
Goodbye, MacBook Pro. The New MacBook Air Is That Good. - _pius
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/13-inch-macbook-air-review/
======
jacquesm
Does this mean the price of getting an article on TC just went up ;) ?

Joking aside, it's a very nice little machine, but I could not imagine
developing software on it without hooking it up to a full sized keyboard and
screen which would defeat most of the purpose of owning one in the first
place.

The mac Air series is so thin that when I saw one the first time I couldn't
believe it was a real functional computer until they turned it on for me!

~~~
newman314
I believe the Air is supposed to have a full sized keyboard and trackpad.

~~~
jacquesm
Full size to me means separate cursor block, numpad and a key travel of more
than a few mm. I am probably more partial to the keyboard I'm using than to
any other aspect of my computer.

~~~
icegreentea
Then you're not going to get fullsized on anything smaller than a 17". And not
even the 17" MBP. Though there was this great deal going on a while back. Back
when you got the free iPod Touch with the MBP, you could just get the numpad
app for the iPod and use the most expensive external numpad ever!

------
steilpass
Be sure to check this HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824563>
(Ask HN: anyone using the new MacBook Air as your main development machine?)

------
achompas
I've spent a bit of time with the 11" Air and, lemme tell you guys: this thing
runs simple apps really well. Safari's icon bounces once, then Safari is open.
iPhoto is pretty quick. Even bloated iTunes doesn't take a million years to
back up an iPhone or scroll through iTMS.

Here's the problem, though: Siegler and I can't talk about intense
applications. I don't know if it can't handle RAW file editing in
Lightroom/PS, Starcraft II on high settings, or developing in Xcode. The
benchmarks Siegler quotes show the Air is worse than the 13" Pro at handling
these intense apps (Handbrake, PS, VM software). [1]

Someone cracked about how Siegler's activities consist of "blogging and
scrolling through Twitter." For anyone who does that (i.e. your average
college student), this thing will be great for years.

For more intense apps? I have my doubts. And the Air might be fine right now,
but what about upgrading two years from now? What if system or available
memory become an issue?

[1]
[http://www.macworld.com/article/154596/2010/10/macbookair_be...](http://www.macworld.com/article/154596/2010/10/macbookair_benchmarks.html)

~~~
grammaton
Photo-editing machine? For low end photo editing it's probably fine. For high
end - why would you be doing that on a laptop?

Gaming? Why would you be doing that on a laptop?

Development machine? What are you developing? I think it could handle the
average web developer's work load just fine. If you're writing something
intensive enough that hardware is a real issue - why are you doing that on a
laptop?

~~~
achompas
Because, if you're like me, you can only afford one machine? And you don't
want to be chained to one desk when using it?

EDIT: sorry, you didn't downvote me.

~~~
grammaton
If you can only afford one machine, what makes you think you can afford a
laptop with the specs to handle something like high end photo editing? For the
same money you could buy a low end laptop for portability, and a decent mid-
end PC for more intensive applications. This objection doesn't make much
sense. Laptops have never been intended for high end intensive applications.

~~~
achompas
I dunno! What's up with looking for portability and power at a decent price?!

Seriously, I value portability. A lot. I don't like being chained to a desk
any more than necessary.

I don't edit photos, but there are other people like me who want a powerful
machine on the go. See this HN thread for about 100 examples:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824563>

~~~
grammaton
Sure, I get jittery easily, don't like sitting in front of a desk either. I'd
love a small, really powerful machine as well. I'd also love to sail around
hawaii with an entourage of super models, but that's not going to happen. If
you want a really powerful laptop - on par with a strong desktop machine - you
need to be prepared to drop some serious bank. That's just how it is.
Otherwise, leave desktop tasks to desktop machines and use laptops for what
they where intended for - non-intensive tasks on the go.

~~~
achompas
Well I value portability over price and I also don't replace my laptop often
(every 4-5 years). So I'm willing to spend a bit more this time.

And if you _ever_ get the chance to sail around Hawaii with those models,
well, you couldn't take your desktop with you. That is, if you actually
planned on working...

------
drats
I will refer to my earlier comment on these machines, they are only worth it
if you have to be, or want to be, in OS X land.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1812730>

Outside of Apple PCs you can get a far better quality machine, and for my
purposes a far better operating system in the form of Ubuntu.
Quicksilver/Gnome-do, Safari/Chrome, Flash/Flash, nice fonts/nice fonts it's
all even or Ubuntu with a slight edge until you get to apt-get which just
slaughters OS X. Then there is freedom to tinker, the price difference and
matching deployment/server OS. The reason apt-get is so far ahead of OS X is
that OS X only has a tiny community, and for good reason considering how they
have often treated it and that many of them are more focused on "striking
gold" with an iPhone app. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but it's a sub-
standard system with loads of tinkering instead of the "just works" experience
of Linux. Good luck finding blogs/documentation/help when something goes wrong
with OS X too. Perhaps Textmate/Ruby-on-Rails has first class support as a
stack, but in so many other areas it's a wasteland.

I suppose I am saying that yes fair enough it's a good machine, but just
because you haven't used an SSD before and/or are attached to OS X for money
don't try to imply, as is usually done, that Apple is lightyears ahead. It's
behind in many areas and hardly worth the hype that is attached to the
release.

