Brian the Education Geek writes an occasional blog with observations about life, geek stuff, politics, and just whatever strikes his fancy.
The EduGeek on Tech: MacBook Air First Impressions
I've had MacEnvy for some months now--regular readers of this blog won't be too terribly surprised by this--and I finally acted on it a couple of evenings ago. It might be more fair to say that I gave myself MacEnvy, by blogging about my impressions of the current state of the Mac. As I was writing up the advantages of a Mac (as I see them) over the current Windows experience, the idea that I really wanted a Mac became more and more real for me.
The problem, of course, wasn't on the technical end, but rather the financial one. I simply didn't have that $1600-$2500+ admission fee that's been the bane of potential Apple enthusiasts for decades. So last month when Apple announced the newest flavor of the MacBook Air at $1299 (for the 13" version), I jumped. (I can't really afford $1299, but we'll ignore that for now.) My Mac geek friend and I wound our way up I-25, amongst the still-considerable Ikea store traffic, to the Park Meadows Mac store where I scored said MacBook Air, and I thought I'd share my fist impressions of it, for all those who may be debating getting a Mac themselves.
In this writer's experience, Apple enjoys the success that they do by giving the average gadget customer what they want, how they want it. Pure and simple. Customers wanted to be able to buy digital music and movies on a computer, so Apple gave us iTunes. We wanted a way to carry said music and movies with use wherever we go, so Apple gave us the iPod. We wanted a desktop computer that was easy to set up and use, and consisted of only one simple component, so Apple gave us the iMac. We like the idea of having a laptop computer, but we wanted one that's lighter, thinner, sexier, and easier to use than the typical laptop, and Apple has given us the MacBook Air.
I'll start with the bottom line for once: the MBA is simply a better laptop than a laptop. It's like Steve Jobs had some kind of brain wave absorber, like the one Jim Carrey used in the movie Batman and Robin as The Riddler, and was thus able to read the minds of everyone who ever said to themselves, "This laptop of mine would be perfect, if only it had..." or "If only it did..." (fill in the blank). In this day and age, most people would consider a sentence like that one to be just fanboy talk, just overblown praise for the gee-whiz gadget of the month (that'll be replaced next month by the Next Big Thing). All I know is, this MBA is the laptop I've always wanted, but that nobody seemed willing to make until now.
Now, I should clarify... that MacBook Air is not new by any means. They've been around for about three and a half years, and I don't mind saying, they got off to a rough start. First-generation MBAs were often described as being slow, expensive, and prone to overheating. I remember the general consensus seemed to be that they were great for the CEO or business executive who wanted to wow all the other business executives in the board meetings with how sexy and thin and lightweight their computer was, but that "real" computer users would quickly outgrow them. Apple has been improving them ever since, and this latest iteration--for me at least--has put the MacBook Air in the running with any other laptop on the market.
Apple kept the sexy, thin, and lightweight properties of the MacBook Air, and simply added some beef to it in terms of power, performance, and connectivity. The result is a laptop that has literally everything a typical user would want from a laptop, and some things that a true power use would want, at a very reasonable price. For $1299, you get an Intel i5 processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM, a 128-gigabyte SSD hard drive, a lighted chicklet-style keyboard, an 802.11n wireless adapter, a 13" video display that's absolutely to die for in terms of contrast ratio, color representation and illumination, 2 USB ports, an SD card reader, a webcam, and a Thunderbolt port. Oh, and a multitouch trackpad that's actually big enough and sensitive enough to be usable--a rare quality in a laptop--and a power cord that features a magnetic breakaway connection, so that if you walk off with the laptop and forget to unplug it, the cord simply detaches from the laptop; nothing gets pulled loose or broken.
