Product Notes: Apple MacBook Air

January 15th, 2008

On January 15th, 2008, Apple introduced the MacBook Air, the first of a new notebook line. The MacBook Air is Apple's first true lightweight notebook since the PowerBook G4 12-inch and their first serious entry into this market since 1997's PowerBook 2400c. With its 3.0 pound minimum weight, it has the potential to meet the needs of many of the University's Mac OS-based 'road warriors', most especially those that do not use many peripherals.

Design

The MacBook Air is an extremely thin 'no-spindle' (with the solid state drive) or single-spindle (with the hard disk drive) 13-inch widescreen notebook designed to run Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. It uses low-voltage (LV) Core 2 Duo processors running at 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz.

The 13-inch display is the same general specification as that on the MacBook. For input, the MacBook Air includes an oversized multi-touch trackpad which supports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities. This gesture-based input resembles that of the iPhone.

The MacBook Air includes many features of Intel's Santa Rosa chipset, but is the first Mac for many years not to include at least one FireWire port. It is also the only current Mac without an integrated optical drive (an external 'SuperDrive' is optional). The MacBook Air also displays Apple's sometime predilection for closed design - the RAM is not user-upgradable and the battery is not user replaceable.

Like all other current Apple notebooks, the MacBook Air has received a Silver rating from EPEAT and is Energy Star 4.0-certified.

Pros

• Highly competitive 3.0 pound weight for a 13.3-inch notebook
• Availability of solid-state drive
• Support for multi-touch gestures on trackpad
• It's a lightweight Mac

Cons

• Late to market
• No FireWire
• Still no on-board cellular option
• Battery is not user accessible
• Many capabilities (Ethernet, modem, etc.) require USB converters
• Not a Pro model in general, though priced close to one

Configuration & Ordering Notes

Several notes when ordering a MacBook Air:

1. The MacBook Air is available with Intel's current low-voltage Core 2 Duo processors. Information Systems & Computing (ISC) sees either the 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz processor as an acceptable choice - the 1.8 GHz system will be approximately 6% faster.
2. Though the 64 GB solid state drive is expensive at $900 over the 80 GB hard disk drive, this a competitive price at this time. ISC expects solid state drive prices to drop by 30% to 50% over the next twelve months.
3. ISC strongly recommends choosing AppleCare when purchasing a MacBook Air.

See ISC's Notebook Purchasing Guide for more configuration hints. As of January 2008, configuring a MacBook Air to the Lightweight Notebook specification can be done for approximately $2,000.

Analysis

Apple has built somewhat of a 'tweener' here, pulling the optical drive out, but retaining a 13-inch screen from the MacBook. They've also pulled much of the connectivity that many professional users need, which is probably one reason this isn't the MacBook Pro 13-inch.

Apple is not the first to bring good and interesting current design to the lightweight notebook market. In particular, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba all have competive offerings in this market and some of them, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 and the Toshiba Portégé R500, do not make nearly as many compromises as the MacBook Air does.

ISC sees the MacBook Air as being an interesting and competitive choice among lightweight notbooks available in early 2008. ISC will be following up with a full review of this product as soon as it has completed testing.

--John Mulhern III, Senior Project Leader, ISC Technology Support Services (January 15th, 2008)