[Macworld]

Post your comments for MacBook Air (Mid 2009) here

[leicaman]

It may not be fast, but there's a girl here at our school who spends every lunch hour in the front lobby video chatting with friends and family back in England. She loves it to death, and I keep wondering if I'd be happy with one. But I don't think so. I use Photoshop too much.

[Hamranhansenhansen]

The MacBook Air is the first notebook I ever carried everywhere with me. Not just because it's so small, but also because it's so rugged. After 6 months in my carry bag it still looks brand new.
As for performance, it outperforms the Empty Air I was previously carrying everywhere by a wide margin. I went from zero to 2 CPU's, from zero to 2MB RAM, and from 0 to 120GB storage, so it is really an improvement. The 1 USB port seems very luxurious compared to the zero I previously had with me.

[Hamranhansenhansen]

> I keep wondering if I'd be happy
with one. But I don't think so.
I use Photoshop too much.
[/quote]
Photoshop runs great on the MacBook Air. It's specs exceed many current Photoshop setups. There are plenty of 2006 and 2007 machines out there running Photoshop just fine. You still have a Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM (just enough) and the latest NVIDIA graphics really help.
If you are sitting at a desk with it, you're better with an iMac with fully-loaded RAM of course, for about the same price and much better performance. But if you want to have Photoshop with you all the time and use it whenever and wherever, then an Air and portable art tablet are very liberating.
I do freelance Photoshop work. Often I go to a client's studio and they have a really awful workstation for me to use, sometimes running Windows. So I unplug the display and hook on the correct DisplayPort, and I have a MacBook Air and 9x12 Intuos in my bag and in no time I'm running Photoshop with all my AppleScripts available and whatnot. Very productive to be able to circumvent lousy I-T (which is most I-T) that way.

[RonAnnArbor]

I'm not sure the benchmark tests in this particular instance match what most people do on an MBA -- I have used the previous models, and just got the 2.13 MBA last week for myself...
I'm not sure why you are getting those benchmarks on the iMovie and iTunes and Photoshop -- maybe it's your test unit? Mine is doing everything faster than that.
And I'm not sure how much iMovie etc most MBA users are using --
In real life, I'm find the 2.13 to be SO much faster in opening web pages, opening programs, things like Pages and Numbers basically open instantly; web pages open instantly -- there was always a lag with even with the 1.88. I'm not seeing any skipping of frames while watching movies on iTunes (which was apaprent on the 1.88) and the whole thing just seems to zip along faster.
I wonder how many MBA users really use Cinema 4D XL...I don't think those users are going to even look at the MBA as an option.
I'm wondering if better benchmarks aren't a comparison of the original model(s) to the current in:
- Opening Web Page (Google)
- Opening Web Page (Apple.com)
-Opening Pages
-Opening Numbers
-Opening Word 08
-OPening XL 08
- Saving document Pages
- Saving document Word 08
- Connection time to iTunes Store in iTunes
- Download of one song on iTunes
Those seem like more real-world benchmarks for they typical MBA user - and I bet you will see huge differences in speed between the original MBA and the current 2.13 version...

[WilfredLaurier]

Are the new MacBook Air effected by the SATA 1.5Gbps limit issue? A firmware was released for the MacBook Pro, but not for the MacBook Air even though they have the same chipset. If the previous MacBook Air had SATA II 3Gbps enabled, but the new MacBook Air are still hobbled by the 1.5Gbps limit, than that could explain why the previous high-end SSD models are faster than the current SSD models.

[Jason Snell_old]

@Hamranhansenhansen: Agreed, Photoshop CS4 runs extremely well on the Air, especially with SSD.
@RonAnnArbor: We test the same tests with every system so we can get a baseline and compare systems. Of course, few people will ever use Cinema 4D XL or Compressor on an Air. But it provides a point of comparison with other systems, letting us say definitively (for instance) that the Air is slower than any other shipping Mac.
We also test lots of more common everyday tasks, including creating archives in the finder, searching and replacing in Pages, a Word scroll test... the list goes on. We don't list all our results in our stories mostly because they would be really big and boring, though I suppose we could consider adding them as an addendum for the curious.
So basically, my answer is: we run both kinds of tests, the stress-test kind and the more casual-use scenarios. (We actually found speed disparities in both places, though tilted toward the processor-intensive tasks, which again -- my theory -- probably has to do with heat management and processor throttling.)
And unless you've got our test scripts I don't think you can actually say that you've done our tests and see different results than we do. ;-)

[Jason Snell_old]

Wilfried: We've been in contact with Apple about this issue, told them what we've seen, and sent them our data. They haven't yet offered any explanation, but we hope that they will at some point in the future.

