1-5 are no longer an issue :) (resuming from sleep takes at least 2-3 times longer for me than on OS X though). I don't know enough to confirm 6, but if that is also covered then 7 should be as well.

cowmixtoo• 16 years ago

I'm running 10.10 on an ASUS 2.5 year old "gaming" laptop and a ASUS netbook and 1 - 7 seemed to be fixed. YMMV.

roadnottaken2• 16 years ago

I think #7 is the kicker.

bck2• 16 years ago

My Vaio TZ has all those things working out of the box with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, along with microphone and camera, memory card readers, and Sprint EVDO card.

I agree with you that getting Linux to work on laptops can often be frustrating, but if you check compatibility prior to purchase (Ubuntu forums are great for this), then you'll get a good idea of what to expect before you buy.

joshfinnie3• 16 years ago

I am in love with this machine (haven't bought it yet), but I can only assume it handles all your issues.

http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&produc...

You need to update to the SSD, but it still makes it below the starting point of the MBA.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

Does the new Macbook Air still have overheating issues that cause it to shutdown due to its poor thermal design? Honestly asking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Air#Issues

Hopefully things have changed.

epo2• 16 years ago

This is just ridiculous fanboyism, how old are you 13? "just works" experience of Linux? On a laptop? Really?

OSX users spend loads of time tinkering with the system? Really?

You are either completely detached from reality or a troll.

epo2• 16 years ago

Perhaps a little intemperate, for which I apologise.

runjake• 16 years ago

You should go for more conciseness. Your comment reads like a rambling rant to me. It's very hard to get your point, which seems to be "I prefer Ubuntu". :)

That said, you're right about the X200. It's an excellent machine. I had one for a while before this MBP, and after Mac OS X jumps the shark, I plan on heading back to Lenovo in the unlikely event their quality still matches the X200. I definitely prefer that hardware over the MBP.

The only thing stopping me is my current preference for Mac OS X, and I'm too busy to be screwing around with hackintoshing a Thinkpad. Great, great machines, though.

Humblecoder• 16 years ago

The article is either extreme fanboyism or trolling taken to a new level. Either way why, oh why, do we keep giving this guy clicks?

bl4k3• 16 years ago

"But for pretty much everything I’ve done this past week — basically, my regular work and play habits"

browsing Twitter and writing blog posts?

pclark2• 16 years ago

whats your point? browsing social networking sites is how most people spend their day and spare time

bl4k3• 16 years ago

it is not a fair review of the performance diff between a pro and an air

for somebody who runs a traditional dev stack (eclipse/netbeans + 2+ browsers + compiler/vm + httpd + photoshop + database +++), or a gamer, or a student, a 10 or even 5% performance delta makes a big diff.

grammaton10• 16 years ago

As opposed to what, rotating particle accelerator dumps through N-space to correlate them against standard model predictions?

What, exactly, do you think people use laptops for? If you're doing something remarkably intensive like encoding video or writing massively scalable ETL code, and you're doing it on a laptop, you have failed at computers.

hkuo• 16 years ago

I actually do video and After Effects on my Macbook Pro, as well as all of my Photoshop work with huge multi-layered files, and it flies. I have a more powerful Quad-Core tower at work, but it's only a slight improvement in speed, and being mobile with my Macbook far outweights that. In fact, there are tons of people that do video editing on the fly with Macbooks. I wouldn't dare try it with a Macbook Air.

marknutter• 16 years ago

I briefly considered selling my 13" MBP for an air, but quickly realized I could upgrade my machine to 8GB of RAM and swap in an SSD for cheap, on top of the processor being much faster than any of the Airs'. Also, I have an iPad and an 11" Air would be a bit redundant for me.

listic• 16 years ago

I hate the fact that tech companies and observers gloss over the technical details of products. On Apple's site, even in the sections labeled "Tech Specs" you cannot find the model of CPU, chipset or hard drive that goes into any of their product (except for Mac Pro, and there you don't have much choice even though I guess it should be expected with the desktop computer of such class). And the reviewers often times make no effort to find that out too! What kind of "technical" is this?