~~~
Yaggo
With the current Ubuntu & your Air-like better quality machine (what's that by
the way?), is it possible to have:

    
    
      1) Sleep/suspend/resume
      2) Hardware-accelerated OpenGL
      3) Compiz/fusion or whatever it's called nowadays
      4) Support for external monitor
      5) No random crashes once per week with 1-4 enabled
      6) Hardware-multiplexed sound output in all programs
      7) No two months of tinkering to get 1-6 working
    

I'm honestly asking this. Between 1998 and 2006, when I used various Linux
laptops as my primary machine, I never had all the above issues solved. Maybe
things have changed?

~~~
mitjak
I have 10.10 installed on my MacBook Pro, and I can confirm the 1-5 are no
longer an issue :) (resuming from sleep takes at least 2-3 times longer for me
than on OS X though). I don't know enough to confirm 6, but if that is also
covered then 7 should be as well.

~~~
albertzeyer
Does Linux still consumes more battery power than MacOSX?

I had this issue in the past on my MacBook. It was very notable: on Linux the
total battery time was about 60-70% of what I had with MacOSX.

I did some debugging and while the kernel itself also consumed slightly more
than MacOSX, the biggest problem where the applications, esp. the window
manager (tested both Gnome and KDE). They do a lot of stuff and mostly prevent
the CPU from going into low-power mode or wake it up all the time.

------
mhd
I think before I get an Air, I definitely need to improve my social life
and/or my coffee intake. Right now, I don't have a personal need for an
ultraportable. I switch desks (home, office, abroad), but for that scenario,
my current MBP 17" is a pretty ideal solution. Considering that I have (or
could have) external monitors at each desk, the Mac Mini probably sounds like
a better solution than the MB Air.

If I ever have to attend a lot of meetings/conferences/presentations or
finally find the time and money to travel the world, this looks pretty neat.
Gives the Thinkpad X Series a run for its money.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I actually don't travel that much but the weight of lugging my current MacBook
around on the occasions I do is what has sold the new MacBook Air to me.

I'm not a frequent traveller - maybe once a month - but by the time I add a
laptop to all the other stuff I tend to have in a shoulder bag (not to mention
the fact that I'd possibly be carrying my 16 month old daughter) and it's
pushing what's practical to carry it for any sort of extended period.

When I was looking at the possibility of replacing my current 4 year old
MacBook I asked myself what had irritated me about the current machine that I
would change. The performance is still basically fine (I code a bit, edit a
bit of video and the odd photo but nothing where the performance is really
getting to me) and I came to the conclusion it was weight and start up time
which means that the MacBook Air rather than a new MacBook or MacBook Pro was
the logical choice.

------
listic
I hate the fact that tech companies and observers gloss over the technical
details of products. On Apple's site, even in the sections labeled "Tech
Specs" you cannot find the model of CPU, chipset or hard drive that goes into
any of their product (except for Mac Pro, and there you don't have much choice
even though I guess it should be expected with the desktop computer of such
class). And the reviewers often times make no effort to find that out too!
What kind of "technical" is this?

