Since it’s release in 2008, the MacBook Air has been a trendsetting, market leading device. While current field of ultra-portable laptops has grown quite crowded, Apple’s now 3-year old MacBook Air is still a force to be reckoned with.
For 2011 Apple ups the ante and proves that they can still pack performance into the smallest of spaces. Hop on past the break for Gadgetsteria’s full review of the 2011 13″ MacBook Air…
Design
It’s designed by Apple. It’s sexy in every way. We could stop right there and most people would get the idea. But for those who need a bit more description…
Ranging from 0.11″ at its thinnest point to a mere 0.68″ at its thickest, the 2011 13″ MacBook Air retains the same overall size and form factor of the previous generation (2010) MacBook Air. While some might discredit Apple for keeping with a now 1+ year design, we’re hard pressed to find a competing laptop that’s both as thin (or thinner), as powerful, and as well designed. Let us not forget build quality either. Competitors may hit a couple of these check boxes, but the finished product often leaves much to be desired.
Along with the MacBook Air in 2008, Apple introduced the new unibody MacBook casing built entirely out of aluminum. In the new MacBook Air, this solid piece of aluminum gives the laptop a feeling of strength that doesn’t exhibit an ounce of flex, all while keeping the scale not a tick more over 3.0 lbs. Considering the power Apple has packed within, the design is quite stunning.
On the right side you’ll find the newly established Thunderbolt port, a single USB port, and standard SD card slot. On the opposite side sits the Magsafe power port, additional USB port — thank god for USB ports not sitting next to each other! — and 3.5mm headphone jack. Focusing on the Thunderbolt port for a moment, we’re pleased to report the miniDisplay Port-to-DVI adapter that worked on previous generations of unibody MacBook Air still works wonderfully on the new Thunderbolt-equipped 2011 MacBook Air. While many would automatically assume the aforementioned outcome given the same miniDisplay port base, Apple has a habit of changing up the pins of plugs to make them incompatible across generations. (Remember the previous generations of iPod and iPod accessories losing compatibility through the years?)
Moving on — once you open up the sexy piece of gadgetry that is the 13″ Air and you’ll find the standard black “island” keyboard and large, glass multi-touch trackpad. Seeing as how space is at a premium on the MacBook Air, the power button is built into the keyboard as a dedicated key.
Speaking of the keyboard, we made the 2nd generation MacBook Air our first venture into Apple’s ultra-portable line, and ultimately gave up only a week in. The lack of backlit keys may seem like a rather silly and insignificant reason to return a laptop and move on to greener pastures, but if you write in the dark as much as we do, you’ll live and die by said backlighting. Thankfully what Apple taketh Apple hath returned. Like the first-gen MacBook Air, the 2011 (3rd-gen) MacBook Air once again features keyboard backlighting. Productivity has returned to GS headquarters after dark.
Tech Specs, Hardware & Sandy Bridge
Apple stunned quite a few people (ourselves included) when they chose to stick with the Core 2 Duo platform for another year with the second generation MacBook Air. Apple spun it as a battery life vs. performance issue and that the then at the time 1st-gen Core i5/i7 platform wasn’t efficient enough to meet Apple’s strict standards for the Air line. That all changes with second generation Core i5 (Sandy Bridge).
Since Sandy Bridge was released in early 2011, the platform has garnered widespread praise for its efficiency and power — two things that the MacBook Air benefits very well from. To put it into perspective how awesome the new Sandy Bridge powered MacBook Airs are, we need only mention the growing list of Geek Bench benchmarks that show the 1.7 GHz 13″ MacBook Air is as powerful as the 2010 Core i7 MacBook Pro — which uses a full-voltage processors as opposed to the Air’s low voltage variant. Even the 11″ MacBook Air with its slightly slower 1.6 GHz Core i5 processor comes close to besting 2010 MacBook Pros — impressive. The smaller overall size of the Sandy Bridge hardware has revitalized Apple’s ultra-portable Air range and given us new hopes for future generations.
Like the previous generations, both the 11.6″ and 13.3″ Airs have the same 1366 x 768 and 1440 x 900 screen resolutions. And just like the previous generations, the screen quality is crisp, clean and easy to use. SSD sizes remain the same 64 GB/128 GB/256 GB options. Though its worth noting only the base 11.6″ Air uses the 64 GB SSD. An upgrade can be ordered that bumps space up to 128 GB while the 13.3″ MacBook Airs now start at 128 GB with a similar upgrade option to 256 GB.
OS X Lion is Apple’s best looking and most demanding OS yet. Because of that, all but the entry-level 11″ MacBook Air feature a minimum of 4 GB of RAM — the aforementioned still trudges along with 2 GB. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t offer an option to upgrade to 8 GB of RAM. And because the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, user upgrades are out of the question. Though considering the integrated Intel graphics, any possible scenarios where 4+ GB of RAM would be utilized are unlikely given the meager GPU offerings.
