
Review of the 11" MacBook Air - flapjack
http://mattgemmell.com/2011/01/01/macbook-air-11
======
stcredzero
My alternative: Put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD 300 in a 13" Macbook and max-out
the RAM. It will be bigger and heavier, with less battery life, but if you
already have a Macbook, this is a much cheaper move. The RealSSD has
background garbage collection, so you don't have to worry about TRIM. You only
need to do two things: 1) noatime and 2) make sure you're using less than
220GB.

I did this, and the performance is _fantastic_. (Original 13" unibody Macbook
with RAM upgraded to 6GB.) Everything happens _instantly_. I had journalling
off, because it increases disk writes by 12%, but OS X compensates by cranking
up its RAM cache. Keep journalling on, as it helps boot-up and shut-down
happen quickly and things just seem to run faster without the system managing
the really large RAM cache to disk. (Another factor: The nasty bug in XCode
3.1 requiring you to reboot your machine to unfreeze the simulator. This makes
fast reboots a big win for me. Otherwise, I'd use sleep and only reboot
occasionally.)

For increased battery life on the plane, I have a Tekkeon myPower All, which I
also sometimes use to power a mobile 4G hotspot. You can find a $14 Magsafe
cord on eBay, and solder it to a male Adaptaplug from Radioshack to make
yourself an adapter.

EDIT: If you have an older Core Duo plastic Macbook capable of supporting more
than 4GB of RAM, then I'd recommend slapping a RealSSD into it. You'll have
something lighter than a 13" aluminum with great performance.

~~~
MikeW
Are you sure the Unibody Aluminum Macbook (Macbook 5,1) supports 6GB of RAM? I
have this laptop and both the apple specs and crucial say it can only support
2x 2GB.

~~~
verisimilitude
Macbook 5,1 absolutely supports 6GB, NOT 8GB.

The best summary I've found: [http://blog.macsales.com/3291-putting-a-rumor-
to-rest-owc-su...](http://blog.macsales.com/3291-putting-a-rumor-to-rest-owc-
supports-6gb-max-in-late-2008-macbook-pro)

~~~
samatman
Typing this from a Macbook 5,1 with 8gb onboard. Been running this way for
months with no problems.

Under Snow Leopard, at least, this limitation does not apply.

~~~
verisimilitude
I should have specified the model... I have a 13.3" 2.0GHz MacBook5,1. There
is some variation within the 5,1 MacBooks; here's a quote from the discussion
attached to that linked article (perhaps you have a 15" MacBook 5,1?)

    
    
      As far as the 15" MacBook5,1 models go – The three models released in October 2008, OWC supports to 6GB of RAM:
    
      MacBook Pro 15″ 2.4GHz
      MacBook Pro 15″ 2.53GHz model w/ExpressCard Slot (Late 2008)
      MacBook Pro 15″ 2.8GHz model w/ExpressCard Slot (Late 2008)
    
      The two models released March of 2009, OWC and Apple support up to 8GB of memory.
      MacBook Pro 15″ 2.66GHz (All)
      MacBook Pro 15″ 2.93GHz (All)

~~~
samatman
Nope, 13", 2.4 GHz.

Like so:

[[ Model Name: MacBook Model Identifier: MacBook5,1 Processor Name: Intel Core
2 Duo Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores:
2 L2 Cache: 3 MB Memory: 8 GB Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz ]]

------
d_r
I got the 13" Air (highest specs: 2.13Ghz+4GB) about a month ago and am
completely loving it. I usually have Xcode, Photoshop, (occasional) Eclipse,
and a slew of other tools open and it performs like a charm.

Most useful "feature": the battery really lasts around 6+ hours, esp. if
you're not using wi-fi. This made some long airplane flights bearable.

I used to dread taking my previous Macbook Pro to a coffee shop, travel, etc.
because it was bulky, required always plugging in the charger, etc. No more.
Since it's so accessible on the go, my productivity has increased and I can
quickly code up ideas anywhere.

It did take a week to get used to the smaller pixel size on the 13" screen-
that-fits-a-15" resolution.

Sorry for the fanboy post, but seriously, this machine made my life as a
developer that much better.