It seems to me they use Core 2 Duo SL9400 (1.87 GHz, 1066
FSB)([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microproce...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors#.22Penryn.22_.28low-
voltage.2C_45_nm.2C_Small_Form_Factor.29)). Not exactly record-setting for low
power, judging by 17W TDP, but when everyone is measuring battery life at
mostly idle CPU, and with process enhancements over the years (I heard that
later Core 2's of the same model consume less power than rated) I think they
might show close to their rated battery life. I think Apple must have worked
hard squeezing the unnecessary volume and weight with the new design to give
place for more battery too.

~~~
cobralibre
_I hate the fact that tech companies and observers gloss over the technical
details of products._

It's hard to expect much of tech journalism when so little of it is actually
journalism. We've collectively ceded the territory formerly occupied by
professional journalists to fanboys and bloggers, many of us celebrating the
fact along the way.

Having said that, it's only right that Apple's marketing downplays specs, part
numbers, and benchmarks (with some notable exceptions). Macs are great
computers for the people who like them because of a combination of clever
industrial design, polished software, and good hardware. Specs and benchmarks
don't begin to tell you _what it's like_ to use a Mac. Think qualia, not
quantity.

------
JofArnold
Right now this device's lack of RAM is a killer (I regularly run out of 8GB on
my MBP). Buuuut... when OSX 10.7 comes out with app resume functionality,
opening and closing apps will be fast (thanks to the OS and the rapid drive
these things carry)... so more than 4GB will not be needed for me.

So I'm thinking that iOS's desktop legacy might be a bit bigger than just
weird scroll bars and a cool app launcher.

~~~
Qz
Am I crazy for still only running 2GB on my desktop?

~~~
cubicle67
ha! I'm running Snow Leopard here on a 4.5 year old 32 bit (pre Core 2 Duo)
iMac with 512Mb ram (double the original amount)

I'd like to get a new machine, but this one's as good as new apart from the
drive which I replaced with a 1Tb one earlier this year

~~~
ralphc
You should try popping in a recent Ubuntu disk. Older (circa 2008)
distributions had trouble with the hardware, but I have a 2006 MacBook Pro
that "just works" with 32-bit Ubuntu 10.04. I even Bootcamped the hard disk
and dual boot Snow Leopard and Lucid.

------
etherael
I hate my cynicism, I wanted to be impressed and yet when I opened the article
it forced me to look at the author and the rest was history.

~~~
weego
I got a bit further to be fair. Infact to here:

"My i7 iMac with 8 GB of RAM takes something like 2 minutes. My i7 MacBook Pro
takes at least 30-45 seconds, and it has an SSD drive."

and then realised that anything further on was a waste of my time.

Summary: man who spends more on upgrading to latest macs than I can afford to
spend on IT equipment in 10 years think the Air is awesome.

~~~
modoc
A guy who's clearly into the latest and greatest hardware, and can give a good
comparison against the fastest other machines out there is a waste of your
time when reading a laptop review? That makes no sense. Hopefully this isn't a
"he's rich so I don't care what he says" thing?

~~~
etherael
Not at all, let's just say if you have read any of his prior articles it isn't
difficult to see a pronounced bias on everything apple.

------
kamechan
i have a newer 17mbp. can't say i've used the optical, but i like having it
there. i would probably move towards a 15" mba if it had their 1680x1050
screen and more battery life. the 8GB ram thing doesn't really get to me tho.
i do all my dev work in vim.

the thing i can't stand is how people are perceiving the dump of the optical
drive as something revolutionary. a) the old macbook air didn't have one (a
gripe for many) and b) neither do netbooks.

a little off-topic but one thing that really kills me about apple is how
they're seemingly refusing to add a blu-ray option even though the standard is
well-established. i would really like to have one in my mbp17. not just
because i have a res (1920x1200) on the lappy that supports it, but because i
also have a 27" panel that i hook my laptop into.

and this move towards "no optical drives" (likely so they can sell more HD
content) is only going to solidify that among their lines in my assessment.

hmmmph.

~~~
qjz
I thoroughly dislike optical drives, regardless of the platform, and see their
demise as a good thing. In laptops, they add weight and draw excessive power.
Elsewhere, only commercial manufacturing provides reliable storage, but even
this is extremely vulnerable to wear and tear from heavy use. At the consumer
level, I've had better luck archiving data on floppy disks than any optical
media (I've yet to see a CD-RW allow reuse without data corruption). As far as
I'm concerned, USB ports make built-in optical drives obsolete.

~~~
kamechan
the problem is that some movies can't be easily [legally]
downloaded/distributed. take "tears of the black tiger" for example. one of
the best films ever made, but nearly impossible to get from blockbuster,
netflix (only recently could one watch online), or apple movie store in any
other medium than DVD. how many more movies are there like this? my wife and i
pick up japanese films from tokyo all the time that we can't get elsewhere.

i would wager there are plenty more films available on DVD than on
downloadable format. sure the reasons for this may be stupid ... but they're
reasons nonetheless [for now].

------
Kilimanjaro
The next move in Jobs' chess board is to bring the plastic macbook down to
$699, in five delicious colors, as thin as the macbook air.

The perfect netbook for the masses.