We’d love to tell you how amazing Thunderbolt transfer speeds are. Only problem is, we don’t actually have any Thunderbolt capable hard drives in house. In our own defense, few people do as the 3rd party accessory manufacturers have yet to pump out Thunderbolt accessories in any meaningful numbers. But even then, the potential performance once accessories do arrive is enough to make us drool — as is the ability to daisy chain monitors and hardware.
OS X Lion & The MacBook Air
If you believe the rumors that have been voiced over the past few months — and we’re sure you’ve at least heard of them a time or two — Apple had the new MacBook Air hardware “ready to go” many weeks before their July 22nd release, but it was OS X Lion that was holding up the train. Apple wanted to make sure as many people as possible had the latest software. The alternate scenario of releasing MacBook Air hardware several weeks ago would have meant end users would have to pay and download a ~ 4 GB file. For a lot of the people that frequent GS, finding the bandwidth and/or time isn’t very difficult. For the larger population as a whole, however, it’s an unnecessary burden.
With that said, Apple chose the MacBook Air to showcase their latest version of OS X — OS X Lion — and what a showcase it is.
Lion is all about blending the traditional desktop experience with that of iOS’ mobile methods. And while we’ve seen plenty of comments/reviews both for and against Apple’s new direction, we can honestly say they nailed it. The MacBook Air’s feather light package combined with large multi-touch trackpad and now even more capable OS is a perfect trifecta that is the pinnacle example of good design, software implementation, and marketing.
OS X Lion relies on multi-touch gestures more than ever. While two-, three-, and four-finger swiping our way around, we found it readily apparent that Lion (and to a lesser degree, the new MacBook Air) makes using and navigating OS X faster and more intuitive. On that same note, we’re finding OS X Lion on non-trackpad Macs isn’t quite the same experience.
For example, because OS X Lion makes use of even more multi-touch gestures, using the traditional keyboard and mouse that your typical iMac/Mac Pro user employs highlights these issues. Apple’s Magic Mouse alleviates some of these issues as it supports several multi-touch gestures itself. But the mouse solution is clunky at best and doesn’t support as many gestures as the trackpad. Also somewhat lacking on non-trackpad macs is the act of scrolling. Like iOS, OS X Lion features disappearing scrollbars. While this is a moot point on trackpad devices where you can simply move your fingers up/down/left/right to move content on the page, mouse users must click and drag in many circumstances. Even though Apple’s implementation of disappearing scrollbars is better than others that we’ve seen, the biggest issue we experienced was waiting for scrollbars to reappear. In short: using OS X Lion with a mouse actually leaves a bit to be desired. To alleviate this disconnect we highly suggest investing in the $69 Magic Trackpad. Not only does it bring all the multi-touch goodness of Lion to any Bluetooth-enabled Mac, it’s even larger than the MacBook Air/Pro’s already large trackpad meaning you’ve got plenty of space to work with.
Battery Life
The 2011 MacBook Air features the biggest power upgrade in the platform’s short history. Moving from a 2+ year-old Core 2 Duo platform to the newer Sandy Bridge Core i5 elevates processing power considerably. The usual trade-off of such a change is of course battery life. But thanks to The Core i5′s frugal power draw (and the low-voltage rating on the MacBook Air’s specific Core i5 processors) we’re happy to announce battery life similar to or slightly better than the Core 2 Duo powered Airs. (For the record, Apple revised their battery life tests in the last year. While quoted battery life hours may be lower, they are more accurate — a much appreciative trade-off in our eyes.)
From 100 to dead we were able to run our 13.3″ 1.7 GHz MacBook Air a solid 6 hours with WiFi on and screen brightness at 70% with most of our usage being web based. Turning off WiFi and going offline pushed battery life past Apple’s 7-hour claim to ~ 7 and a half hours. Don’t let the 50-watt hour built-in battery fool you. It’s a marathon runner in its own right.
If we get a bit more demanding and hook up our T-Mobile Web Rocket 2.0 3G card, battery life fell from 6 hours to a little over 4. That just goes to show you how incredibly inefficient those little life savers are. But hey, if you’ve ever experienced the unfortunate situation of needing to get online and not being around a WiFi network of any type, you’ll come to appreciate these little sticks of joy regardless of their appetite.
Finally, firing up a movie in Quicktime and letting it do it’s thing until the battery gave out it’s last whimper came around the 4 hour mark. Though such things can vary wildly. As such, your mileage may vary.
Considering how small the MacBook Air is combined with the powerful Core i5 processor inside, we’ll say we’re quite impressed.
Conclusion
The new MacBook Air hardware combined with Apple’s latest version of OS X — OS X Lion — is a powerful 1-2 punch that should please most OS X users new and old. While some may be put off by the heavy iOS undertones, we feel Apple’s attempts to blend the mobile and traditional desktop computing experience has paid off. Our only suggestion: if you don’t have a multi-touch trackpad Apple laptop or use an Apple desktop, invest in the Magic Trackpad for the full effect.
