Macbook Air Review

So a few days ago my shiny new MacBook Air finally turned up after a long wait due to PayPal choosing to pay using an eCheque. Anyway, I'm not here to bitch about PayPal as enough people are doing so already; instead I'll be giving a quick review of the Air.

First thing's first, this thing is so thin and so light - bare in mind I'm coming over from the not-so-chubby MacBook - and what is also striking is the sturdy feeling. When first viewing the Air one may expected it to feel flimsy, or at least for the screen to have some 'give'.

Nope.

No play in the screen, or any of the body for that matter, at all; this thing is incredibly well put-together and the cold feeling of the aluminium case is really ...erm...cool.

Once booted up the next striking feature is the brightness of the LED back-lit screen - I actually have it turned down a notch or 2 most of the time to save my eyes - and the awesome back-lit keyboard. The black-keys-on-silver-background look might take some getting used to for some but this just emphasises the backlights once they are illuminated - which is done automatically thanks to a light sensor by the iSight.

Next up is the large trackpad with small button. The button does take a little getting used to, its not always where u expect it to be and the need to reach a little further is felt while first getting to grips with the Air. The extra size of the 'pad isn't really that noticeable and, although I haven't looked too closely, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find I am using the same amount as I would when using the regular MacBook. Now of course the reason for the extra size is the inclusion of multi-touch to the Air.

Make no mistake, this is pretty much a gimmick.

Bare with me.

The 3 fingered 'swipe' to navigate Safari - and FireFox 3 via the MultiClutch addon - is useful, altho it moves the opposite way to what you would expect when compared to the iPhone. Meaning that where a swipe from left to right on the iPhone moves to the right, it actually moves to the left (and back a page) on the Air. I'll admit, that's a tiny bone to be picking.

The pinch/pull zooming isn't useful at all in real-world tasks and the 'rotate' feature is also a cool trick to show friends, but not something I'd use while being productive.

While some may winge about the 1.6Ghz processor and the 80Gb HDD (yeh, I got the 'cheap' one) the performance 'hit' is not noticeable during every-day tasks. Sure, I could get out the stopwtch and test encoding speed or whatever but seriously I don't care; for what I need its plenty fast enough.

The fans do have a tendency to speed up after watching streaming video for a while but they are noticably quieter than those in the MacBook.

In relation to the core shut-down problems I have installed CoolBook and after configuring it to what most Internet-users have found most friendly I have had no problems regarding core shut-downs or Kernal panics.

Oh and a quick note on the lack of ports; I can plug in my iPhone when I need to. I can plug in my mic when I need to. I can plug in my USB modem when I want to...my point being I don't need to be using more than 1 device at a time. Although I have bought a small hub...just in case.

Finally, the lack of a disc drive is not important to me as I have pretty much no music CD's at all and most of my films are on Blue-Ray. I installed iWork via Remote Disk and was amazed and how easy it was. Put disc into MacBook, click MacBook in the Air's Finder window and install as normal. Over a b/g wi-fi network it wasn't noticeably slower than installing using a drive directly.

So to conclude, while the Air will be underpowered for some and overpriced for others, the Air fits my needs of a full size Mac which is very portable and looks the business.

Ah, on the last comment; why is it that people kick up such a fuss over a cool-looking laptop being expensive when people pay £1000 for a watch or £150 for some sunglasses for exactly that reason, when a far cheaper alternative will do? Apple has made a laptop that looks good and, in a way, reflects the personality of it's owner.

You can call it 'style over substance' if you want, but you didn't buy that Rolex because it tells the time better than a Casio, did you?

Alistair

Dynolicious

While I'm sat waiting for someone to turn up (he's late) I'll quickly
mention a new app for the iPhone called Dynolisious. What this app
does is, once calibrated by holding the phone at various angles,
monitor movement using the phone's accelerometer while you drive your
car. At this point witch-craft happens and it plots - rather accuratly
- your g-force, 0-60mph time and an estimate of your cars bhp figure.

I just had a couple of quick goes on the way to the gym earlier and,
after finding a good position for the phone, I just hit the start
button at the lights, the app then starts recording once I set off.

Haven't had chance to get to 60mph but the 0-40 and 50 times seem
fairly accurate and it states I pulled 0.4 G...I'm sure there's room
for improvement there.

I think the app was about '7 and I'd say well worth it when compared
to dedicated units costing several hundred pounds.

Alistair