It seems to me they use Core 2 Duo SL9400 (1.87 GHz, 1066 FSB)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microproce...). Not exactly record-setting for low power, judging by 17W TDP, but when everyone is measuring battery life at mostly idle CPU, and with process enhancements over the years (I heard that later Core 2's of the same model consume less power than rated) I think they might show close to their rated battery life. I think Apple must have worked hard squeezing the unnecessary volume and weight with the new design to give place for more battery too.

cobralibre• 16 years ago

I hate the fact that tech companies and observers gloss over the technical details of products.

It's hard to expect much of tech journalism when so little of it is actually journalism. We've collectively ceded the territory formerly occupied by professional journalists to fanboys and bloggers, many of us celebrating the fact along the way.

Having said that, it's only right that Apple's marketing downplays specs, part numbers, and benchmarks (with some notable exceptions). Macs are great computers for the people who like them because of a combination of clever industrial design, polished software, and good hardware. Specs and benchmarks don't begin to tell you what it's like to use a Mac. Think qualia, not quantity.

aphexairlines2• 16 years ago

> What kind of "technical" is this?

It's not technical. It's an industry gossip blog article about a lifestyle consumer electronics company's latest product.

Kilimanjaro2• 16 years ago

The next move in Jobs' chess board is to bring the plastic macbook down to $699, in five delicious colors, as thin as the macbook air.

The perfect netbook for the masses.

Kilimanjaro2• 16 years ago

Oh, and the mac mini 'soapbar', a 3x2x1" computer as powerful as any pc desktop, for just $199.

Total world domination.

topherjaynes• 16 years ago

I'd like to know what application he is running. Yes, I'd imagine that Chrome would be faster on a fresh out of the box mac, but let's see him try to process RAW photos.

thomasfl• 16 years ago

They should measure temperature and noise when testing new laptops. In addition to disk speed and processing power, it's the most important features for me.

My 2 year old MacBookPro gets boiling hot after an hour.

glhaynes2• 16 years ago

I agree. These things have become the most important thing about a computer for most people... C2D vs i5 = I couldn't care less.

Happily, the reviews I've read of the Air have universally said that fan noise and heat are both minimal.

Encosia2• 16 years ago

I went to the local Apple store to investigate that for myself.

They had an older MBA sitting in a corner, which was hot enough on the bottom that I nearly dropped it.

The newer ones, which people had been using all day, were no warmer than my iPad gets (and significantly cooler than the iPhone tends to get).

Hard to tell about the noise. The store was too loud.

Encosia2• 16 years ago

Just to follow up on the noise, if anyone's interested (or happen to notice this followup comment at all), noise is not an issue. I received my 13" about 24 hours ago, and only heard the fan briefly while it was syncing my entire Dropbox. Otherwise, it has been absolutely silent (and not even warm).

jeebusroxors• 16 years ago

I'm not particularly an Apple guy (if anything a bit against them), but these Airs are exactly what I think a laptop should be.

I want my laptop to be small, lightweight and have a long (3-4 hour) battery life, with performance as a low priority. Netbooks are a good compromise but their limited screen size/smaller keyboard are a bit of a hassle.

They're still too pricey for my blood though. The previous Air I saw was listed at ~$1800 (USD), and even though $999 is significantly better, I can't see myself spending that much on (what would be for me) a secondary machine.

That being said - tax season is coming up. =) Is it a pain to get linux running on these things?

achompas6• 16 years ago

I've spent a bit of time with the 11" Air and, lemme tell you guys: this thing runs simple apps really well. Safari's icon bounces once, then Safari is open. iPhoto is pretty quick. Even bloated iTunes doesn't take a million years to back up an iPhone or scroll through iTMS.

Here's the problem, though: Siegler and I can't talk about intense applications. I don't know if it can't handle RAW file editing in Lightroom/PS, Starcraft II on high settings, or developing in Xcode. The benchmarks Siegler quotes show the Air is worse than the 13" Pro at handling these intense apps (Handbrake, PS, VM software). [1]

Someone cracked about how Siegler's activities consist of "blogging and scrolling through Twitter." For anyone who does that (i.e. your average college student), this thing will be great for years.

