7 ms·

Review of the 11" MacBook Air

106 points by flapjack 16y ago

diego 16y ago
I own the 13" version. I spent some time testing both at the Apple Store. I really wanted to get the 11" one, but the upper row of keys is significantly thinner. As someone who uses vim all the time, this means missing the esc key very frequently. My advice would be to test both versions as much as you can and see which one works better for you.
- bosie 16y ago
  i use vim a lot and i got the 11". i simply remap capslock to esc, which i would do anyways.
- derwiki 16y ago
  ive been remapping 'esc' to be triggered by rapidly hitting 'jj' and havent really run into this problem. jj is also more convenient than a fullsized esc key.
- spudlyo 16y ago
  You can always type control-[ in lieu of escape.
megaframe 16y ago
I got the 11" and it does Starcraft on medium settings better than my wine session on a quad core 8800GTS does. Boot time of 16sec is also kind of a moot point... it drops in and out of sleep so effortlessly I doubt I'll ever need to reboot the thing.
- fredoliveira 16y ago
  Indeed. This has been the case with all my recent macs, actually. Why reboot (or shut down) if you can always just put it to sleep quickly.
there 16y ago
i've been using an 11" air as my only development machine for a month or two. a few minor things worth mentioning: - no backlit keyboard - no IR interface, so no ability to use a non-bluetooth remote control - the LCD screen is glossy, but it's just a film over the screen, not a glass/plastic sheet over the entire display. as a result, the glare isn't as bad as the macbook pro. - because the display is very thin, the glowing apple logo behind the screen sometimes shows through on the front.
- nasht 16y ago
  I have been using the 11" for a couple of months now. I also love it but I am more productive at a real desktop with large screen and large keyboard. I have never seen the apple logo shine through the screen. Take that unit back for a replacement.
  - there 16y ago
    i have two of them, and one had its entire display replaced. all three displays show the logo through under certain lighting conditions.
    - barrym 16y ago
      Does the same on my 13 inch - it freaked me out the first time I saw it. Same for everyone else in my office who owns one.
    - wyclif 16y ago
      That is completely unacceptable, and Apple needs to fix it fast.
- cageyjames 16y ago
  re: backlit keyboard Once you live with it, you can't live without it. I've become so spoiled in my years....
  - jrockway 16y ago
mark_l_watson 16y ago
I bought the entry level 11" MacBook Air 4 weeks ago and now it is the system I use for over 90% of my work, writing,and web browsing. Caveat: most of my work is straight-up Ruby development, Rails development (both using RubyMine 3.01), and Clojure with Emacs. All three of these development scenarios take up little in the way of CPU or memory. I use TexShop for writing. I do sit at my desk with a large external monitor occasionally, but not often. The only thing I don't like is the tiny escape key and I'll probably end up remapping it. Otherwise this is my favorite home computer ever (and I have owned many, starting with a PDP 8 one board, then serial number 71 Apple II, etc.) Both the light weight and a SSD drive make for a great experience. I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop for that.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop for that. Why not use your Air? Expecting insufficient screen space?
  - mark_l_watson 16y ago
    Screen space is OK. However, I need to run NetBeans, web app, and DB 2. The 2 gigs of RAM is insufficient. I am happy keeping the Air for everything else and setting up the Pro for this one project.
    - masklinn 16y ago
      Oh yeah, I can understand that. Why didn't you get the 4GB upgrade? I'd have thought of that one as a no-brainer.
- statictype 16y ago
  How do you keep 2 separate notebooks to work with? How do you access your mail, code libraries, music, important files etc... on both? Do you sync them with dropbox or something? I have 2 laptops - a Vaio for Windows related work and a Macbook for mac/iphone related work and I'm always struggling about which one to take when I go on a trip (when I don't have any specific work but like to keep a laptop handy anyway). The Macbook is lighter and more convenient but the Vaio has most of my mail and personal files.
srgseg 16y ago