[Martian]

Macworld said:

>But if the specs that matter most to you are light weight and small size, the MacBook Air is the system for you.

How can you call the Air “small”? Light yes, but how is it small? The footprint is identical to the real 13” MB/MBP, and the thickness difference is a truncated wedge of 1/5 to 4/5 inch.

And if you want versatile connectivity and add in the extra dongles and hubs the Air needs, it is even “less small” than the other 13 inchers.

In the real world, a 13” MB/MBP will fit anywhere an Air will fit. Now a netbook really is small and has all the advantages and disadvantages that go with being small.

[palane]

With the 13" MacBook finally getting its deserved Pro upgrade, any desire I would have for the Air vanished into thin...
BB

[spinoza2]

Jason, I think @RonAnnArbor makes some very important points here, points that MacWorld should take seriously in its reviews. Your Speedmark tests may be useful for a "lab" comparison with other machines, but at least as important are the "real-world" performance routines that a MBA user will typically carry out (Safari, iLife, iWork, Mail, etc.). I've also noticed that the new crop of MacBooks are noticeably faster (astonishingly so) in executing basic browser, mail, image-manipulation routines than in previous models. The new MBA's are noticeably zippier than my first gen MBA, and even with my "older" machine I have no complaints with it managing all the Safari, iLife, and iWork routines I throw at it.
But you make virtually no mention of any of this in your review--aren't these real-world perceptions arguably more important than your Speedmark tests for most people considering the purchase of a MacBook Air? I know several academics who, like you, could not be forcibly pried from their MacBook Airs because they so love them. Isn't there a reason for this? Your sterile "lab" review would make my old Sony Vaio hold up pretty nicely to the MBA, but having used both I know that in a "real world" comparison the Vaio couldn't hold a candle to the MBA. Somehow your reviews have to do a better job in expressing this real-world comparison, I find this review off-the-mark in fairly assessing the MBA's capabilities.

[blecch]

SSDs are really the wave of the future: no moving parts, no noise, low power, fast read/write, no seek time. The current downsides are cost, capacity, and limited write cycles.
I'd like to know what the boot time is on the Air with an SSD vs. a MacBook Pro with a hard drive.

[rab777hp]

What really irks me are people who say 'oh my god the air is unbelievable because its so light and ooo, it has a full size keyboard! Well guess what? a keyboard takes up horizontal, not vertical space, so why are you screaming that the MBA doesn't make compromises when it doesn't even have an optical drive
So just shut up apple

[Jason Snell_old]

@Spinoza: I appreciate your thoughtful feedback. (Someone accusing me of not being generous enough to the Air -- that's a new one.) The problem is, in the real world for basic tasks, almost every computer is fast enough. My hacked one-core netbook can do Web and e-mail and word processing. You're right, though, that I could probably put it in some different contexts. For example, I find it difficult to use iMovie on the Air and GarageBand is even rougher. There are definitely intense tasks where it fails, due to how slow it is and the throttling that happens when it overheats.
I believe I say in the story that the first-gen MBAs were much slower. The second-gen updates dramatically improved the hardware. This revision does less (if anything) for the platform, so the price tag is the big story.
@Martian: In terms of volume, the Air is truly small. :-) You're right that it's pretty much the same as the 13" MBP in two dimensions. I mentioned that in my story but it ended up getting cut when I reorganized the story and took out some of the wackier stuff I had written. I guess I just got tired of saying "thin" so I changed it up with "small." Maybe a little less precise than it could have been.
@blecch: I can tell you boot times in seconds for the Airs. 30 and 33 for the old and new SSD models; 49 and 46 for the old and new HD models. SSD is definitely faster at reading, and it pays off on boot to the tune of 15-20 seconds.
@rab777hp: The Air could be narrower and still have a full-sized keyboard, it's true - like the 12-inch PowerBook was. I'd love for Apple to make a laptop that small, though the screen would be smaller. I think the reaction is due largely to the smaller keyboards on the netbooks, which (IMO) are really not suitable for anyone who types as a part of their job.
For the record, I don't miss the optical drive on the Air at all, except when I'm trying to restore from a Time Machine backup on a USB drive. :-) I never used the optical drive in my old MacBook.