2010 MacBook Air

So last month I was very excited and upset about the changes Apple are making to their subscription model for the iPad. Steve Jobs has since made an effort to clarify that these changes should not apply to single item purchases – such as Kindle – or Software As A Service products – think Dropbox. Only time will tell whether Apple decides to do the right thing by its customers.

This month I wanted to stay with Apple – but to have something a little more positive to say! This year was renewal year for my work computer – and I decided to go for an iMac with a MacBook Air rather than a MacBook Pro this time. This article is about the MacBook Air.

To stay within budget I was left with little option but to go for the least expensive model off the shelf. This is the 11 inch with 2Gb of RAM and a 64Gb onboard Solid State Drive. It is worth noting that if you choose to buy a MacBook Air you MUST order it in the configuration you can live with because both the RAM and the SSD are soldered to the logic board and cannot be upgraded later.

To be honest I was a little nervous at first that the Air would be little more than a toy with what are today considered such low specs. I had read quite positive reviews – but to be honest they did not prepare me for the stellar performance of this little machine! You certainly wouldn’t want to have it as your only machine if you have any interest at all in editing home movies – but if you travel a lot and your needs centre around the web and office applications it really is perfect.

One thing that really surprised me was how adequate 64Gb is as a drive when you remove all of your media. My iTunes and iPhoto libraries now sit on a small external drive – which works perfectly well when needed. I have a reasonable selection of applications on the Air – including Microsoft Office 2011 and several lightweight web design and graphics tools. Whilst most of the Adobe Creative Suite would probably run reasonably well I have not tried because it would simply take too much of my precious space. The screen is a tiny revelation – whilst small it is very high-res and is fairly comfortable to look at for extended periods.

Visually the Air is a stunner. Until you close it up it is hard to believe just how small this thing is. It is actually lighter than an iPad – and yet is a full blown computer with none of the restrictions of iOS. I cant help but think how great it would have been to have one of these when I did my backpacking Grand Tour…

So why does the Air perform so much better than expected? In my opinion it is largely due to the SSD – followed closely by Apple’s ability to ensure maximum compatibility between all installed components. I have a SSD’s installed in all of my computers now and the difference it makes to performance is astonishing.

All up I would highly recommend the MacBook Air. I find myself using it a great deal more than I expected to. In hindsight I do wish I had opted for more RAM and the bigger SSD – maybe next time…

The MacBook Air is available from Apple starting from $1199.