Two things that really bug me: 1. No cleartype. I.e. although there is subpixel antialiasing, fonts aren't optimized for the pixel grid. Thus, the fonts are much clearer when I boot to Windows and so I feel like everything is fuzzy when I boot back to Mac OS. This isn't a problem for the web, but for coding and SSH it's terrible. I can't use Windows full time though because Spaces is so outstanding and I don't get trackpad options under Windows. 2. Excel on Mac lacks my most used feature: web data import. Windows Excel lets me choose a table inside a web browser, and the data in that table (stock quotes/currency rates/etc) are imported into Excel (and re-retrieved just by pushing F9). Excel on Mac does allow you to manually create text files that describe web data import which would be a possible workaround except that the sites I use require a login, and Windows Excel can save cookie state because of its tight integration with IE, but Mac Excel can't.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  My font-rendering beefs seem quite transient, I've been a detractor and appreciator of plain aliased, ClearType and Mac style at various times. The only consistency has been Linux distro defaults looking gash ;)
  - nagnatron 16y ago
    You can easily set it to be pretty nice(hinting to slight or none, subpixel rendering). One very nice thing about linux is that it works very, very well for high-dpi screens.
- chc 16y ago
  The first point is a longstanding difference of opinion between different users. The thing is, fonts on Windows in general are sharper but mangle the letterforms, while fonts on the Mac look just how they were designed but have to sacrifice sharpness to do so with current display resolutions. So, basically, the question is: Is readability more a function of the font's design or contrast of the luminance?
  - Groxx 16y ago
stcredzero 16y ago
My alternative: Put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD 300 in a 13" Macbook and max-out the RAM. It will be bigger and heavier, with less battery life, but if you already have a Macbook, this is a much cheaper move. The RealSSD has background garbage collection, so you don't have to worry about TRIM. You only need to do two things: 1) noatime and 2) make sure you're using less than 220GB. I did this, and the performance is fantastic. (Original 13" unibody Macbook with RAM upgraded to 6GB.) Everything happens instantly. I had journalling off, because it increases disk writes by 12%, but OS X compensates by cranking up its RAM cache. Keep journalling on, as it helps boot-up and shut-down happen quickly and things just seem to run faster without the system managing the really large RAM cache to disk. (Another factor: The nasty bug in XCode 3.1 requiring you to reboot your machine to unfreeze the simulator. This makes fast reboots a big win for me. Otherwise, I'd use sleep and only reboot occasionally.) For increased battery life on the plane, I have a Tekkeon myPower All, which I also sometimes use to power a mobile 4G hotspot. You can find a $14 Magsafe cord on eBay, and solder it to a male Adaptaplug from Radioshack to make yourself an adapter. EDIT: If you have an older Core Duo plastic Macbook capable of supporting more than 4GB of RAM, then I'd recommend slapping a RealSSD into it. You'll have something lighter than a 13" aluminum with great performance.
- dedward 16y ago
  Curious - how does background GC eliminate the need for TRIM? I know it can use a set of unallocated blocks and clean them and swap them in and out where necessary - but without knowledge of the filesystem structure itself (TRIM) - it's always going to be sub-optimal. You'll have some fast write-space available, but not necessarily the full amount you could.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    My understanding is that OS X/HFS+ already optimizes for reusing already allocated blocks. This means that fast write-space is conserved as much as possible at the expense of larger commit-loads from the OS's RAM cache when writing to already allocated blocks. Also, what I've read seems to indicate that OS X behaves sub-optimally, but this is still good enough to support snappy behavior under normal workloads.
harold 16y ago
I recently purchased the 11 with the same config. Xcode runs happily enough on my iOS and Mac OS projects. It runs my web dev stack just fine (Textmate, Python, Django, Nginx, Apache, Postgres) It reminds me of how much I appreciated the form factor of my old 12" Powerbook back in the day. I got a lot of mileage out of that little machine. The speakers sound tinny (under the keyboard) and I wish it had a proper ethernet port. The webcam doesn't seem to do as well in low light compared to the one in my MBP. Overall I'm very happy with it and it's already been getting a lot more use than I expected considering it was purchased as a secondary machine.
