“The Apple MacBook Air is a seminal computer. There I said it. I’m not going to pretend that my opinion is the final word (or anything close to it) but I will weigh in by saying it’s a ground-breaking product. After using it for about two months, here’s why,” Brooke Crothers writes for CNET’s Crave. “(Note: I am not a Mac enthusiast. This is the first Apple [Mac] I’ve ever owned.)”
1. Very thin, very light but comparatively fast. That’s no mean feat.
2. Solid state drive (SSD): The SSD is revolutionary.
3. Sturdy. For a sub-one-inch-thin notebook, it feels remarkably solid.
4. Battery life. I can only compare the battery life against the other PC notebooks I use. The Air beats them all.
5. Looks. You can’t beat the aesthetics.
Full article here.
Great review! Hopefully, the voices of reason will continue to drown out the obtuse squealing of stupidity and cluelessness.
And from the C|Net review:
“Choosing the Air over the cheaper, faster standard 13-inch MacBook, or the comparably priced MacBook Pro, will depend on your needs. Travelers who want minimum weight, maximum screen real estate, and who live their lives via Wi-Fi hot spots, with little need for wired connectivity, will find the $1,799 starting price a reasonable investment for owning one of the world’s premier bits of high-tech eye candy. And while the MacBook Air’s specs are inferior to those found on the cheaper MacBook, they compare more favorably when you look at other ultraportables, where a price premium is always exacted. For instance, both the Sony VAIO TZ150 and Toshiba Portege R500 cost hundreds more than the MacBook Air and feature slower CPUs and half the RAM as the Air.”
SOoo … he compared the battery life against “the other PC notebooks I use” and the MBA wins?!? Are the other notebooks he uses also Ultra-lights or are their batteries nothing to brag about? Well, the SSD is better about battery use than the HD model … that could be it. Ultra-lights are generally not so much about battery life as about light weight – at nearly any cost. And battery life is often part of the price you pay.
So! I guess this is even more of a rave review than it seems at first glance. Bravo!
Still lusting.
Refreshingly enough, the reviewer gets it right.
Can you say seminal here? Gee…. I use mine for other purposes.
I think the Native American tribes of Florida deserve nothing less.
I think the SSD is revolutionary, and I can’t wait until they become mainstream. It’s hard to judge just how revolutionary from the article though, since he’s comparing the Air to a PC laptop’s hard drive thrashing, and a big part of the Air’s performance boost could be from OS X.
MDN, selective comment editing, much? How does Buster get away with a comment like that?
As for the MBA, it’s a great product and it’s finally about time that we heard from a level-headed reviewer. Here’s to hoping for more of them.
Although it’s a great, beautiful product, I don’t see a need for it. I have 15″ MBP. The weight is solid but not too heavy. I do a lot of photo editing in full-screen mode. At that, it’s painstaking on a 15-inch monitor. It would most definitely suck on a 13″ screen. If it wasn’t for the price, this would be a perfect present for my girlfriend. For the life of me, I can’t get her to switch, even though her sister has. Grrrrr!
http://www.tmsruge.com
If he has never owned a Mac, then the first thing he should have noticed was OS X.
Yeah the underpowered MBA is great toy to have lying around all those other laptops he has to review….
Oh hey isn’t that economic crunch coming…yeah looks like the computer for every occasion project will have to be held off until the next economic upswing. People can’t afford to shell out for 2 computers when they need to pay the mortgage first. They need a laptop that does not require a supplemental computer, right out of the box. This is a great concept…and once they figure out how to make a practical laptop with the MBA’s foot print more ppl will, and should, spend their precious few bucks on it.
What folks here need to understand is that they are fanatics of anything Apple does. Apple enthusiasts. If this is your hobby..yeah you need an MBA, an original iSight, a Lisa, etc. etc. I still have my message pad 1000. Real people that do have radio shows, home decorating empires, or make Apple products a hobby want a computer that is not a gadget. The MBA is a gadget right now. The next version won’t be. The first iPhone was a gadget. Now it is a real telephony platform.
We should stop paying top dollar for Apple’s beta projects.