~~~
Kilimanjaro
Oh, and the mac mini 'soapbar', a 3x2x1" computer as powerful as any pc
desktop, for just $199.

Total world domination.

------
sanj
I'm surprised he cares about startup and shutdown times.

One of the lovely things about the Mac laptops is that you never have to turn
them off. Close them and they go to sleep in a few seconds. Open them up and
you're ready to work immediately.

The uptime on my _laptops_ tends to be a few months.

~~~
grammaton
Business frequent flyers would tend to care about this metric - imagine
yourself going through multiple iterations of "please turn off all electronics
at this time" could easily get annoyed in a hurry by an overly long boot
sequence.

~~~
lukeqsee
Does anybody _actually_ turn electronics off? It seems the majority of people
simply leave them on sleep/locked/airplane mode.

------
bl4k
_"But for pretty much everything I’ve done this past week — basically, my
regular work and play habits"_

browsing Twitter and writing blog posts?

~~~
grammaton
As opposed to what, rotating particle accelerator dumps through N-space to
correlate them against standard model predictions?

What, exactly, do you think people use laptops for? If you're doing something
remarkably intensive like encoding video or writing massively scalable ETL
code, and you're doing it on a laptop, you have failed at computers.

~~~
hkuo
I actually do video and After Effects on my Macbook Pro, as well as all of my
Photoshop work with huge multi-layered files, and it flies. I have a more
powerful Quad-Core tower at work, but it's only a slight improvement in speed,
and being mobile with my Macbook far outweights that. In fact, there are tons
of people that do video editing on the fly with Macbooks. I wouldn't dare try
it with a Macbook Air.

------
jeebusroxors
I'm not particularly an Apple guy (if anything a bit against them), but these
Airs are exactly what I think a laptop should be.

I want my laptop to be small, lightweight and have a long (3-4 hour) battery
life, with performance as a low priority. Netbooks are a good compromise but
their limited screen size/smaller keyboard are a bit of a hassle.

They're still too pricey for my blood though. The previous Air I saw was
listed at ~$1800 (USD), and even though $999 is significantly better, I can't
see myself spending that much on (what would be for me) a secondary machine.

That being said - tax season is coming up. =) Is it a pain to get linux
running on these things?

------
topherjaynes
I'd like to know what application he is running. Yes, I'd imagine that Chrome
would be faster on a fresh out of the box mac, but let's see him try to
process RAW photos.

------
mironathetin
I personally want an optical drive. Am I old fashioned? I don't trust these
movie and music download stuff and prefer hardware in my drawer.

For my last business trip, I quickly copied my iTunes library to my business
Macbook (in a hurry, the evening before). On the remote site I switched on the
audio book that I recently started and got the message: this computer is not
authorized ...

Get my point?

~~~
robin_reala
Right, but are you carrying the media with you all the time? If not then a
small external drive is a decent compromise - if you think you’ll need it you
can chuck it in the bag as well and you can at least not take it if you think
you won‘t.

~~~
mironathetin
Well, in terms of movies: you break the law, if you extract them to the
harddrive.

For the rest, you are right, it is possible to carry a drive. But then we are
back to the clutter on the desk that we had in the 80s and 90s and just got
rid of. This is progress? Without an optical drive works only properly, if you
download the data or get them on non optical media.

I would be fine though, if I could download movies and music to an external
storage and the DRM would be on that storage, not on a computer. A storage
with at least the same possibilities that we have with CDs and DVDs today
(import to iTunes without DRM!). As long as that is not possible, the Macbook
Air remains a pretty good second computer IMHO.

------
thomasfl
They should measure temperature and noise when testing new laptops. In
addition to disk speed and processing power, it's the most important features
for me.

My 2 year old MacBookPro gets boiling hot after an hour.

~~~
Encosia
I went to the local Apple store to investigate that for myself.

They had an older MBA sitting in a corner, which was hot enough on the bottom
that I nearly dropped it.

The newer ones, which people had been using all day, were no warmer than my
iPad gets (and significantly cooler than the iPhone tends to get).

Hard to tell about the noise. The store was too loud.