- elithrar 16y ago
  Same here — I have the 1.6/4GB/128SSD version of the 11", and it's been fantastic since day one. I use it for Rails development, general web stuff & some light Lightroom work (when pressed), and as a second machine to a MBP that lives at home with a 23" external, but I vastly prefer the Air whenever I have the choice. The MBP really only gets used for when I'm editing clients' work in Lightroom & PS, where the CPU power makes the difference. Thing is, the Air makes my 13" MBP seem fat — and the 13" is actually a pretty slim machine as far as laptops go these days.
d_r 16y ago
I got the 13" Air (highest specs: 2.13Ghz+4GB) about a month ago and am completely loving it. I usually have Xcode, Photoshop, (occasional) Eclipse, and a slew of other tools open and it performs like a charm. Most useful "feature": the battery really lasts around 6+ hours, esp. if you're not using wi-fi. This made some long airplane flights bearable. I used to dread taking my previous Macbook Pro to a coffee shop, travel, etc. because it was bulky, required always plugging in the charger, etc. No more. Since it's so accessible on the go, my productivity has increased and I can quickly code up ideas anywhere. It did take a week to get used to the smaller pixel size on the 13" screen-that-fits-a-15" resolution. Sorry for the fanboy post, but seriously, this machine made my life as a developer that much better.
- jjcm 16y ago
  Same specs here. Still having issues with it even after the firmware patch though. If it sleeps after idle, it almost never wakes up. Have to do a forced reboot. I do all of my development work over ssh, so it's never really a problem - I haven't lost work it yet. Nevertheless it is kind of annoying (though the quick boot time helps mitigate that somewhat).
  - d_r 16y ago
    Ah, that sounds lousy. :( I wonder if it's a defective batch or something in my usage pattern that avoids this issue. Have you tried getting a replacement from a Genius bar? They are usually pretty helpful.
jjg 16y ago
"I haven’t felt so thrilled by a new piece of hardware since I bought our first iPad..." That long, eh?
inovica 16y ago
I bought the top 11" that I could and I love it. It has become my main machine. Not since the 12" PowerBook have I loved a machine - sad as that sounds. The form factor fits me and I've been much more productive with it
danilocampos 16y ago
I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational drive when needed, and my machine now screams. It's heavier, sure, but I don't travel much and I love having all the additional internal storage. I still get over 8 hours of battery and the machine is silent as long as I'm not accessing anything on the rotational drive.
- mmastrac 16y ago
  +1. I put a 140GB Intel X-25 in my old non-unibody Mac. This thing boots so fast I can barely notice it. The only thing I really miss out on is the extended battery life of the newer macs.
- nzadrozny 16y ago
  Those AppleScripts sound interesting -- mind sharing a link to more info?
  - ddinch 16y ago
    I, too, would like to see these AppleScripts!
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    They're nothing special, and I can quote them right here if you like: To mount a partition: do shell script "diskutil mount PARTITION_UUID" Where PARTITION_UDID is the partition's UUID as returned by diskutil's info command. To unmount all partitions: try do shell script "diskutil unmount PARTITION_UUID" end try try do shell script "diskutil unmount NEXT_PARTITION_UUID" end try The try is there in case one partition is mounted and another isn't – won't throw an error in those cases. Just compile those as self-contained apps, drop them in your dock and you're good to go. It's pretty manual stuff, I have to remember to launch the appropriate script at the beginning and end of a task that involves the HDD, but it's not much of a problem, since I don't use it that often. Meanwhile, you get a silent MBP, with a smidge better battery life, since the HDD isn't spinning needlessly. Looking into auto-mounting the partition when a symlink is accessed, got a SuperUser question going here: http://superuser.com/questions/228028/mount-drive-when-symbolic-link-is-accessed/ http://superuser.com/questions/228028/mount-drive-when-symbo...
yesimahuman 16y ago
