Apple's MacBook Air is a winner by the thinnest of margins

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Apple has revamped their ultrathin MacBook Air with an enhanced 13" model and a new, even smaller 11-inch model (seen here in its traditional perch atop a 15-inch MacBook for reference). Among the many improvements: even the lesser model is powerful enough to run high-performance apps, like Photoshop.

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I had two big problems with the original MacBook Air, released back in early 2008. First, it was only "kind of" a real MacBook. It felt underpowered - the slow internal hard drive didn't help matters - and the Air's fan put up a ruckus when you threw a seriously processor-intensive task at it.

Its ports were a big practical problem. You only got one USB port. Given that the original Air had a teensy 80 gig hard drive, transferring photos and videos from a camera required either a portable powered USB hub or a great deal of patience. And because the ports were hidden inside a slim, drop-down hatch, many devices - USB flash drives, mobile broadband adapters, even many headphones - physically wouldn't fit.

But my biggest disconnect was the price. For $1,799 - the price of a true premium laptop, even in 2008 - you don't want to have to make such serious compromises. Even for a stylish notebook that was thin enough to slip under a door, like a ransom note.

Consumers seemed to share that same opinion. The Air, like the Apple TV and the Mac Mini, seemed to just sort of occupy a space in Apple's product line for two years, awaiting the inevitability of either death or a major evolution.

Evolution came last week. Apple spent some time alone in its room, seriously thought about What It Had Done, and emerged chastened and apologetic. Their two new Airs (a revamped edition of the original and a new, even smaller 11" version) address the original's shortcomings: they're real Macs, and they're reasonably-priced.

(By Apple standards, anyway.)

What Stays The Same

Both models carry through the signatures of the original: this is a small and mercilessly-thin notebook. You can slide either of these into a FedEx envelope and seal it. How thin- The leading edge of the 11-inch model is so thin that I accidentally got it wedged inside the optical drive slot of my MacBook when I carelessly pulled it closer.

The 13-inch model is 2.9 lbs. The 11-inch is just 2.3 lbs. On paper, the Air doesn't seem that much lighter than a 4.7-pound MacBook. But on your shoulder, inside a bag that you have to carry through airports and on the 1.2 miles from the commuter rail station to your office, it's a huge and blessed difference.

That's obviously the attraction of the Air: it's thin and light enough that carrying it around isn't "expensive." They say that the camera that takes the best photos is the one that you have with you, not the technically-superior one that you left at home or in your hotel room. It's the same story with computers. You're not likely to haul a thick, full-sized laptop with you across town to a meeting unless you're certain you'll need it. But a notebook that you can just pluck off of your desk and tuck under your arm like a magazine- Sure.

Build quality is excellent. These are still fairly expensive notebooks: the 11-inch starts at $999, while the cheapest 13-inch configuration is $1,299. But you do feel as though you've bought a true premium product. It's solid-body aluminum construction with a very satisfying fit and feel.

Apple has demonstrated a good sense of what can be sacrificed in the name of size and weight. The optical drive- Out. Good call. I can't remember the last time I actually used one. For installing software from a DVD, the Air still can wirelessly share the internal drive of any nearby Mac. If you want a "real" drive, Apple has dropped the price of their external USB SuperDrive to $79, or just use any old USB model.

Hard drive- Gone. Apple has gone all-in with solid-state storage; you can't buy an Air with a mechanical hard drive any more. That's probably the right choice for a machine like this.

Anybody who's attracted to the Air's unique design will happily (or maybe just "grudgingly") trade high storage capacity for the added durability of a drive with zero spinning parts, as well as the increased speed and savings in size and battery demands.

But "non-negotiable" features include anything that you have to touch or look at nonstop.

The keyboard is the same size as a MacBook Pro's. The trackpad is the full-sized multitouch device, too, though on the 11-inch model it's slightly shallower than the Pro's.

The screens are the same high quality glossy LED backlit jobbies found across the rest of the MacBook line. The Air has a native resolution of 1366 by 768 while the 13-inch goes all the way to 1440 by 900.

The Dull Part: Raw Specs

Both models are based on Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs. Choose between 1.4 or 1.6 GHz for the 11-inch and 1.86 or 2.13 for the 13-inch.

That's ample power for most consumer tasks but clearly at the low end for notebooks in this price range. Apple's $999 MacBook comes with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo standard. Apple didn't skimp on the graphics processor, though: an NVIDIA 320M (same as in the MacBook) should handle gaming and video quite well. Playback of HD video was smooth and clean on both machines.

I do wish that the Air's battery life were more impressive. A conventional MacBook, which has plenty of room inside for at 63.5 watt-hour battery and thus can offer 10 hours of what Apple calls "WiFi usage." The 13-inch Air offers seven hours and the even-smaller Air runs for just five.

Both models ship with a built-in iSight camera, a headphone jack (compatible with Apple's combo microphone/headset), a DisplayPort adapter for external video, and 2 USB ports.

What a difference a second USB port makes.