~~~
jjcm
Same specs here. Still having issues with it even after the firmware patch
though. If it sleeps after idle, it almost never wakes up. Have to do a forced
reboot. I do all of my development work over ssh, so it's never really a
problem - I haven't lost work it yet. Nevertheless it is kind of annoying
(though the quick boot time helps mitigate that somewhat).

~~~
d_r
Ah, that sounds lousy. :( I wonder if it's a defective batch or something in
my usage pattern that avoids this issue. Have you tried getting a replacement
from a Genius bar? They are usually pretty helpful.

------
jjg
"I haven’t felt so thrilled by a new piece of hardware since I bought our
first iPad..."

That long, eh?

------
mark_l_watson
I bought the entry level 11" MacBook Air 4 weeks ago and now it is the system
I use for over 90% of my work, writing,and web browsing.

Caveat: most of my work is straight-up Ruby development, Rails development
(both using RubyMine 3.01), and Clojure with Emacs. All three of these
development scenarios take up little in the way of CPU or memory. I use
TexShop for writing.

I do sit at my desk with a large external monitor occasionally, but not often.
The only thing I don't like is the tiny escape key and I'll probably end up
remapping it. Otherwise this is my favorite home computer ever (and I have
owned many, starting with a PDP 8 one board, then serial number 71 Apple II,
etc.) Both the light weight and a SSD drive make for a great experience.

I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java
EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop
for that.

~~~
masklinn
> I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end
> Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu
> laptop for that.

Why not use your Air? Expecting insufficient screen space?

~~~
mark_l_watson
Screen space is OK. However, I need to run NetBeans, web app, and DB 2. The 2
gigs of RAM is insufficient. I am happy keeping the Air for everything else
and setting up the Pro for this one project.

~~~
masklinn
Oh yeah, I can understand that. Why didn't you get the 4GB upgrade? I'd have
thought of that one as a no-brainer.

------
danilocampos
I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical
drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and
symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes
U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational
drive when needed, and my machine now _screams_. It's heavier, sure, but I
don't travel much and I love having all the additional internal storage. I
still get over 8 hours of battery and the machine is silent as long as I'm not
accessing anything on the rotational drive.

~~~
zhyder
That's a much more expensive system. If we configure them as:

Macbook Pro 15: $1800 + $250 for 128GB SSD

Macbook Air 13: $1300 + $100 for 4GB RAM

Both machines will have the same size SSD, RAM, and same number of pixels, but
the MBP will be $650 more.

(I know there are other ways of configuring the two, like adding a $100 hi-res
option to the MBP, or adding the $100 MCE OptiBay like you did. I ignored them
for simplicity and to create a more apples-to-apples comparison.)

~~~
PStamatiou
Sigh, makes me regret my setup even more, price-wise. I have a big early
adopter problem. First SSD was $680 for 80GB, it died, Intel sent me a second
generation replacement. Then I purchased a second for $400, put them in my
17-inch MBP (older core 2 duo) in RAID 0 via an optibay. Then upgraded to 8GB
of RAM when I started using redis locally. System screams but the SSDs are
showing their age. I almost always run the drives close to maxed out storage.
I used to have large volumes like iTunes on my Time Capsule but whenever I
wanted to play a song it would take 10 seconds for the Time Capsule to spin up
the drive.

<http://paulstamatiou.com/ssd-raid-performance-9-months-later>

I'm waiting until Lion comes out for any more hardware changes. Now that I'm
using Jekyll locally (and will be just rsyncing the files) and it needs to
regenerate 1000+ posts with layout etc changes, the core 2 duo is showing its
age. And I have LSI disabled..

~~~
cma
RAID-0 after having one die? RAID-1 would still get you double read speeds in
the cases that tend to matter (small scattered reads), right? And is there a
use-case for double write speeds on a non-server machine?

~~~
dedward
raid-1 may or may not get you double read speeds - it depends on how things
are set up. ARe you sure the OSX implementation will take advantage of this?

------
there
i've been using an 11" air as my only development machine for a month or two.
a few minor things worth mentioning:

\- no backlit keyboard

\- no IR interface, so no ability to use a non-bluetooth remote control

\- the LCD screen is glossy, but it's just a film over the screen, not a
glass/plastic sheet over the entire display. as a result, the glare isn't as
bad as the macbook pro.

