Certain people in The Towerlight office have been bugging me to do a column about the MacBook Air. I told them I wouldn't, but I feel I kind of have to, if only to warn people not to buy it. Mac fans, cover your ears (or eyes), because this may sting.
For those who haven't seen the commercials everywhere, the MacBook Air's defining technical achievement is that it can fit inside a manila envelope. Its peak thickness is only about .76 inches. That's pretty cool, but that's about it. For a base price of $1,799, it's a very thin, but very underpowered laptop.
Plus, certain standard features are gone. To me, that seems like cheating.
For starters as I go down the specifications, it comes with a paltry 80 GB hard drive. Users like me will likely fill that up fairly quickly with music, video, and other random files.
The drive can be "upgraded" to a 64 GB solid-state drive (like flash memory, no moving parts, so less chance of breaking) for an extra $1,099, bringing the price tag for the Air to $3,098. Somewhere I just felt a great disturbance, as if millions of wallets suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The hard drive is the only drive in the Air. No disc drive. No joke. Disc support is provided through plugging an external drive in through the lone USB port, or using software called Remote Disc to beam content from a Mac or PC to the Air. Like to watch movies on the go? Sorry.
In fact, using Remote Disc, users can't use playback features on DVD's and CD's at all, or even import music into iTunes.
One of the few hated things about the iPod is also back to haunt the Air: the lack of a user-serviceable battery. In fact, lack of a user-serviceable anything. If the battery dies, it means a trip to the Apple Store and a fee to swap it out, whereas other laptops (even Apple's) are not as strict about that. Some of the other parts in the case are soldered down.
Oh, and there's no wired Ethernet port and only one USB port. Users wanting to plug in more than one device will have to buy all sorts of hubs and adapters and create what may be a rather unpleasant daisy chain and end up with a bulky, heavy mess with their ultra-light, ultra-thin laptop.
So that's the bad news. The good news is it does have the iSight camera, built-in Bluetooth, a decent 2 GB of RAM, and a full size keyboard. While the battery does carry that iPod curse, it does have a decent battery life, running five hours on one charge.
Ultimately, the MacBook Air is not for college students. It's for rich people with an awesome computer at home who have a few grand to blow on a new laptop for the road, not something to rely on daily. For everyone else, it is an obscene waste of money. I know I'll be taking a lot of flak from Mac fans for that, but the truth hurts.
Macs are still generally good investments, just not this one. For that, get a regular old MacBook on a student discount for $999 and up. It's much more bang for the buck.
RSS Feeds
Be the first to comment on this article!