This feature alone flips the Air's Usability switch from "Often Impractical" to "Just Fine." Windows notebooks often ship with three USB ports. As silly as that sounds, there have indeed been times when I've wanted to transfer photos from a camera to an external hard drive without having to disconnect a broadband modem. The 13-inch model also includes an integrated SD card reader.

The Air's USB ports can power external devices like hard drives and portable scanners. And what an innovation: any connector will actually fit ... even the chunky ones. All ports are now flush with the edge of the Air.

A FireWire port would have been nice. The new Air's reliance on solid-state storage limits them to 64, 128, or 256 gigs of storage, which elevates the importance of external storage. Users who shift a lot of big files around will miss the higher-speed data connection. You're also zoinked out of the ability to dock your notebook to a desktop and mount it as an external hard drive. Like a second USB port, it's a feature you don't miss until the moment it's the simplest solution to a problem.

(Interesting: the Air comes with a "restore" disk that's actually a bootable waferlike USB flash drive. On a machine that has no DVD drive to boot from and can't be docked to another Mac, that's a very thoughtful touch.)

There's no Ethernet, either. As with the old Air, you can buy a 10/100 speed USB Ethernet adapter. Overall, though, the lack of FireWire and Ethernet are sensible choices, given that the Air isn't being sold as a tool for power-users, or as replacements for anybody's desktop machine.

A bigger issue for many people will be the fact that like a package of Birds-Eye green beans, the MacBook Air is sealed and frozen at the factory. You have plenty of hardware options at time of purchase but your MacBook Air will never have more storage or memory than it did when Apple ran your credit card.

The battery isn't swappable, either ... so you can't "infinitely extend" the Air's off-grid time by carrying spares.

Deep Soak Time with the 11-inch MacBook Air

I've been using the 11" model nonstop for five days now. It left me with the emphatic conclusion that the Air is truly - finally - a "real" Mac. The Air certainly didn't perform as well as my 15-inch MacBook Pro, but the key point is that it could handle every app and every task that I perform daily on my main machine.

The 11-inch size sells the whole the point of the Air in a way that the 13-inch doesn't. The larger model has the same footprint as any medium-sized notebook. The smaller one is both less wide and less deep (by about an inch and an inch and a half). It's so small that it really wants to be compared to the iPad, not other notebooks. Side by side, in fact, the 11-inch model looks like the legal-sized version of the letter-sized iPad.

That extra inch and a half in depth is a huge difference. It means that (like the iPad), it's one of those rare computers that you can actually use while flying Economy.

Despite its size, the 11-inch Air is extremely comfortable to work with. When Apple says "full-sized keyboard" they mean it. The Air's function keys are a little shorter but otherwise, the keyboard is the exact same size as my MacBook Pro's, as well as the keyboard that ships with Apple's desktops. I had no problems typing at full turbo speed.

The 11-inch screen packs a hell of a lot of pixels into a small area. When viewed from 16 inches away, text is a little harder to read and buttons and other controls are a little smaller and harder to click. But if it ever seems truly uncomfortable you can always switch to a lower screen resolution, or use your apps' built-in scaling features.

Although I missed the extra real estate of my Pro, I didn't find the Air to be any less comfortable to use. Even after the end of hours of work, even when I let the Air sit on a cushion of the sofa while streaming a movie, the machine was cool to the touch. And dead-quiet.

Lacking any moving parts, the only way it could make any mechanical noises would be if it were haunted.

[Update: My bad. An iFixit.com teardown of the 11-inch Air reveals a tiny fan mounted under the upper-right corner of the keyboard. And yet the Air has no visible ventilation slots, and I didn't hear the fan operate even once over five days of use. I can only sensibly conclude that the fan isn't actually hooked up to anything and was inserted into the Air just to make reviewers look foolish.]

Back to the point of "handling all of the tasks of my MacBook Pro." The weaker processor of the Air definitely creates some performance tradeoffs. But I was pleased to find that no app was really off the table. Playback of Flash and HD video was perfectly smooth. I was able to edit a hundred photos with Aperture (Apple's "pro" photo editor) and cut movies in iMovie. Even Photoshop CS5 wasn't off the table. Yes, absolutely: Photoshop's adjustment sliders weren't as interactive and agile on the Air as they are on my daily driver, but it runs credibly well.

(The prime test: did I, at any point, mutter "Oh, for ****'s sake!" while waiting for the 11" Air to do something I had asked- " No, I did not.)

The five-hour battery life that Apple promises for the 11" Air does worry me. Once again, the whole point of an Air is mobility. If the battery dies before you've gotten a productive afternoon out of it, or if you're forced to carry around a wall adapter wherever you go, the Air's compact size becomes less of a plus.

I was able to verify Apple's claims. I consistently got a solid 5+ hours of work out of the Air on a charge without turning off the WiFi or doing anything heroic in terms of energy conservation.

I also put the 11-inch through a couple of additional scenarios that a road warrior is likely to encounter. First, I tried to kill the battery via the most stressful real-world scenario I could think of: I edited hundreds of RAW-format photos in Aperture. It's a math-intensive job, so the CPU got a real workout. I kept the screen brightness at maximum. And my photo library was on an external USB hard drive, powered by the Air. Just to be a jerk, I navigated to a constantly-updating webpage that would keep the WiFi radio working.

