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Thin is in

The new MacBook Air has techies lusting, but it also has drawbacks.

By Spencer Watson (Contact)

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

When it comes to technology, thin is in. And the runway superstar of the industry turning the most heads these days is Apple, maker of the revolutionary, must-have iPhone as well as the latest and greatest in ultra sleek laptops, the recently announced MacBook Air.

Weighing in at just about 3 pounds and slimmer than your index finger, the Air was unveiled to oohs and aahs at last month’s Macworld Expo, a counter to the tech industry’s annual showcase Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which Apple famously refuses to attend. So slim is the Air, in fact, that it’ll easily slip under a door or into an inter-office envelope.

Since its debut, Macophiles around the country have been logging in to the Apple Web site, placing orders at $1,800 for the basic model or $3,100 for the beefy version — or just generally lusting over the aesthetics of the innovative Air. Between you and me, my boss falls into that last category. Don’t tell her I told you so, though.

But what’s so rarified about the Air? After all, ultra thin laptops are nothing seriously new. Each new generation brings models that are slimmer and lighter, as well as more powerful than previous incarnations. So is this really the holy grail of portable computers?

Daniel Spillers, a project manager in the Computing Services Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and an all-around computer guy, said not exactly — though it does have some newer features never seen before.

“With Apple, they do one of two things. They’re either the first one into the market and they just completely dominate everyone or they’re the third or fourth in and do what others are doing, they just do it a lot better.”

So the Air has a lot going for it on the innovation side: A backlit keyboard common on other MacBooks but hard to find elsewhere and a trackpad that expands on the trend toward multifunctionality by incorporating the “gestures” used on the iPhone (pinching, shuffling, etc.).

But the really neat trick of the Air, said Spillers, comes in the pricier model, which includes what Apple calls a “solid state” hard drive. Unlike a traditional hard drive, they’re built on the technology of flash drives and thus have no moving parts. This does two things: It makes them faster and it requires less power, thus extending battery life.

“If you’re not using the battery to spin a disk, now the only drain on the power is the screen basically,” Spillers said. And on that count, the Air uses an LED rather than an LCD display — yet, according to the Mac Web site, sacrifices no color quality, brightness or size (the screen is 13.3 inches on both models).

For travelers or business people, the advertised five hours of battery life are huge, Spillers said. Combined with the portability of the Air, it makes for an attractive package.

But the machine has its drawbacks. Spillers said when he first saw it, the first thing he noticed was the lack of an optical drive (that is, a CD or DVD drive). You can order an external drive for $100 or use software that allows the Air to wirelessly “borrow” an optical drive installed in another computer, Mac or PC, but the Air itself is without. According to Apple, that’s because the WiFi- and BlueTooth-ready machine simply doesn’t need to be tied down with a drive. New software, music, movies, and all those things you’d install from a disc can increasingly be downloaded on the Internet. It’s the same approach the company took when they stopped shipping desktops with floppy drives years ago.

“I really think this is their way of saying, in a laptop world, an optical drive is not as important as wireless and mobility,” Spillers said. “It’s a risk, but that’s Apple.”

For that reason, Spillers said he envisions the Air as the perfect “appliance companion” — especially for students or traveling professionals — as it’s a great second computer that can go anywhere and does more than a PDA but doesn’t quite offer all that a true workhorse desktop can. For that reason, Spillers said he’s not sure he’ll go with the Air even though he’s in the market for a new MacBook. It just might not have the horsepower needed to be an all day, everyday kind of machine.

“It’s not a beast. It’s not a power laptop. But it’s not meant to be,” he said.