~~~
Encosia
Just to follow up on the noise, if anyone's interested (or happen to notice
this followup comment at all), noise is not an issue. I received my 13" about
24 hours ago, and only heard the fan briefly while it was syncing my entire
Dropbox. Otherwise, it has been absolutely silent (and not even warm).

------
djacobs
Once again, MG is blinded by his fanaticism.

My favorite line:

"This thing boots up in less than 15 seconds, ready to go. My i7 iMac with 8
GB of RAM takes something like 2 minutes."

As if RAM had anything to do with boot time.

And my Core 2 Duo boots up in less than 2 minutes, so I'm not really sure what
his problem is. (If he wants fast, maybe he should try Linux.)

~~~
wazoox
My 2 years old unibody macbook 13" boots (rarely) in about 1 minute, with its
old 160 GB hard drive. Maybe he shouldn't have bought a shitty SSD :)

------
marknutter
I briefly considered selling my 13" MBP for an air, but quickly realized I
could upgrade my machine to 8GB of RAM and swap in an SSD for cheap, on top of
the processor being much faster than any of the Airs'. Also, I have an iPad
and an 11" Air would be a bit redundant for me.

------
jbarham
For all this talk of SSDs, it's worth pointing out that you can pick up the
2.5" 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid SSD/platter drive for $130 on Amazon.
Best upgrade I made to my Thinkpad, and one that is not available for the
Air...

~~~
colomon
I am (as I type this on a different system) in the midst of upgrading my MBP
with one of these babies. :)

------
billjings
What sort of performance do people see on the macbook air solid state storage?
What sort of hardware interface does it use? I'm not seeing any non-puff
reviews of this thing anywhere.

------
steilpass
So I've read a couple of comments the Air would be a good secondary computer.
So how do you guys hook it up to lets say your iMac at home?

------
Humblecoder
The article is either extreme fanboyism or trolling taken to a new level.
Either way why, oh why, do we keep giving this guy clicks?

------
duck
What exactly is that picture at the bottom of the article?

~~~
angstrom
Appears to be the smaller MBA on top of the Pro.

------
adamsmith
MG might or might not run into trouble once his SSD drive burns in / fills up,
as it no doubt has on the other laptops he talks about. His comparison might
be somewhat apples to oranges..

------
confuzatron
PT;MG _(probably trolling;MG Siegler)_

 _"Thanks largely to Apple themselves, we live in a world where we have
digital music, photos, movies, and TV shows that take up dozens, if not
hundreds of gigabytes of storage."_

Ah nope. Fawning, not trolling.

He forgot to add indoor plumbing, the internal combustion engine, modern
medicine, etc, to the list.

~~~
StavrosK
Jesus, that article was ridiculous. I grew suspicious when he talked about
speed being partly due to the processor, when we've all known since we got
SSDs that the processor has nothing to do with UI latency (when was the last
time you saw CPU usage spiking to 100% just by launching programs)?

The disk has always been the bottleneck, Apple was smart enough to put a fast
disk in the Air, and now this guy praises it.

This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months
loading it with programs, guy. Format the MacBook Pro and it will be just as
fast... Sure, the Air might be a great little computer, but for a $999
pricetag, I could get 3 netbooks instead.

~~~
joshfinnie
Add to the fact that no one is actually buying the $999 version. Every
positive review I have read goes like this:

"The new MacBook Air is amazing. It starts at $999 and I have been using the
top-of-the-line 13" for a week! (of course not mentioning that it costs
$1,599)"

I would love to see a tech person use the $999 version and see their review.
The price-point, when actually comparing the usable one, is ridiculous!

~~~
glhaynes
The vast majority of the hands-on actual-usage reviews I've read (nearly all
of which have been extremely positive) have been of the 11" with more people
running the 2GB than the 4GB.

~~~
mrkurt
The 2GB 11" is the model Apple handed out to people at the event announcing
it, so that makes sense.

------
hackermom
Apple have a damned good track record on their portable strategy; very few
boneheaded moves have been made. If the new Air is THAT good, you can bet your
b-hind that the new MB Pro incarnation will be THAT THAT good.

------
zackattack
god, disqus is so unreliable. are the comments not loading for anyone else?

~~~
bradendouglass
same here, I was excited to see the extra amount of anti Apple folks drinking
haterade but, Disqus is robbing me at the very moment.

~~~
zackattack
i just wanted to comment and offer to buy the dude's laptop