I edited photos for 140 minutes before the Air reported that I needed to save my work and put it to sleep. I quit Aperture and disconnected the hard drive, and got another 20 minutes out of the battery before the Air went dark. Two hours and forty minutes of "full-service desktop" usage: not bad.

The other scenario in which you'd worry about battery life would be watching videos on a plane. For this test, I plugged in headphones, set the screen brightness at a comfortable level (just above 50%), turned off WiFi, and started playing .MP4 videos that had been ripped from DVD and encoded for local playback, not compressed and optimized for streaming.

Here's where we see the big advantage of solid-state drive. The Air got me all the way through "The Godfather" (just shy of three hours) and took me an hour and thirty-one minutes into "Godfather 2" before sleeping with the fishes. Nice job: that means that I can watch any movie I want on the plane and still have plenty of juice left over to get some real work done.

The SSD brings another benefit: iPad-style instant-on and instant-off. When you need to make tracks, just slap down the lid and toss the Air in your bag. There's no need to put it to sleep and then wait for the drive to spin down. When you pull it out of your bag again and open the screen, the Air is awake and ready to go by the time you set it on the table.

MacBook, MacBook Air ... or iPad-

So the Air is finally ready for prime time. But the buying decision is still immensely tricky and I honestly don't know how to advise people.

The Air is all about ultra-mobility. When you buy one, you're willfully making sacrifices to get that feature. The ability to travel with your whole media library and all of your apps isn't as important. Being able to run high-performance apps to the very best of their abilities isn't as important. You're also willing to trade a few hours of battery, an optical drive, Gigabit ethernet and high-speed Firewire.

The "MacBook Air, or conventional MacBook- " question is actually pretty simple, come to think of it. If you're on the fence, then the answer is "get a regular MacBook." If your reaction to the preceding paragraph was "Yes, so- " then you'll be very, very happy with the Air.

The more interesting question is probably "MacBook Air…or iPad- "

I've had an iPad for more than six months now. I've been surprised and pleased by its versatile. I've come to think of it as just another computer. It can easily handle the most important 80% of the tasks I perform on my MacBook…particularly the functions I need when I'm traveling. I can write and submit columns and book chapters. I can create and deliver presentations from it. It's a terrific media device, whether playing music and video from its built-in library or streaming from Netflix or Hulu. It even lets me offload photos and videos from my camera, edit them, and post them.

It would be a mistake to think of it as the equal of any MacBook. But whether I'm leaving the office for a few hours or leaving the house for a few days, the iPad is usually the only computer I need.

So let's make the iPad part of your deliberations. If you're seriously considering an iPad instead of an Air, don't even think about anything less than the 64-gigabyte model. $699. Add $69 for Apple's wireless keyboard, $50 for a good case that converts to an easel, and some loose change for a few apps to make up for the desktop software that you get with the Mac OS.

The final price tag comes in at $850…still way cheaper than a $999 11" Air. Plus, the iPad will give you a solid 10 hours of battery. You'll also have the option of leaving the keyboard behind when you won't need it, making the iPad into a much better book reader and movie player.

If you want an utterly unfair comparison: buy the $499 16 gig iPad and use the quite-serviceable virtual keyboard.

It's very tempting. But obviously, it's a mistake to think the iPad as a "real computer" on the same level as a MacBook. It's fine for excursions with specific, foreseeable and predictable expectations. Does that sound like a typical business trip to you- Having an Air means never chewing your lower lip in a hotel room and thinking "This problem would be a piece of cake if I had a MacBook with me."

Of the two Airs, the 11" is the true standout. It's lighter, smaller, and cheaper, and is a better articulation of the solutions that the Air was meant to solve. Every day when I took this Air out of a slim bag, I marveled that this is indeed a Real Computer in which I could place my full expectations and confidence.

It's harder to see the emphatic drive to own a 13" Air, though. The cheapest standard MacBook is made out of plastic instead of aluminum and it's as thick as…well, it's no thinner than you'd expect a modern notebook to be. But it's $300 less than the cheapest 13" Air, and it comes with none of its tradeoffs.

I'm left thinking about something that Douglas Adams once wrote about an experience had flying on the Concorde. A ticket on the supersonic transatlantic jet cost a lot more than regular service. You had to make some serious tradeoffs, too; Concorde had to be smaller and lighter than a conventional jet, which meant that it didn't offer the same space and comforts.

And the SST wasn't allowed to land at the airport close to the city, like the non-sonic-boom-ey kinds of planes could. When all of the time factors were taken into consideration, the supersonic flight got you to downtown London only about 30 minutes faster than a 747. "This plane," he wrote, "must therefore be full of 200 people for whom those 40 minutes are very, very important."

The MacBook Air would be a great choice for those Concorde passengers. Either you're attracted to its unique and considerable style and elegance…or the savings in size and weight are simply Very, Very Important to you. In which case no other solution will suffice.