I chose the 13" over the 11". The 11" had too small of a screen for my tastes and felt like a netbook. The 13" has a really nice resolution and feels amazing for typing (as the laptop is so thin your palms rest perfectly on it). My 13" is not a netbook. It is a powerful laptop that I now absolutely love and do so much on. It's also my first mac, but I prefer the feel over my friends 13" macbook pro so I think I made the right choice.
stcredzero 16y ago
Another good satchel for the 11" Macbook Air: http://amzn.com/B001F7FMUA http://amzn.com/B001F7FMUA I have one of these for my old tc1100 Windows stylus tablet. It should fit the 11" Air quite handily as well as the iPad.
jrockway 16y ago
People are worried that 128G is not enough for a boot drive!? On my eeepc, I did it in 4G. On my desktop, I did it in 9.8G: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 26G 9.8G 15G 41% / /dev/sda1 894M 19M 827M 3% /boot /dev/mapper/md0_crypt 917G 238G 680G 26% /home The key is to keep all your movies on an extra drive :P
hogu 16y ago
problems waking up from sleep http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630327&start=0&tstart=0 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630327&#3... we have this problem with ours, we've installed the newest firmware updates as well, I'm hoping they fix this soon. other than that, seems pretty good.
enneff 16y ago
I bought the 11" when it came out and it quickly became something I don't fo anywhere without. I used to carry my 13" MBP in a nice laptop backpack, but now I have a small satchel bag which can hold the Air as well as my essentials. With 3G tethering it's SO useful to always have a real computer with Internet access at my disposal. I still have and use my MBP and iMac, but I use them much less. Convenience trumps power 90% of the time.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
siglesias 16y ago
Is anybody else holding out for the 3G compatible Air?
- smhinsey 16y ago
  I thought about it, but like with the iPad, I ended up not bothering with it. My thinking is that now that 4g is rolling out and the next thing is probably in the wings, it's better to use your phone as a wifi hub and connect that way. I just got a g2 and t-mobile makes no attempt to prevent you from doing this, at least as far as I can tell, and their 4g service is super fast so far.
tchock23 16y ago
I bought the 11" Air shortly after it came out as a fun little secondary notebook, and liked it so much I picked up the 13" as well for regular work purposes (replacing a 15" MBP). I just finished coding an app on the 11" and it worked great. I never had a problem with the screen size or performance, and also have never had a problem with the apple logo showing through the display that another poster mentioned (on either the 11" or the 13"). I do occasionally hook it up to a 23" monitor when I need to do any design work, since there is a point where the 11" display is just too small for some tasks. My only regret was going with the low-end 11" system. I really should have opted for the higher end 11", but didn't at the time because I was really buying it as "fun" purchase and the $999 entry price point was pretty attractive. If you're considering one, definitely spend the extra money to get the next step up.
kiranryali 16y ago
Got the 13" version with the 4GB ram upgrade. Works great for Android/iPhone/Web development. Loving it so far, haven't used by dell since. In fact, I'm going to give it to my mom (Core i7, NVidia GT435M)
bnewton 16y ago
I've checked out the Macbook Air at the Apple Store a few times and I'm so close to just selling my i5 MBP for a fully spec out 13" Air. I like the idea of having such a light and still powerful system for web and ios development. From the sounds of it I wouldn't be giving up to much going with the Air over the MBP.
- tchock23 16y ago
  That's exactly what I did, and I couldn't be happier. It's so light that I find myself checking my laptop bag just to see if it's still in there. I went with the highest-end 13" configuration so I didn't lose any performance in the transition, and haven't noticed any discernible difference in "real world" use.
lwat 16y ago
I know this is blasphemy but is anyone running Win 7 on their 11" Air?
yuvipanda 16y ago
I have a 10" Samsung N210 - proper 'netbook' (Atom, 1G RAM, etc) - and is fast enough for my dev needs (HTML/CSS, C, Python). I do need to farm compiling out to my main machine (a quad core) with distcc if I need to compile anything >10k LOC though. I'm happy with it.