Just my $0.02
@ Ray,
You are free to pay for HP’s or Dell’s beta products. I am sure you’ll get a good run for your money.
http://tmsruge.com
@Ray
here’s your 1¢ change for your opinion
P.S. option key is your friend
The Windows sheep keep coming over to the Mac side as if they are ringing the dinner bell at the Cupertino farm.
@Ampar
“obtuse squealing of stupidity and cluelessness.”
Did you have in mind our particular friend who has yet to appear here?
I wish I could read the review, but reversed-out type wrecks my eyes. Is it just me?
What works in print doesn’t always work on a computer monitor.
Ray, sorry your house is being foreclosed on.
Ray, you ignorant slut.
The iPhone was no beta or gadget; what an incredibly solid, useful, bug free, roll-out for such a radical, version 1.0, engineering marvel.
I buy Apple products because they deliver, not because it is my hobby. And because the products deliver, I am enthused.
You call the MBA a toy. Why? Because it focuses on the aesthetics of lightness, thinness over certain expendable features?
(Dictionary: expendable – of little significance when compared to an overall purpose, and therefore able to be abandoned)
The MBA is not just a gadget, it delivers a desirable experience, an experience that, taken as a whole, is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
The MBA delivers art. Art is not a toy.
Many real people, people who also happen to be successful, do have the money, they see past the spec sheet, and they value the synergy and the art delivered by the MBA.
The MBA is a serious product. It is a great product. It will sell. It is selling.
To mark:
He’s definitely no friend. But he’ll waddle, belch and stagger in and maintain his ultimate buffoon status by comparing the MBA to the MacBook Pro or similar laptops rather than ultraportables. He’ll never get it. He’s just that thick-headed. He’s also incredibly easy to bait. A sure sign of arrogance and blind obstinance.
And to Ray:
“The first iPhone was a gadget.”
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve read today. Use one for a few days first or STFU. The maps widget alone has helped me out of a jam more than a few times. Come back when you’ve actually used one for awhile.
I’ll see your 2¢ and raise you with common sense.
Ampar:
”Great review.”
It has already been established that Ampar, Big Al, mark, Crabs, et al. think alike and any other fanboi who thinks like them is, according to their definition, a “great mind”.
Fanboi Cothers has not compared MBA with any other Apple notebook so a prudent consumer would find his article absolutely useless when deciding which Apple notebook to purchase. Fanboi Crothers also fails to mention what other PC notebooks he owns, the age of his PCs, the types of batteries the machines use, what software was installed, etc. In other words, his article is a complete crap.
So, what do our resident fanbois rave about? What does this crappy article provide that arouses the fanboi population? Fortunately, Crothers provides his list of insipid insights:
1. Very thin, very light but comparatively fast.
Item one consists of three features. MBA is light and thin – that’s obvious. Anyone with a third grade education should be able to read the specification at http://www.apple.com. Persons interested primarily in thin, lightweight notebooks may find these two features desirable. Of course, to achieve this lightweight and thinness Apple has purposefully deleted other features such as Ethernet and Firewire connectivity that some users may find indispensable when WiFi is out of range or an additional connector is needed. “Fast” is a relative term. Faster than what, Crothers? A MBA with 1.6 GHz CPU is much faster than a G3 400 MHz notebook, but significantly slower than any other Macbook or Macbook Pro equipped with 2.1, 2.4, or 2.6 GHz CPUs, depending on the model. For those who don’t care about ultimate power, the slower MBA is adequate to perform the mundane tasks of emailing, word processing, and web browsing. The kinds of activities that most elementary school children are familiar with today.
2. Solid state drive (SSD): The SSD is revolutionary.
It also raises the cost of the MBA to over $3,000 and the SSD is also a meager 64 GB. If you have very few files to maintain the MBA is adequate to store them. If, however, you require a hard drive with greater capacity the Macbooks and Macbook Pros can be equipped with drives of 160, 200, or 250 GB, depending on the model. A common belief is that the MBA SSD is faster than most other notebooks without SSD, In fact, the Macbook Pro without SSD still boots 2.5 seconds faster than the MBA (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1288). In other words, for MBA with SSD you get a smaller hard drive than costs nearly a grand and is slower than a Santa Rosa equipped Macbook Pro. The only “revolutionary” thing about SSD is that SSD now becoming integrated into consumer products, but only with a huge financial cost in dollars per GB. The SSD does not have add any appreciable speed to the MBAs, which, as mentioned previously, contain the slowest CPUs of all notebooks in the Apple product line.
