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MacBook Air, one month on

Someone emailed recently asking for an update on life with the MacBook Air. What can I say? It’s completely fantastic. Every time I pick it up, put it in my bag and walk to work, I know I made a good choice.

I used the MBA recently when I was shooting the second day of Scotland on Rails. Aperture 2.1 performed flawlessly on it: downloading cards was perfectly fast and moving through the UI was fine. I turned off preview generation on import, and that kept everything moving nicely.

I’ve been building software on it, surfing the web and RSS, doing email, light Aperture work, several apps open at once, no real problem.

There’s really nothing more I can add that Daivid Pogue hasn’t already said:

every now and then, a couple of messages come in that really irk me. These messages tell me how wrong I am about something I reviewed, which is fine — but they come from people who have *never even tried the product.*

It was that way with the iPhone, in the time after it was announced but before it was available. “This will be the biggest flop since the Cube,” went the critics. “No removable battery? Nobody will touch this thing.” Etc.

The blogs were full of this stuff.

As it turns out, they were massively, humiliatingly wrong. Four million iPhones were sold in the first 200 days. Its sales surpassed Treos, Windows Mobile phones — everybody but BlackBerry.

So what’s the lesson here? Simple enough: those vocal pre-release blogger-bashers are terrible predictors of a product’s success or failure.

All of this brings us to the MacBook Air. When it came to public pre-opinion, I knew I had another iPhone on my hands. Here it was, another Apple product with a stunning and sexy design, gorgeous software — and several missing standard features. (In the Air’s case, those features included a removable battery, an Ethernet jack, a FireWire jack and a built-in DVD drive.)

So confident was I that the spec-peepers would dump on this machine, I actually tried to pre-empt them in my review. I tried to explain that looks, size, shape, fit and finish actually matter, actually affect the pleasure you get from a machine. “But for anyone who shares Apple’s admiration for elegance,” I wrote, “the tradeoff is worth it. This laptop’s cool aluminum skin and smooth edges make it ridiculously satisfying to hold, carry, open and close. You can’t take your eyes or your hands off it.”

Needless to say, my tactic didn’t work. The feature counters blew right past my attempts to describe the differentness of this machine and dumped on it. “This will be the biggest flop since the Cube! No removable battery? Nobody will touch this thing!” Etc.

I have no idea what the Air’s sales are like, so I can’t yet say that the blogger-bashers were wrong again. I do know, however, that the Air has precisely the same effect on people (who actually *see it*) as the iPhone did: they’re awestruck. They want to hold it, to touch it

I don’t think I have ever agreed more fully with anything I’ve read on the internet. Exactly my experience.

I agree that it is a sexy package. One thing that does put me off it (aside from the fact that — design aside — there’s no compelling reason to upgrade from my rev. A BlackBook) is that the battery isn’t user-replaceable. Now, honestly, I guess that’s not a huge deal, since the cost to have the MBA serviced to replace the battery is the same as just purchasing a new battery (US$129), but what *is* more of a big deal is having to “survive” without my computer for the week or two turnaround time. I presume there are many MBA-supporters who will say “ah, but how often do you need a 2nd battery or need to replace the one you’ve got?” and I’m normally in that more pragmatic group of people. However, I am brutally hard on laptop batteries. My old 12″ PowerBook won’t last long enough to cross the room without being plugged in, and my BlackBook wasn’t much better until I replaced the battery. And that was only after about two years of non-professional use. I still always enjoy real-world, non-FUD and non-fanboy reviews like yours, so thanks for that.

Just out of curiosity, exactly how many computers do you have in your house, now??

I bought mine about the same time as you, except I went for the 1.6 Ghz one. I also have an iMac 24″ at home. I essentially use the little one. Except for Lightroom (yes, I’m that kind of guy).

When workmates or people around start complaining about the lack of dvd or whatelse, I unplug it violently from its magsafe and hand it to them. And they just shut their mouth.

That’s what happened to me first time I tried it in a store, and the reason that decided me to resell my MBP. No regrets. Ever.

I am happy you enjoy your MBA, it is a great little machine.
Your article just confirms my hard learned experience - no amount of words is enough to convince people about the great joy using Apple’s products until they get hands on experience. People are doubting Thomases and need to stick their fingers inside the stigmata ( I know it is just a fable, but nice one) to understand. I don’t argue with people any more. My 8 years old Cube does it much better than I ever could : )

And why should the non removable battery be a problem? Doesn’t some company make external ones already?

Does the MBA get very hot?

@blalor My understanding was that you could have the battery swapped in-store while you wait, so there probably won’t be the usual downtime if you live near a store.

We’re currently running four machines: I have a Mac Pro for development, a Mac mini server and the Air. My wife and kids share an iMac.

@Aaron The Air doesn’t get hotter than my Core Duo MacBook Pro. However, the fans do come on earlier and blow harder than I had expected.

@fraserspeirs hawt, i’ve had my 17″ MBP tweaked at 5000rpm for the last few months to stop my thighs from cooking

… i’m SOOO getting a MBA