106 points by flapjack 16y ago

diego 16y ago

I own the 13" version. I spent some time testing both at the Apple Store. I really wanted to get the 11" one, but the upper row of keys is significantly thinner. As someone who uses vim all the time, this means missing the esc key very frequently. My advice would be to test both versions as much as you can and see which one works better for you.

bosie 16y ago
i use vim a lot and i got the 11". i simply remap capslock to esc, which i would do anyways.
derwiki 16y ago
ive been remapping 'esc' to be triggered by rapidly hitting 'jj' and havent really run into this problem. jj is also more convenient than a fullsized esc key.
spudlyo 16y ago
You can always type control-[ in lieu of escape.

megaframe 16y ago

I got the 11" and it does Starcraft on medium settings better than my wine session on a quad core 8800GTS does. Boot time of 16sec is also kind of a moot point... it drops in and out of sleep so effortlessly I doubt I'll ever need to reboot the thing.

fredoliveira 16y ago
Indeed. This has been the case with all my recent macs, actually. Why reboot (or shut down) if you can always just put it to sleep quickly.

there 16y ago

i've been using an 11" air as my only development machine for a month or two. a few minor things worth mentioning: - no backlit keyboard - no IR interface, so no ability to use a non-bluetooth remote control - the LCD screen is glossy, but it's just a film over the screen, not a glass/plastic sheet over the entire display. as a result, the glare isn't as bad as the macbook pro. - because the display is very thin, the glowing apple logo behind the screen sometimes shows through on the front.

nasht 16y ago
I have been using the 11" for a couple of months now. I also love it but I am more productive at a real desktop with large screen and large keyboard. I have never seen the apple logo shine through the screen. Take that unit back for a replacement.
- there 16y ago
  i have two of them, and one had its entire display replaced. all three displays show the logo through under certain lighting conditions.
  - barrym 16y ago
    Does the same on my 13 inch - it freaked me out the first time I saw it. Same for everyone else in my office who owns one.
  - wyclif 16y ago
    That is completely unacceptable, and Apple needs to fix it fast.
cageyjames 16y ago
re: backlit keyboard Once you live with it, you can't live without it. I've become so spoiled in my years....
- jrockway 16y ago

mark_l_watson 16y ago

I bought the entry level 11" MacBook Air 4 weeks ago and now it is the system I use for over 90% of my work, writing,and web browsing. Caveat: most of my work is straight-up Ruby development, Rails development (both using RubyMine 3.01), and Clojure with Emacs. All three of these development scenarios take up little in the way of CPU or memory. I use TexShop for writing. I do sit at my desk with a large external monitor occasionally, but not often. The only thing I don't like is the tiny escape key and I'll probably end up remapping it. Otherwise this is my favorite home computer ever (and I have owned many, starting with a PDP 8 one board, then serial number 71 Apple II, etc.) Both the light weight and a SSD drive make for a great experience. I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop for that.

masklinn 16y ago
> I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop for that. Why not use your Air? Expecting insufficient screen space?
- mark_l_watson 16y ago
  Screen space is OK. However, I need to run NetBeans, web app, and DB 2. The 2 gigs of RAM is insufficient. I am happy keeping the Air for everything else and setting up the Pro for this one project.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Oh yeah, I can understand that. Why didn't you get the 4GB upgrade? I'd have thought of that one as a no-brainer.
statictype 16y ago
How do you keep 2 separate notebooks to work with? How do you access your mail, code libraries, music, important files etc... on both? Do you sync them with dropbox or something? I have 2 laptops - a Vaio for Windows related work and a Macbook for mac/iphone related work and I'm always struggling about which one to take when I go on a trip (when I don't have any specific work but like to keep a laptop handy anyway). The Macbook is lighter and more convenient but the Vaio has most of my mail and personal files.

