Why would anyone buy a MacBook Air?
We all remember the announcement of the MacBook Air with the image of sliding it out of an envelope showing us how thin it is. We were enamored of the thought of a Mac that is thinner than any other notebook out there and how portable it is. Then the reality set in and the high price coupled with the hardware compromises that Apple had to make with the Air began to get noticed by those who pay attention to such things but at the end of the day since it was the smallest MacBook available it still ruled the portable Mac roost. That all changed with the introduction of the new 13-inch MacBook and I can’t see why anyone would buy a MacBook Air today. Let’s take a look at the two notebooks and I’ll explain my reasoning.
MacBook Air
13-inch MacBook
Road warriors will be the first to jump all over a notebook that is thin and light. Carrying a notebook and accessories around while traveling is a chore at best and a nightmare at the worst. The MacBook Air at 3 pounds certainly makes it one of the easiest notebooks to carry around and it’s no question that Apple did a good job in this regard. When you look at what that light weight cost you in capability and price though you are wise to begin looking at alternatives.
The introduction of the new 13-inch aluminum MacBook is just that alternative. At less than an inch thick the MacBook packs a much larger wallop than the Air in a package not much bigger. When you compare the two notebooks feature for feature you begin to see how wide the capability margin is between the two (optional configurations used):
MacBook Air vs. MacBook
- Processor: 1.86 GHz vs. 2.4 GHz
- Hard drive: 120 GB 4200 rpm vs 250 GB 5400 rpm (SSD options available on both models)
- Memory: 2 GB vs 2 GB (4 GB available on MacBook)
- Optical drive: None vs. 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- Graphics: NVidia 9400M on both
- Battery: Integrated (37 W/hr) vs. user replaceable (45 W/hr)
- USB: One vs. Two
- Ethernet: None vs. 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit)
To keep things fair I compare the high-end MacBook with the MacBook Air to give a feel for price comparison. The 1.86 GHz processor in the Air is a $200 option but I used it here to narrow the performance gap between the two models. Here’s what the pricing is currently for the two models as configured above:
MacBook Air: $1,999
MacBook: $1,599
If you think it’s not fair that I compare price with the faster Air processor here’s the price comparison with the slower 1.6 HGz processor:
MacBook Air: $1,799
MacBook: $1,599
Looking at this from any angle tells us that the Air is much more expensive for a lot less performance, primarily in the area of processor and hard drive speed. Add in the fact that you can bump the MacBook hard drive to 320 GB for $100, the memory to 4 GB for $150 and pick up a second battery for just $129 and you get the picture. Don’t get me wrong, the Air is 1.5 pounds lighter and is thinner than the MacBook. But is that slight weight difference worth the extra money, and at the expense of a big performance hit? Not to me and this is why I can’t understand why anyone would buy a MacBook Air today.
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Why you ask? Because it doubles as a cake slicer of course!
( http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/01/the-macbook-air-thin-enough-to-slice-a-cake/ )
Next time you are out and about with your Macbook, wanting to slice some cake, i bet you’ll be wishing you got a Macbook Air. :)
beacuse the screen of the MB-Air is much (much, much)better than the MB.
In fact, I cannot decide for any of the two. Will keep my MN-Pro 2007)
As everbrave stated, the LCD panel on the Air is much better quality… But if you needed the quality for business reasons – photoshop etc – then you’d probably go for a 15″ MacBook Pro.
Unfortunately there are always folk who will shout for Barabbas.
I’ll give you this much. This is a though choice. I was excited about the glass touchpad but I also worry about Mac’s 1.0 machines. I’d prefer to wait for the 2.0. The Air is a 2.0 now.
And the weight matters. I have been using 10.4/10.6″ screen notebooks since P1-133MHz (Toshiba). My first step upwards was the Powerbook 12″. It was too heavy. Then I went 12″ Windows for a year and now I have a 15″ MBP. I got the MBP over the MB because the weight difference was not significant but the performance difference really mattered at that time. I was running computationally heavy stuff for work.
Now I have a nice server at work running my stuff. All I need is a nice light laptop to browse the net, emails, RSS and Remote Desktop etc. Never used the CD so I don’t care about that.
So the question for me is not if I’ll get the MBA or the new MB. It is if I will give up OSX and get a netbook, produce a hackintosh or drop the cash for the new MBA.
In a world without netbooks, the Air would be an excellent idea.
Unfortunately, for Apple, the notebook world is a lot different today than it was a year ago. You can have small, thin, light and stripped down, at a stripped down price. Even Mac users have a hard time stomaching the price of the Air, especially when small computers can be had for peanuts these days.
I do applaud Apple for creating the Air, though. To me, it’s sort of like a concept car that came out of concept and actually went into production. It’s not the most practical computer in the world, but man is it pretty.
Apple needs to give the people what they want and shrink the Air down to a netbook sized device. Heck, they could even give it an Apple price tag. They could own the netbook market.
I believe the new aluminum MacBook has the same LED backlit display as the Air.
I see what you mean James; I also got my wife the Macbook which we tried to choose between both the Air and the Macbook, but at the end the Macbook out weighed the Air. I personally picked up a copy of the family Leopard and installed on my Macbook Pro and picked up the Gigabyte M912 last month and installed Vista and Leopard on it. So now I have the MacNano at 8.9″ LCD. :)
Unfortunately, no: the new MacBook display is still a TN matrix and far inferior to the screen on the Air. As everbrave states, it is really the one thing that makes choosing between the two a challenge. Performance is *adequate* either way, especially with the chipset refresh on the Air and, as you say, the weight difference is not big enough to really matter anymore.
So, why would anyone care about the inferior TN matrix in the MB? Well, one reason (for me, at least) it that reviewing pictures downloaded from a camera in the field is an exercise in frustration on a TN display. There is a tiny viewing angle where color and contrast are accurate enough to know whether pictures are usable or not.
Are you sure that the new MacBook’s screen is different? I have researched it and can’t find any reference that the screen is different than that in the Air. I did find a test graphic that is designed to highlight displays that are TN matrix and my MacBook displays it properly. I’m stuck trying to prove that the MacBook and new MacBook Pro screens are not the same as that in the Air.