For more intense apps? I have my doubts. And the Air might be fine right now, but what about upgrading two years from now? What if system or available memory become an issue?

[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/154596/2010/10/macbookair_be...

grammaton10• 16 years ago

Photo-editing machine? For low end photo editing it's probably fine. For high end - why would you be doing that on a laptop?

Gaming? Why would you be doing that on a laptop?

Development machine? What are you developing? I think it could handle the average web developer's work load just fine. If you're writing something intensive enough that hardware is a real issue - why are you doing that on a laptop?

achompas6• 16 years ago

Because, if you're like me, you can only afford one machine? And you don't want to be chained to one desk when using it?

EDIT: sorry, you didn't downvote me.

hackermom• 16 years ago

Apple have a damned good track record on their portable strategy; very few boneheaded moves have been made. If the new Air is THAT good, you can bet your b-hind that the new MB Pro incarnation will be THAT THAT good.

djacobs2• 16 years ago

Once again, MG is blinded by his fanaticism.

My favorite line:

"This thing boots up in less than 15 seconds, ready to go. My i7 iMac with 8 GB of RAM takes something like 2 minutes."

As if RAM had anything to do with boot time.

And my Core 2 Duo boots up in less than 2 minutes, so I'm not really sure what his problem is. (If he wants fast, maybe he should try Linux.)

wazoox2• 16 years ago

My 2 years old unibody macbook 13" boots (rarely) in about 1 minute, with its old 160 GB hard drive. Maybe he shouldn't have bought a shitty SSD :)

sanj• 16 years ago

I'm surprised he cares about startup and shutdown times.

One of the lovely things about the Mac laptops is that you never have to turn them off. Close them and they go to sleep in a few seconds. Open them up and you're ready to work immediately.

The uptime on my laptops tends to be a few months.

albemuth• 16 years ago

just checked mine amesen-mac:~ alfredomesen$ uptime 9:06 up 34 days, 10:38, 6 users, load averages: 1.27 1.08 1.17

calloc5• 16 years ago

I agree with the poster that my laptop has uptimes that reach into the months generally. I can't say the same about my Windows machines.

10:11 up 36 days, 1:16, 2 users, load averages: 1.07 1.19 1.22

tjogin2• 16 years ago

Maybe it's more of an easily measured performance indicator than something he cares about.

grammaton10• 16 years ago

Business frequent flyers would tend to care about this metric - imagine yourself going through multiple iterations of "please turn off all electronics at this time" could easily get annoyed in a hurry by an overly long boot sequence.

dasil003• 16 years ago

There is not one time during an air trip when I shut my laptop down completely.

seanalltogether• 16 years ago

Wait, do you all actually shut your machine off for flights? I just close the lid.

lukeqsee• 16 years ago

Does anybody actually turn electronics off? It seems the majority of people simply leave them on sleep/locked/airplane mode.

adamsmith• 16 years ago

MG might or might not run into trouble once his SSD drive burns in / fills up, as it no doubt has on the other laptops he talks about. His comparison might be somewhat apples to oranges..

steilpass2• 16 years ago

So I've read a couple of comments the Air would be a good secondary computer. So how do you guys hook it up to lets say your iMac at home?

jbarham3• 16 years ago

For all this talk of SSDs, it's worth pointing out that you can pick up the 2.5" 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid SSD/platter drive for $130 on Amazon. Best upgrade I made to my Thinkpad, and one that is not available for the Air...

colomon• 16 years ago

I am (as I type this on a different system) in the midst of upgrading my MBP with one of these babies. :)

billjings• 16 years ago

What sort of performance do people see on the macbook air solid state storage? What sort of hardware interface does it use? I'm not seeing any non-puff reviews of this thing anywhere.

Goodbye, MacBook Pro. The New MacBook Air Is That Good.

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