srgseg 16y ago

Two things that really bug me: 1. No cleartype. I.e. although there is subpixel antialiasing, fonts aren't optimized for the pixel grid. Thus, the fonts are much clearer when I boot to Windows and so I feel like everything is fuzzy when I boot back to Mac OS. This isn't a problem for the web, but for coding and SSH it's terrible. I can't use Windows full time though because Spaces is so outstanding and I don't get trackpad options under Windows. 2. Excel on Mac lacks my most used feature: web data import. Windows Excel lets me choose a table inside a web browser, and the data in that table (stock quotes/currency rates/etc) are imported into Excel (and re-retrieved just by pushing F9). Excel on Mac does allow you to manually create text files that describe web data import which would be a possible workaround except that the sites I use require a login, and Windows Excel can save cookie state because of its tight integration with IE, but Mac Excel can't.

frou_dh 16y ago
My font-rendering beefs seem quite transient, I've been a detractor and appreciator of plain aliased, ClearType and Mac style at various times. The only consistency has been Linux distro defaults looking gash ;)
- nagnatron 16y ago
  You can easily set it to be pretty nice(hinting to slight or none, subpixel rendering). One very nice thing about linux is that it works very, very well for high-dpi screens.
chc 16y ago
The first point is a longstanding difference of opinion between different users. The thing is, fonts on Windows in general are sharper but mangle the letterforms, while fonts on the Mac look just how they were designed but have to sacrifice sharpness to do so with current display resolutions. So, basically, the question is: Is readability more a function of the font's design or contrast of the luminance?
- Groxx 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago

My alternative: Put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD 300 in a 13" Macbook and max-out the RAM. It will be bigger and heavier, with less battery life, but if you already have a Macbook, this is a much cheaper move. The RealSSD has background garbage collection, so you don't have to worry about TRIM. You only need to do two things: 1) noatime and 2) make sure you're using less than 220GB. I did this, and the performance is fantastic. (Original 13" unibody Macbook with RAM upgraded to 6GB.) Everything happens instantly. I had journalling off, because it increases disk writes by 12%, but OS X compensates by cranking up its RAM cache. Keep journalling on, as it helps boot-up and shut-down happen quickly and things just seem to run faster without the system managing the really large RAM cache to disk. (Another factor: The nasty bug in XCode 3.1 requiring you to reboot your machine to unfreeze the simulator. This makes fast reboots a big win for me. Otherwise, I'd use sleep and only reboot occasionally.) For increased battery life on the plane, I have a Tekkeon myPower All, which I also sometimes use to power a mobile 4G hotspot. You can find a $14 Magsafe cord on eBay, and solder it to a male Adaptaplug from Radioshack to make yourself an adapter. EDIT: If you have an older Core Duo plastic Macbook capable of supporting more than 4GB of RAM, then I'd recommend slapping a RealSSD into it. You'll have something lighter than a 13" aluminum with great performance.

dedward 16y ago
Curious - how does background GC eliminate the need for TRIM? I know it can use a set of unallocated blocks and clean them and swap them in and out where necessary - but without knowledge of the filesystem structure itself (TRIM) - it's always going to be sub-optimal. You'll have some fast write-space available, but not necessarily the full amount you could.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  My understanding is that OS X/HFS+ already optimizes for reusing already allocated blocks. This means that fast write-space is conserved as much as possible at the expense of larger commit-loads from the OS's RAM cache when writing to already allocated blocks. Also, what I've read seems to indicate that OS X behaves sub-optimally, but this is still good enough to support snappy behavior under normal workloads.

harold 16y ago

I recently purchased the 11 with the same config. Xcode runs happily enough on my iOS and Mac OS projects. It runs my web dev stack just fine (Textmate, Python, Django, Nginx, Apache, Postgres) It reminds me of how much I appreciated the form factor of my old 12" Powerbook back in the day. I got a lot of mileage out of that little machine. The speakers sound tinny (under the keyboard) and I wish it had a proper ethernet port. The webcam doesn't seem to do as well in low light compared to the one in my MBP. Overall I'm very happy with it and it's already been getting a lot more use than I expected considering it was purchased as a secondary machine.