\- because the display is very thin, the glowing apple logo behind the screen
sometimes shows through on the front.

~~~
nasht
I have been using the 11" for a couple of months now. I also love it but I am
more productive at a real desktop with large screen and large keyboard. I have
never seen the apple logo shine through the screen. Take that unit back for a
replacement.

~~~
there
i have two of them, and one had its entire display replaced. all three
displays show the logo through under certain lighting conditions.

~~~
barrym
Does the same on my 13 inch - it freaked me out the first time I saw it. Same
for everyone else in my office who owns one.

------
jrockway
People are worried that 128G is not enough for a boot drive!? On my eeepc, I
did it in 4G. On my desktop, I did it in 9.8G:

    
    
        Filesystem             Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
        /dev/sda2               26G  9.8G   15G  41% /
        /dev/sda1              894M   19M  827M   3% /boot
        /dev/mapper/md0_crypt  917G  238G  680G  26% /home
    

The key is to keep all your movies on an extra drive :P

------
tchock23
I bought the 11" Air shortly after it came out as a fun little secondary
notebook, and liked it so much I picked up the 13" as well for regular work
purposes (replacing a 15" MBP).

I just finished coding an app on the 11" and it worked great. I never had a
problem with the screen size or performance, and also have never had a problem
with the apple logo showing through the display that another poster mentioned
(on either the 11" or the 13"). I do occasionally hook it up to a 23" monitor
when I need to do any design work, since there is a point where the 11"
display is just too small for some tasks.

My only regret was going with the low-end 11" system. I really should have
opted for the higher end 11", but didn't at the time because I was really
buying it as "fun" purchase and the $999 entry price point was pretty
attractive. If you're considering one, definitely spend the extra money to get
the next step up.

------
yesimahuman
I chose the 13" over the 11". The 11" had too small of a screen for my tastes
and felt like a netbook. The 13" has a really nice resolution and feels
_amazing_ for typing (as the laptop is so thin your palms rest perfectly on
it).

My 13" is not a netbook. It is a powerful laptop that I now absolutely love
and do so much on. It's also my first mac, but I prefer the feel over my
friends 13" macbook pro so I think I made the right choice.

------
megaframe
I got the 11" and it does Starcraft on medium settings better than my wine
session on a quad core 8800GTS does. Boot time of 16sec is also kind of a moot
point... it drops in and out of sleep so effortlessly I doubt I'll ever need
to reboot the thing.

~~~
fredoliveira
Indeed. This has been the case with all my recent macs, actually. Why reboot
(or shut down) if you can always just put it to sleep quickly.

------
harold
I recently purchased the 11 with the same config.

Xcode runs happily enough on my iOS and Mac OS projects.

It runs my web dev stack just fine (Textmate, Python, Django, Nginx, Apache,
Postgres)

It reminds me of how much I appreciated the form factor of my old 12"
Powerbook back in the day. I got a lot of mileage out of that little machine.

The speakers sound tinny (under the keyboard) and I wish it had a proper
ethernet port. The webcam doesn't seem to do as well in low light compared to
the one in my MBP.

Overall I'm very happy with it and it's already been getting a lot more use
than I expected considering it was purchased as a secondary machine.

~~~
elithrar
Same here — I have the 1.6/4GB/128SSD version of the 11", and it's been
fantastic since day one. I use it for Rails development, general web stuff &
some light Lightroom work (when pressed), and as a second machine to a MBP
that lives at home with a 23" external, but I vastly prefer the Air whenever I
have the choice. The MBP really only gets used for when I'm editing clients'
work in Lightroom & PS, where the CPU power makes the difference.

Thing is, the Air makes my 13" MBP seem fat — and the 13" is actually a pretty
slim machine as far as laptops go these days.

------
enneff
I bought the 11" when it came out and it quickly became something I don't fo
anywhere without. I used to carry my 13" MBP in a nice laptop backpack, but
now I have a small satchel bag which can hold the Air as well as my
essentials. With 3G tethering it's SO useful to always have a real computer
with Internet access at my disposal.

I still have and use my MBP and iMac, but I use them much less. Convenience
trumps power 90% of the time.

------
srgseg
Two things that really bug me:

1\. No cleartype. I.e. although there is subpixel antialiasing, fonts aren't
optimized for the pixel grid. Thus, the fonts are much clearer when I boot to
Windows and so I feel like everything is fuzzy when I boot back to Mac OS.
This isn't a problem for the web, but for coding and SSH it's terrible. I
can't use Windows full time though because Spaces is so outstanding and I
don't get trackpad options under Windows.

2\. Excel on Mac lacks my most used feature: web data import. Windows Excel
lets me choose a table inside a web browser, and the data in that table (stock
quotes/currency rates/etc) are imported into Excel (and re-retrieved just by
pushing F9).

Excel on Mac does allow you to manually create text files that describe web
data import which would be a possible workaround except that the sites I use
require a login, and Windows Excel can save cookie state because of its tight
integration with IE, but Mac Excel can't.