Now you're thinking, "Come on, how fast could an i5-powered laptop really be?" Especially at only 1.67 Ghz clock speed and a mere 3 megabytes of shared L3 cache? The answer lies in the operating system. Most computer geeks think of computer specs in terms of how fast the computer can run Windows. So the typical computer geek would scoff at specs like those mentioned above. But if you take Windows out of the equation...and all the overhead, the code bloat, and the general sophistication that goes with it...that's when the game changes. With an operating system like Mac OS 10.7, most of those system resources mentioned above actually go toward running your programs, instead of simply supporting the weight of the operating system. Here are some analogies: think of how much better your car would perform if you could reduce its weight by half. Or how much less food you'd have to eat if your body could get twice the energy from digesting it. That's what it's like to go from Windows to Mac OSX (or just about any other operating system for that matter).
Now is a Mac twice as fast as an equivalent Windows computer? No, probably not twice as fast. But when I sat down to this MacBook Air for the first time, I noticed immediately the difference in its operating-system-to-application performance curve against Windows PCs. When I run a program on this computer, it just runs. Almost instantly. No hard drive activity, no hesitation, no error messages--programs just work. It feels like a computer that was built just for me, just to do the things I want to do on it, without making me think or worry about the operating system in which those programs run. (If I want to deal with OS issues, I'll go to the office and assist any one of the dozens of my customers who need support in that area!) For a computer like this, I don't mind dropping $1299. Sure, I'd pay less for a Windows computer, but I'd get less too. Even on a Windows computer with better specs than this MacBook Air has to offer, the overall experience just wouldn't be as good. And that's from someone who sets up new computers for customers all the time.
I should mention, too, that if a Mac user has programs or needs to use external hardware devices that only work with Microsoft Windows, Apple provides a built-in method of installing Windows on the Mac. The user can then boot the computer into Windows if they need to use Windows, then boot into OSX for everything else. There's even Mac software out there that lets you run Windows inside of OSX, so you don't even need to boot into Windows to use Windows! It's not the easiest thing for a non-technical user to set up by any means, and the aforementioned MS Windows doesn't actually come with the Mac; you have to buy your own copy of Windows to install. But you do have the option, which in a very large sense gives you two computers in one.
In terms of the MacBook Air's hardware components, the SSD hard drive is probably the star of the show. SSD stands for solid-state drive, meaning that it stores files on a big memory chip instead of a magnetic disk. Getting information to and from a standard hard drive requires mechanical read-write heads that pass information to a disk platter, spinning at frightening speeds. That's a lot of moving parts that require considerable power to operate, and even at today's level of miniaturization in computer technology, hard drives are relatively large and heavy. An SSD drive can store and retrieve files faster and more efficiently, in a smaller, lighter package that's less consumptive of power. (Oh, and its also completely silent, and runs marginally cooler as well.) Coupled with OSX, the SSD in my MacBook Air gives me boot times of 7 seconds. 7 seconds! And restart times of 10-12 seconds. When restarting a PC, it can take that long just to close applications that have stopped responding to the system!
Coming in a close second to the SSD is the trackpad mouse. Why? It's the first trackpad I've encountered on a laptop that's genuinely usable in operating the computer. It isn't merely an afterthought, the way other laptop trackpads seem to be. Apple has built functionality into OSX which allows the user not only to move the mouse cursor around with the trackpad, but also to do things like switch between applications, zoom in or out, rotate an object (such as a picture), and scroll up and down (and even left and right, in some applications). The user performs multitouch gestures on the trackpad such as swiping, double-tapping, and scrolling with one finger, two fingers, three or even four. It's these gestures that give the trackpad the OS functionality mentioned above. Bottom line: the trackpad and the keyboard give the user all the control of the computer that they need, no external mouse required.
Besides the speed and the trackpad, the other thing that makes the MacBook Air such a joy to use is it's light weight. Since the dawn of the laptop age, we've all come to accept that "portable" doesn't necessarily mean "small" or "light." The first portable computer I ever used wasn't even a laptop; it was called a "suitcase" computer. It was basically a big box that contained a computer and a small monochrome monitor; one end of the box was detachable and doubled as the keyboard. At the time, people were so taken with the idea of a portable computer that they didn't even mind that it weighed even more than a full-size, fully-loaded suitcase. Nor that a good, sturdy table or desk was required just to support the thing. You had them at "portable!" And so it's gone throughout the ages; we don't even notice how big and heavy and clunky most laptops have proven, even today, because its enough for us that we can carry the computer around at all.