elithrar 16y ago
Same here — I have the 1.6/4GB/128SSD version of the 11", and it's been fantastic since day one. I use it for Rails development, general web stuff & some light Lightroom work (when pressed), and as a second machine to a MBP that lives at home with a 23" external, but I vastly prefer the Air whenever I have the choice. The MBP really only gets used for when I'm editing clients' work in Lightroom & PS, where the CPU power makes the difference. Thing is, the Air makes my 13" MBP seem fat — and the 13" is actually a pretty slim machine as far as laptops go these days.

d_r 16y ago

I got the 13" Air (highest specs: 2.13Ghz+4GB) about a month ago and am completely loving it. I usually have Xcode, Photoshop, (occasional) Eclipse, and a slew of other tools open and it performs like a charm. Most useful "feature": the battery really lasts around 6+ hours, esp. if you're not using wi-fi. This made some long airplane flights bearable. I used to dread taking my previous Macbook Pro to a coffee shop, travel, etc. because it was bulky, required always plugging in the charger, etc. No more. Since it's so accessible on the go, my productivity has increased and I can quickly code up ideas anywhere. It did take a week to get used to the smaller pixel size on the 13" screen-that-fits-a-15" resolution. Sorry for the fanboy post, but seriously, this machine made my life as a developer that much better.

jjcm 16y ago
Same specs here. Still having issues with it even after the firmware patch though. If it sleeps after idle, it almost never wakes up. Have to do a forced reboot. I do all of my development work over ssh, so it's never really a problem - I haven't lost work it yet. Nevertheless it is kind of annoying (though the quick boot time helps mitigate that somewhat).
- d_r 16y ago
  Ah, that sounds lousy. :( I wonder if it's a defective batch or something in my usage pattern that avoids this issue. Have you tried getting a replacement from a Genius bar? They are usually pretty helpful.

jjg 16y ago

"I haven’t felt so thrilled by a new piece of hardware since I bought our first iPad..." That long, eh?

inovica 16y ago

I bought the top 11" that I could and I love it. It has become my main machine. Not since the 12" PowerBook have I loved a machine - sad as that sounds. The form factor fits me and I've been much more productive with it

danilocampos 16y ago

I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational drive when needed, and my machine now screams. It's heavier, sure, but I don't travel much and I love having all the additional internal storage. I still get over 8 hours of battery and the machine is silent as long as I'm not accessing anything on the rotational drive.

mmastrac 16y ago
+1. I put a 140GB Intel X-25 in my old non-unibody Mac. This thing boots so fast I can barely notice it. The only thing I really miss out on is the extended battery life of the newer macs.
nzadrozny 16y ago
Those AppleScripts sound interesting -- mind sharing a link to more info?
- ddinch 16y ago
  I, too, would like to see these AppleScripts!
- danilocampos 16y ago
  They're nothing special, and I can quote them right here if you like: To mount a partition: do shell script "diskutil mount PARTITION_UUID" Where PARTITION_UDID is the partition's UUID as returned by diskutil's info command. To unmount all partitions: try do shell script "diskutil unmount PARTITION_UUID" end try try do shell script "diskutil unmount NEXT_PARTITION_UUID" end try The try is there in case one partition is mounted and another isn't – won't throw an error in those cases. Just compile those as self-contained apps, drop them in your dock and you're good to go. It's pretty manual stuff, I have to remember to launch the appropriate script at the beginning and end of a task that involves the HDD, but it's not much of a problem, since I don't use it that often. Meanwhile, you get a silent MBP, with a smidge better battery life, since the HDD isn't spinning needlessly. Looking into auto-mounting the partition when a symlink is accessed, got a SuperUser question going here: http://superuser.com/questions/228028/mount-drive-when-symbolic-link-is-accessed/ http://superuser.com/questions/228028/mount-drive-when-symbo...

