You don’t have to love Apple, or even like it, to have a deep appreciation for the new generation of MacBook Air. The two models, of 13- and 11-inches, are the most visually impressive and delightful laptops on the market.
Where Apple scores with the Air is somehow managing to cram in a good, dual-core 1.6GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD into a case that makes netbooks look lardy and ungainly. We'll stop short of calling it magical, but it certainly is quite the feat of science.
Best Desing so far
It’s all too easy to sound like an Apple fanatic when talking about the Air. But this machine is groundbreaking, and there's no one who could really argue about that. While PCs usually offer lower prices and sometimes even better performance, there's beauty in the balance that Apple has found between styling, performance and battery life.
The all-metal body is the classiest we’ve seen on any computer, and it also has the advantage of being strong and durable too. There’s a chance you won’t want a garish silver laptop, in which case Apple isn’t the manufacturer for you. We do miss the old, black, G4 laptops Apple used to make, but those days have - at least for now - gone.
The keyboard too, is distinctive and very usable for typing. It’s not perfect though, and while the island-style keys are easy to hit, they don’t have a lot of travel, and Apple’s layout is a little American-centric for our liking. Of course, we understand that the company doesn’t care if we want our @ key where it puts the quote button, but it still annoys us. And PC "switchers" are going to find this highly irritating.
The lack of a delete key might irk some - you use it more than you might think - as might the decision not to include home and end keys, or any of those other navigational buttons that you might find handy in day-to-day use.
The trackpad, on the other hand, is one of the best of any computer out there. Apple’s silky-smooth, gigantic, multi-touch surface is a huge part of the new Macs and is put to great use in the latest version of OS X.
Processing power
The MacBook Air is more powerful than you might expect for such a small laptop. But it does sometimes run out of grunt too. We noticed that when switching between spaces there was sometimes a little lag. This was never serious though, and the only way we were able to really cause a performance issue was by running video, then triggering the Mission Control interface.
Screen
The 11-inch display on the smaller Air is a real delight. It’s super-bright, and can easily been seen outdoors in direct sunlight or in other bright conditions. At its lowest setting, the backlight still pumps out enough light to work on a train, or in a normally illuminated home.
Ports
On a compact machine there is not much room for every kind of port, but the pair of USB sockets and lone Thunderbolt connection really is the most basic connectivity Apple could have offered.
If you're willing to invest though, Thunderbolt does have a lot of potential, from connecting up monitors or external hard drives. It's fast, and while the connector is less common on monitors than DVI or VGA, at least it is directly compatible - and the same connector - as DisplayPort.
Recovery
As the Air has no DVD or Blu-ray drive, recovering if something goes wrong could be a little tricky. Happily though, Apple has thought of that and come up with a pretty decent solution.
Hold down the Apple CMD key at boot, along with R and you'll end up in the recovery system. From here, you can perform a restore of the OS, and get your computer back up-and-running. We like the fact that the newly-launched iCloud service also offers you the chance to keep your photos and documents safe.
While it's fair to say that there are other, third party, solutions to these problems for all platforms Apple has done a nice job of integrating them all into one, simple to use package.
Where Apple scores with the Air is somehow managing to cram in a good, dual-core 1.6GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD into a case that makes netbooks look lardy and ungainly. We'll stop short of calling it magical, but it certainly is quite the feat of science.
Best Desing so far
It’s all too easy to sound like an Apple fanatic when talking about the Air. But this machine is groundbreaking, and there's no one who could really argue about that. While PCs usually offer lower prices and sometimes even better performance, there's beauty in the balance that Apple has found between styling, performance and battery life.
The all-metal body is the classiest we’ve seen on any computer, and it also has the advantage of being strong and durable too. There’s a chance you won’t want a garish silver laptop, in which case Apple isn’t the manufacturer for you. We do miss the old, black, G4 laptops Apple used to make, but those days have - at least for now - gone.
The keyboard too, is distinctive and very usable for typing. It’s not perfect though, and while the island-style keys are easy to hit, they don’t have a lot of travel, and Apple’s layout is a little American-centric for our liking. Of course, we understand that the company doesn’t care if we want our @ key where it puts the quote button, but it still annoys us. And PC "switchers" are going to find this highly irritating.
The lack of a delete key might irk some - you use it more than you might think - as might the decision not to include home and end keys, or any of those other navigational buttons that you might find handy in day-to-day use.
The trackpad, on the other hand, is one of the best of any computer out there. Apple’s silky-smooth, gigantic, multi-touch surface is a huge part of the new Macs and is put to great use in the latest version of OS X.
Processing power
The MacBook Air is more powerful than you might expect for such a small laptop. But it does sometimes run out of grunt too. We noticed that when switching between spaces there was sometimes a little lag. This was never serious though, and the only way we were able to really cause a performance issue was by running video, then triggering the Mission Control interface.
Screen
The 11-inch display on the smaller Air is a real delight. It’s super-bright, and can easily been seen outdoors in direct sunlight or in other bright conditions. At its lowest setting, the backlight still pumps out enough light to work on a train, or in a normally illuminated home.
Ports
On a compact machine there is not much room for every kind of port, but the pair of USB sockets and lone Thunderbolt connection really is the most basic connectivity Apple could have offered.
If you're willing to invest though, Thunderbolt does have a lot of potential, from connecting up monitors or external hard drives. It's fast, and while the connector is less common on monitors than DVI or VGA, at least it is directly compatible - and the same connector - as DisplayPort.
Recovery
As the Air has no DVD or Blu-ray drive, recovering if something goes wrong could be a little tricky. Happily though, Apple has thought of that and come up with a pretty decent solution.
Hold down the Apple CMD key at boot, along with R and you'll end up in the recovery system. From here, you can perform a restore of the OS, and get your computer back up-and-running. We like the fact that the newly-launched iCloud service also offers you the chance to keep your photos and documents safe.
While it's fair to say that there are other, third party, solutions to these problems for all platforms Apple has done a nice job of integrating them all into one, simple to use package.
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