Enter the MacBook Air; at a mere 2.96 pounds, it's the first laptop that's portable and convenient. You can easily lift it up with one hand, and I actually find myself needing to do this all the time. At the coffee shop, for example, when I'm sitting on a couch or comfy chair with my coffee in one hand (with really no place to put it down), it's easy for me to grab the laptop out of the bag with the other hand. Or in the lounge chair at home, when I'm typing away, and suddenly there's an angry MEOW behind me, from the cat demanding attention! No problem; I one-hand the computer off to the side so that said furball can hop into my lap. These are examples of how laptop computers are used in everyday life. Maybe not how they're used by everyone, but how they're used by many of us. A laptop really only gives you value when its not only powerful and fast, but also something that you can live with, something that fits the way you operate. From my initial experience with it, that's the real benefit of the MBA over other laptops.
Of course, no laptop is perfect, and the MacBook Air is found wanting in some areas. Probably the biggest of these is in the area of connectivity, that is, the ability to plug other devices into it. For starters, there's no Ethernet network port, so the only network/Internet connectivity you have is through the 802.11n wireless component. Out of range of the wireless network? You're screwed for Internet. There's not even a PCMCIA/Expresscard slot for one of those wireless modems you get from your cell phone company that lets you use your cellular network for Internet access. Your only option is to use an outboard flavor of said modem, one that can be connected to a USB port--if you're lucky enough to find one that works with OSX. The MacBook Air has but two USB 2.0 ports and 0 USB 3.0 ports, so if you have more than two USB devices to connect, you'll have to do some juggling. Also notably absent are a VGA and a DVI port for connecting an external monitor to the MBA should that need arise. The only external video connection option you get is a Thunderbolt port.
Thunderbolt is the Next Big Thing in device connectivity (at least, if you ask Apple). It's a combination video and data protocol, and unlike USB or Firewire, it's daisy-chainable, so you can have lots of Thunderbolt devices plugged into each other yet only one of them has to be connected to the computer itself. The problem? The technology is so new that there are currently only a few T-bolt devices out there, and they aren't cheap. Yet here's Apple diving into the technology headfirst, and expecting their users to do the same. This should sound real familiar to Mac geeks, at least those who've been around a while. Remember when USB itself was in its infancy? That would be when Apple introduced the color iMacs that had only USB ports, leaving customers with PS/2 printers and mice high and dry. Same with FireWire; Apple computers have never had what you'd consider a plethora of USB ports, because FireWire was SO much faster, and customers should really just use that instead.
This points to a big complaint that many have about Apple: You can use Apple devices any way you want to, as long as it's Steve Jobs' way. You get only the amount of flexibility and connectivity in a given Apple device that Steve Jobs thinks you should get, no more. And as far as Apple is concerned, there's no reason to ever change this; they're selling products hand over fist (you can't walk into an Apple store these days when it isn't abuzz with activity) --Apple has more money on hand right now than the Unites States government for cripes sake! Remember what I said at the beginning of this article...Apple gives the people what they want, and the people have beaten a path to their door. So they don't have to care about the geek who wants to connect an external monitor to their Mac, or wants to connect a real Ethernet cable to their Mac for a faster and more solid Internet experience; Mr. Everyman doesn't need to do this, so in Apple's mind, you don't need to be doing it either. That's a corporate philosophy that has turned off many a potential Apple customer over the years, if only on general principles, to say nothing of technical ones.
Its up to each user to decide if, in this space, they want to spend the money on a Mac, but for me, the MacBook Air has been worth every penny. They say that for big-ticket items like a car or a computer, it's best to pay more and buy better, because in the long run, you'll be glad you did. So far, the MacBook Air has borne this out, in spades.
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