Apple MacBook Air Review

Braving long queues and hordes of Mac fans, we managed to get a first hand look at Apple’s new toys at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2008 held in San Francisco.

There was definitely something in the air at this year’s Macworld conference and like every year, Apple Computer chief executive officer Steve Jobs waited till the last minute to make his big announcement.

At the tail end of the conference, Jobs announced the MacBook Air, an ultra-portable notebook which Apple claimed is the thinnest in the world.

After getting our hands on it, we can assure you that he was not kidding, as it’s really, really slim.

On the outside, the Air looks really cool and sleek in its aluminium grey casing and it actually looks more like a sheet of metal than a notebook.

It measures 0.16 inch at the thinnest point and 0.76 inch at the thickest part, and weighs a mere 1.36kg. It is so light, that we felt like holding a plastic folder and not a fully functional notebook.

Surprisingly, despite it being so slim, the MacBook Air felt solid and durable, as the top lid of the notebook did not bend when we applied force on it.

Powerful

The Air is no slouch when it comes to performance, as users get a choice of an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz processor, and it comes standard with 2GB of memory.

We didn’t get to test the performance of the notebook, but based on the specifications, it looks like the Air can compete with the best.

The notebook ships with an 80GB hard drive – pretty small by today’s standards – but you can also opt for a 64GB solid-state drive.

Connectivity wise, the Air comes with a micro-DVI port for users to connect the notebook to other external displays via DVI, VGA, composite or S-video.

We was a little disappointed that the Air only comes with one USB port so users will have to pick between using the port to hook up external devices such as a hard disk or additional peripherals like a mouse.

The Air also has a great looking 13 inch screen that has a native resolution of 1,280 x 800pixels. We browsed through photos on the Air and we were pretty impressed at how crystal clear and bright the display was.

What was even more amazing than the display was the Air’s unique multi-touch trackpad.

The trackpad is big and spacious and was quite fun to fool around with. As we were browsing through photos in iPhoto, we could make a pinch motion to zoom in and out as we would on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Also, if a photo is not orientated the right way we could rotate it around by making a semicircle motion to turn the picture the right side up.

The new features definitely made it easier to use the notebook even without having to resort to a mouse.

Dependent

The slim form factor of the Air is amazing but Apple could only achieve this because it was willing to sacrifice a number of things, mainly an optical drive.

This may seem like a serious design flaw but fortunately Apple has come up with two solutions. One is a standalone USB powered SuperDrive optical drive that reads and burns CDs and double-layer DVDs.

The other is through the use of Remote Disc, a special utility installable on a PC or Mac that allows the Air to wirelessly access the optical drive of another computer.

There was a demo and we were quite impressed at the speed the Air was able to access the different optical drives and continuously read data off them.

Given that the Air requires external peripherals and even other computers to accomplish some things, it is safe to assume that it is intended to be a secondary computer.

All in all, the Air looks like a solid portable notebook with some rather unique features such as a multi-touch trackpad and remote wireless access to other optical drives within a network.

Apple MacBook Air on Youtube :

Apple MacBook Air Review on Youtube :

Apple MacBook Air Guided Tour on Youtube :

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