The MacBook Air

Sleek, shiny and lightweight. Is there anything else a portable-computer user could want in such an uber cool device?

IT IS obvious that Apple’s latest ultraportable is aimed at mobile users who have a disdain for heavy notebook computers bristling with buttons, LEDs and ports.

Here is a seemingly paper-thin device in brushed metal with a gorgeous display and full-sized keyboard – its looks oozing science fiction, in our eyes – for the minimalists among us.

The MacBook Air is certainly a marvel to behold. But having said that, could anything less than such elegance be expected from the company that brought us the Macintosh and iPhone?

Despite its waif-like appearance, it is solidly built. Its casing durability and lightness come from a healthy dollop of aluminium in the manufacturing process, and we get a portable that's just 1.36kg in weight.

Compared to rival notebooks that are considered light at 1.9kg, Apple's contender is a flyweight among the heavyweights, in our book.

One minor gripe, though, is that the casing is so smooth that there hardly seems any spot that you can get a proper grip on; and if you're Mr Butter Fingers, the Air could slip right out of your hands.

In keeping with its sci-fi looks, all the ports are cleverly hidden inside a small, foldable latch that closes flush with the exterior when not needed.

Pop it out and you get the headphone jack, one USB port, and a micro-DVI port that can be fitted with two video adaptors for DVI and VGA output. The adaptors come bundled with the notebook.

LIGHT AS AIR: The MacBook Air is so light that you can hold it up with just one hand without difficulty.
This brings us to our next gripe, involving form versus function. It's nice that Apple opted to keep things neat with the well-hidden ports, but we think that such a limited number of ports may not go down well with most users.

The lack of a Firewire port presents a problem for users wanting to perform high-speed data transfers, such as the transferring of video files. It also doesn’t help that the connection port is so recessed within the casing that it becomes difficult to connect larger peripherals without having to resort to a USB extension cable.

On the opposite side of the notebook, you will find the teensy MagSafe charging port.

Note that it is different from the regular MagSafe port on other portables – Apple has set it at a slight slant. Should you need to plug in an older MacBook charger, it won't seat properly because of the angle.

Inside the Book

Opening up the Air, you are greeted by a nice large 13.3in LED backlit display, which has a brightness control to help conserve battery life.

With a native resolution of 1,200 x 800pixels, the screen looks great and the bright colours almost jump out at you. It also offers excellent viewing angles, with almost no hint of colour shifts when seen from different angles.

Unlike some other ultraportable notebooks that have smaller keyboards, the Air's full-sized backlit keyboard is very comfortable to use. No cramped fingers here, thank you.

The keys are well spaced out, giving you plenty of room to move about and there is a nice tactile feel to the keys as you type.

You will also like to know that the keyboard backlight automatically goes on or off depending on the ambient lighting around the notebook when it is being used.

LOTS OF SPACE: Unlike most ultra-portables, the Air has a full-sized keyboard and a new multitouch enabled trackpad.
Also, there is a bunch of shortcut keys tied to the “F” keys that gives you quick access to the brightness setting, Apple's exposé feature, keyboard backlight and some media function buttons that correspond with the iTunes music application.

The Air also has an enormous trackpad that gives you lots of space to move about and generally makes menu navigation really easy. So easy in fact, we never even thought of hooking up an optical mouse.

One new feature of the trackpad is that it supports multitouch gestures, which greatly enhances the way you would adjust item views in the Finder window and icon sizes.

You can also zoom in and out of photos by just pinching or moving apart your thumb and index finger on the touchpad. iPhone and iPod touch users will know how this works.

However, the best bit for us is how picture orientation can be adjusted by just twisting two fingers of one hand on the trackpad – really neat.

Performance

Running on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the Air is a capable workhorse with enough horsepower to easily take on everyday user tasks such as wordprocessing, web surfing as well as music and video playback.

It comes standard with 2GB RAM and this should suffice unless you are into video editing or other power hogging applications.

We were pleased to note that the Air is a very silent notebook. Throughout the entire review, we can't recall hearing it emit any sound, not even the sound of the hard disk spinning.

Startup is almost instantaneous from hibernation or sleep mode. This is a bonus if you are often making presentations or need to view a file quickly.

As for hard disk space, there isn’t a lot of real estate here. There's just 80GB, which is small by today’s standards – most notebooks have about 160GB as standard.

We also weren't impressed with the sound quality of the Air. There's a tiny mono-speaker hidden underneath the keyboard.

While it is loud enough to be heard, it sounds flat and just isn’t good for music or movies. You’re better off plugging in a headset or a bigger set of speakers for better sound quality.

WiFi connectivity is good and using this to surf the Web is smooth and satisfying. The built-in iSight webcam comes in handy when making video calls over the Internet.

While browsing on Safari, I used some of the multitouch gestures on the touchpad and found them useful for adjusting text sizes, or to scroll webpages.

Next up is Bluetooth connectivity; this helps with the Air's limited number of ports because you won't take up any when you use a wireless mouse.

TINY PORTS: A small foldable latch reveals the MacBook Air's three sole ports - the headphone jack, USB an micro-DVI port. Now, Apple claims the Air is able to go five hours without charging. We ran our own battery test, using the Air to surf the Web, watch a movie and perform some light processing tasks, and it fell short of the mark; only lasting three hours and 10 minutes in continuous use.

However, three hours of non-stop should still be acceptable to most mobile users.

Missing features

Apple has made some sacrifices to maintain the Air's slim form-factor. This means some features have had to be left out.

The most notable feature missing is an optical drive. Apple argues that consumers won’t miss this that much, but we beg to differ.

While we don’t hugely utilise an optical drive, it is a necessity when installing new programs, most of which are on a disc.

Apple’s solution to this is Remote Disc, which basically allows the Air to read and access data from an optical disc on another desktop or notebook computer over a wireless network.

Before you start installing programs using Remote Disc you are going to need to install the Remote Disc application on a PC or Mac with a disc drive. The installation process is quick and there aren’t a whole lot of settings you need to tweak.

SLIM JIM: The MacBook Air's slim form factor makes it easy to carry around. Once you are done installing, click on the Remote Disc icon listed on the left side of the Finder to remotely access any disc in the drive.

Having used Remote Disc to transfer some media off a DVD, I found that the Air needs to be within close proximity of the borrowed DVD drive in order to maintain a stable connection.

I transferred a 600MB video file from a nearby DVD and managed a transfer rate of roughly 37MB per minute.

Admittedly, Remote Disc is a handy tool for accessing data over a wireless network but it still has limitations.

Among them is that while you can browse the file contents of commercial DVDs, you cannot playback any media on the disc. You also can’t browse or listen to music CDs, let alone rip or burn CDs and DVDs over the network.

So what can you do with Remote Disc? Well, you can install applications, browse and transfer data from data CDs, as well as reinstall the operating system should the system crash.

Alternatively, if you find Remote Disc too troublesome there is the option to purchase an external USB-powered SuperDrive optical disc drive which will read both CDs and DVDs, as well as burn dual-layer DVDs.

The major drawback to the SuperDrive is that it only works with the Air