3. Sturdy. For a sub-one-inch-thin notebook, it feels remarkably solid.
MBA “feels remarkably solid”. No quantifiable data are presented regarding how robust or “sturdy” the MBA actually is. You have to believe that Crothers has some fanboi superpowers that exceed that of normal persons.
4. Battery life. I can only compare the battery life against the other PC notebooks I use. The Air beats them all.
Fanboi has failed to report the actual battery life of his machines. Crothers demonstrated that he is not a quantifiable and objective thinker by failing to provide comparable numbers. MBA beats the battery life of all “other PC notebooks” he uses, but, again, no number are offered for the reader to contemplate nor can these data be applied to other Apple notebooks. Fanboi also provides no description of his testing procedures, so you have to take on faith that his testing, observational and analytical skills were performed without bias. Fanboi conspicuously neglects to mention that to replace the battery will require the loosening and removal of 19 screws or sending MBA off to Apple. All of the other Macbooks and Macbook Pro batteries can be replaced in less than 5 seconds by the user without having to use a screw driver.
5. Looks. You can’t beat the aesthetics.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The last and most important phrase from Crothers is “Obviously, the Air has its (well-publicized) shortcomings.” However, fanboi does not list these. Why not? Only fsnboi knows for certain, but I suspect that listing MBA deficiencies would provide a list longer than that of Crothers raves.
So, how would an intelligent and thoughtful person make an objective decision which Apple notebook to purchase? Well, if they read Crothers crap they would have no real information that would give them a sense how to evaluate which notebook was best for them.
Afib,
Do you need a hug?
Did you all see number 5 on the list?
5. Looks. You can’t beat the aesthetics.
Talk about obtuse squealing, stupidity and cluelessness. “Look at me, I’m a MAC lemming and isn’t my MAC Book Air pretty?” Give me a break. That silly thing looks like a make-up compact for little girls.
Your potential. Our passion.™
To Zune Tang®:
NICE ! !
Now I miss my old, trusty TRS-80. Good times.
Well it sounds as if he’s starting to come around…
Wow, I think we should all meet at the vacant lot down the street and bring this thang to fisticuffs.
“Turn my headphones up…. What?”
What the hell can you buy with 2¢? Let’s get fid of the penny!
It probably contains 5¢ worth of copper anyway. Melt the damn things down!
Ampar:
Since you provided the following quote, I assume that it contains information you find important. Strangely, the very quote you thread repeats everything That I have bren threading.
“Choosing the Air over the cheaper, faster standard 13-inch MacBook, or the comparably priced MacBook Pro, will depend on your needs.”
That’s precisely what I have been saying. One has to make an objective decision which notebook most optimally fits their needs. To make that decision requires careful and objective comparisons between all models.
“Travelers who want minimum weight, maximum screen real estate, and who live their lives via Wi-Fi hot spots, with little need for wired connectivity, will find the $1,799 starting price a reasonable investment for owning one of the world’s premier bits of high-tech eye candy.”
Well, Ampar, WiFi is NOT always available where I travel. I need Ethernet when I am out of range. Therefore, MBA is not the ideal notebook for people for whom WiFi is a hit or miss phenomenon. Again, that’s precisely what I have been saying.
“And while the MacBook Air’s specs are inferior to those found on the cheaper MacBook, they compare more favorably when you look at other ultraportables, where a price premium is always exacted.”
Other PC notebooks CANNOT run OS X- that should be obvious even to you, Ampar. So a person who wants a notebook with OS X and has superior specs would be wise to purchase Macbook or Macbook Pro versus MBA. Again and again, that’s precisely what I have been saying.
I you find this quote intriguing you’re beginning to think like me, Ampar. In spite of your childish attitude and crass language you may actually be getting smarter by reading my threads.