yesimahuman 16y ago

I chose the 13" over the 11". The 11" had too small of a screen for my tastes and felt like a netbook. The 13" has a really nice resolution and feels amazing for typing (as the laptop is so thin your palms rest perfectly on it). My 13" is not a netbook. It is a powerful laptop that I now absolutely love and do so much on. It's also my first mac, but I prefer the feel over my friends 13" macbook pro so I think I made the right choice.

stcredzero 16y ago

Another good satchel for the 11" Macbook Air: http://amzn.com/B001F7FMUA http://amzn.com/B001F7FMUA I have one of these for my old tc1100 Windows stylus tablet. It should fit the 11" Air quite handily as well as the iPad.

jrockway 16y ago

People are worried that 128G is not enough for a boot drive!? On my eeepc, I did it in 4G. On my desktop, I did it in 9.8G: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 26G 9.8G 15G 41% / /dev/sda1 894M 19M 827M 3% /boot /dev/mapper/md0_crypt 917G 238G 680G 26% /home The key is to keep all your movies on an extra drive :P

hogu 16y ago

problems waking up from sleep http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630327&start=0&tstart=0 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2630327&#3... we have this problem with ours, we've installed the newest firmware updates as well, I'm hoping they fix this soon. other than that, seems pretty good.

enneff 16y ago

I bought the 11" when it came out and it quickly became something I don't fo anywhere without. I used to carry my 13" MBP in a nice laptop backpack, but now I have a small satchel bag which can hold the Air as well as my essentials. With 3G tethering it's SO useful to always have a real computer with Internet access at my disposal. I still have and use my MBP and iMac, but I use them much less. Convenience trumps power 90% of the time.

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siglesias 16y ago

Is anybody else holding out for the 3G compatible Air?

smhinsey 16y ago
I thought about it, but like with the iPad, I ended up not bothering with it. My thinking is that now that 4g is rolling out and the next thing is probably in the wings, it's better to use your phone as a wifi hub and connect that way. I just got a g2 and t-mobile makes no attempt to prevent you from doing this, at least as far as I can tell, and their 4g service is super fast so far.

tchock23 16y ago

I bought the 11" Air shortly after it came out as a fun little secondary notebook, and liked it so much I picked up the 13" as well for regular work purposes (replacing a 15" MBP). I just finished coding an app on the 11" and it worked great. I never had a problem with the screen size or performance, and also have never had a problem with the apple logo showing through the display that another poster mentioned (on either the 11" or the 13"). I do occasionally hook it up to a 23" monitor when I need to do any design work, since there is a point where the 11" display is just too small for some tasks. My only regret was going with the low-end 11" system. I really should have opted for the higher end 11", but didn't at the time because I was really buying it as "fun" purchase and the $999 entry price point was pretty attractive. If you're considering one, definitely spend the extra money to get the next step up.

kiranryali 16y ago

Got the 13" version with the 4GB ram upgrade. Works great for Android/iPhone/Web development. Loving it so far, haven't used by dell since. In fact, I'm going to give it to my mom (Core i7, NVidia GT435M)

bnewton 16y ago

I've checked out the Macbook Air at the Apple Store a few times and I'm so close to just selling my i5 MBP for a fully spec out 13" Air. I like the idea of having such a light and still powerful system for web and ios development. From the sounds of it I wouldn't be giving up to much going with the Air over the MBP.

tchock23 16y ago
That's exactly what I did, and I couldn't be happier. It's so light that I find myself checking my laptop bag just to see if it's still in there. I went with the highest-end 13" configuration so I didn't lose any performance in the transition, and haven't noticed any discernible difference in "real world" use.

lwat 16y ago

I know this is blasphemy but is anyone running Win 7 on their 11" Air?

yuvipanda 16y ago

I have a 10" Samsung N210 - proper 'netbook' (Atom, 1G RAM, etc) - and is fast enough for my dev needs (HTML/CSS, C, Python). I do need to farm compiling out to my main machine (a quad core) with distcc if I need to compile anything >10k LOC though. I'm happy with it.