~~~
chc
The first point is a longstanding difference of opinion between different
users. The thing is, fonts on Windows in general are _sharper_ but mangle the
letterforms, while fonts on the Mac look just how they were designed but have
to sacrifice sharpness to do so with current display resolutions.

So, basically, the question is: Is readability more a function of the font's
design or contrast of the luminance?

~~~
Groxx
Not sure if they're "sharper". They're definitely _thinner_. OSX essentially
increases boldness when they AA, while Windows decreases.

I, personally, _vastly_ prefer OSX's rendering. But it's entirely a preference
thing for nearly everyone (unless they're doing typographical work).

------
diego
I own the 13" version. I spent some time testing both at the Apple Store. I
really wanted to get the 11" one, but the upper row of keys is significantly
thinner. As someone who uses vim all the time, this means missing the esc key
very frequently. My advice would be to test both versions as much as you can
and see which one works better for you.

~~~
spudlyo
You can always type control-[ in lieu of escape.

------
inovica
I bought the top 11" that I could and I love it. It has become my main
machine. Not since the 12" PowerBook have I loved a machine - sad as that
sounds. The form factor fits me and I've been much more productive with it

------
bnewton
I've checked out the Macbook Air at the Apple Store a few times and I'm so
close to just selling my i5 MBP for a fully spec out 13" Air. I like the idea
of having such a light and still powerful system for web and ios development.
From the sounds of it I wouldn't be giving up to much going with the Air over
the MBP.

~~~
tchock23
That's exactly what I did, and I couldn't be happier. It's so light that I
find myself checking my laptop bag just to see if it's still in there. I went
with the highest-end 13" configuration so I didn't lose any performance in the
transition, and haven't noticed any discernible difference in "real world"
use.

------
yuvipanda
I have a 10" Samsung N210 - proper 'netbook' (Atom, 1G RAM, etc) - and is fast
enough for my dev needs (HTML/CSS, C, Python). I do need to farm compiling out
to my main machine (a quad core) with distcc if I need to compile anything
>10k LOC though.

I'm happy with it.

------
stcredzero
Another good satchel for the 11" Macbook Air:

<http://amzn.com/B001F7FMUA>

I have one of these for my old tc1100 Windows stylus tablet. It should fit the
11" Air quite handily as well as the iPad.

------
kiranryali
Got the 13" version with the 4GB ram upgrade. Works great for
Android/iPhone/Web development. Loving it so far, haven't used by dell since.
In fact, I'm going to give it to my mom (Core i7, NVidia GT435M)

------
hogu
problems waking up from sleep

[http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630327...](http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630327&start=0&tstart=0)

we have this problem with ours, we've installed the newest firmware updates as
well, I'm hoping they fix this soon.

other than that, seems pretty good.

------
siglesias
Is anybody else holding out for the 3G compatible Air?

~~~
smhinsey
I thought about it, but like with the iPad, I ended up not bothering with it.
My thinking is that now that 4g is rolling out and the next thing is probably
in the wings, it's better to use your phone as a wifi hub and connect that
way. I just got a g2 and t-mobile makes no attempt to prevent you from doing
this, at least as far as I can tell, and their 4g service is super fast so
far.

------
lwat
I know this is blasphemy but is anyone running Win 7 on their 11" Air?

