After all the flak the Air's taken from TR and the "Style over, well, everything!" editorial from Riyad it still gets an 8. I could never understand why someone would chose this over a 13" Pro.
@ravmania: Well I don't think Hugo could've explained his reasons any more clearly. He even explicitly says the MacBook Pro is the better bet. However, if you're after a machine that has that wow factor, and you have the money then there's no significant reason not to buy this Air, thus the scoring. The same couldn't be said of the first Air.
At the time of writing, it's the wee small hours in the morning after a long hard Friday, but I simply cannot NOT reply to this pusillanimous review for the Hollyoaks cast member of the MacBook family.
I'll concede it's a better deal now than at launch, with the marginally lower price point, the bigger (but still not big) SATA (once PATA) drive, the nVidia graphics and the DDR3 RAM, but it wasn't worth 8/10 then, and it isn't worth it now. Not by any stretch of the imagination. There's a reason it's thin : THERE'S DAMN ALL IN IT. And if there's damn all in it, it should be a netbook with a smaller footprint and a competitive price to match. I was lambasted for despising Apple's rebranding of the unibody MacBook, but that doesn't even begin to compare to the Campbellesque strategy Apple have pulled off here. They've actually convinced people to -
PAY MORE money for
LESS STUFF and then
SPIN it as portability -
when it's barely more portable! If we adjust for the justifiable - the AppleTax - that should still bring this in for 800 quid max. But the bottom line is, this should not cost more money than a better machine with practically the same design, a MacBook {grinds teeth} Pro.
And come on, if we're talking about looks, exactly how fat and heavy and ugly is a MacBook (Pro)? If you want a MacBook (Pro), then buy a MacBook (Pro). You get your Superdrive back, the combined joy of ethernet AND USB back ("Monsieur, you are really spoiling us."), an arguably better trackpad, and now about over an hour's worth more battery life, plus an SD slot to boot, all for 250 quid less. Even if you want the SSD, it's still minus £130, which call me a hobo, but I don't think is trivial money to most.
Hell, even before the mid-2008 refresh, the polycarbonate MacBook was, and still is IM-not-so-HO, a far better deal. And what's really offensive is in that review, the official position was "Don't buy it, it's a rip off, it's an uggo, get a Pro instead because it does everything better and looks great - 6/10." Now it's, "Screw the Pro, sod it's specs, money is no object, nothing quite like an Air - 8/10."
I hated this product right from the off in MacWorld 2008, when the novelty of the envelope trick quickly wore off, as Jobs started trying to pass off renting movies from creaky old iTunes, and that Remote Disk palaver as a viable current alternative to physical media. It's not. And despite the queer hatred for discs it still won't be for some time because -
Streaming HD is a bag of hurt.
DRM is still a bag of hurt.
Having to rely on secondary machines to make your own computer work the way it already should and much cheaper alternatives already do is a bag of hurt.
Telling people they don't need discs, only to supply them with a DISC to install on a second computer, whilst selling an external SuperDRIVE that everyone in their right mind has to buy to use all their other DISCS... IS A BAG OF HURT.
So to sum up, I don't really like it. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the MacBook Air is everything that is wrong about society : looks and weight should not matter to people this much. Apple's great achievement has been in surpassing the watermark for both aesthetic AND utilitarian standards. None of that didactic purpose is in evidence here. Please tell me Riyad hasn't lost his marbles too, as he put it best with his brilliant but brief preview entitled 'Style Over, Well, Everything!', an article that remains the best review of the MBA in the mainstream I've found. If he has not lost them, then for the love of journalistic integrity let him review this infernal machine. In the meantime, can't we just chalk this golddigging strumpet up once and for all as Unibody Beta, backslap Ive and the rest for their groundbreaking design in that sycophantic manner all us Mac users always do, and just move the hell along?
5/10 because they made the aforementioned improvements and I'm in a good mood.
(As a reward for the patience of the TR staff and fellow posters, I'll minimise my posts for a good couple of weeks now.)
I think your got your car analogy wrong. The Noble is an ugly but great performing car, the Air is totally the other way around. Under-promise and over-perform is always the way forward.
Why would someone choose this over a 13" MBP? Simple, because they want to. We've reached the point where to most people computer specs are almost irrelevant. Anything with a multicore processor over about 1.5 Ghz and a couple of gigs of memory will be more than enough for the vast majority of users. As a result people can choose their machine on other factors, in this case looks. And to be honest I think that's a very good thing indeed, about time manufacturers started to look at ways to make their machines unique through design rather than specs.
May I suggest though that the supercar analogy is the wrong one? The Air is more a coupe versus a hatchback - same experience when using it, same quality standards, same dealer but you sacrifice some practicality for the better looking coupe.
So let's get this review straight, it's rubbish and underfeatured but it's Apple and looks nice so 8/10. Nice.
Seriously the Air is about as poor as it gets for usability, one USB port says it all, I mean what if you wanted to use a CD drive and the ethernet adapter at the same time... ;)
I suppose all of the iTards will go and buy them though so I can't blame Apple for making it...
The new Vaio X series looks to be a great alternative to the Air. Plus it will be running the vastly superior Windows 7. I can't wait for Sony to release more details!
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