As is my habit, over the weekend I braved the rain in order to go to the nearby Apple store, so that I might play with the new MacBook Airs:
The new 13" MacBook Air
While I'm obviously not going to do a full review, here are random list of first impressions:
The weight of the 13" MacBook Air feels about the same as the first generation machine that I have, but the 11" Air feels really light. It's still over 2lbs., but it really doesn't feel that heavy at all.
The 11" Air is tiny. It's about as small as Apple could make a laptop, but still retain a full size (ish) keyboard. The trackpad actually seems to be a bit squished vertically, but in my use I didn't notice any problems with it.
The rigidity of the new machines is amazing. You can hold either Air by just a corner, and the machine doesn't flex at all.
The new Airs fix a lot of my complaints with the previous model: two exposed USB ports (can fit bulky flash drives or other peripherals), exposed headphone jack, Magsafe connector is on the side, so it's easy to attach without having to lift the machine.
It's weird that the microphone is located on the side of the machine, as opposed to next to the camera, as it is on the previous generation Air.
Video playback performance is by far my biggest gripe with my first generation MacBook Air. It's not clear how well this works on the new machines, as Apple doesn't have Flash installed on the in-store display models. I'm hoping that this policy changes, so that I'll be able to see how well (or poorly) Hulu and YouTube perform on the new machines. Interestingly, I couldn't get YouTube to spit out an HTML5 version of any of the videos that I tried. The only video I could playback was from Apple, but Quicktime is so highly optimized for Apple's machines that the Air handled that test easily.
Just messing around in store, I was surprised by how snappy both the 13" and 11" Airs felt. Both machines had stock CPUs and RAM (sometimes Apple will bump up the specs of the demo models, but not so this time), and scrolling performance in Safari and iPhoto was just amazing. Maybe the fast NVIDIA graphics are really helping out here?
Both machines wake from sleep freakishly fast. I think part of it is perception — the LED-backlit display is nearly instant-on, which is a big help in making the machine ready to go faster.
Another niggle with the first-generation air is that it is so thin at the edges, that it actually feels sharp. This also appears to be fixed on the new Airs.
- There is still no integrated 3G option, which in light of how things work on the iPad, is a bit puzzling.
The previous models of MacBook Airs haven't exactly lit the world on fire, I think that the low price and compact nature of the 11" Air could turn this machine into a "minor hit". The amount of storage and processing power available in the 11" Air will keep it as a secondary machine for most, thus the rest of the MacBook line is safe for now. But as Apple's cloud efforts ramp up, and the need for fast local processing diminishes, we could very well be seeing the future of laptop-style computing with these new Airs.
For now, Apple has succeeded (as they always do) in making me want one. Maybe work will see fit to upgrade my first generation machine with a new 11" model? Only time will tell...
-Andy.