"It's almost as if Apple made a list of practical features that consumers actually use, and based its engineering decisions upon that, rather than simply assembling the specifications everyone else was shipping in a similarly identical form factor."
"It seems, however, that almost everybody has missed the real significance of the MacBook Air. Sure, it's a very thin laptop that a lot of serious road warriors will buy, but its greatest importance lies in the fact that it will attract hundreds of thousands of new customers. All of these folks are going to flock to the Apple stores to see it first hand and while they're there..."
"Apple's new laptop, the MacBook Air, may not be the true ultraportable that many had hoped for, but it still easily breaks new ground for small laptops."
"The MacBook Air is quite simply the most stunning notebook we've seen in recent memory. There just isn't any way to prepare yourself for the thinness of this notebook until you hold it in your hands for the first time."
"But on closer examination, the Air looks more like a clever engineering exercise than a fully realized product. Apple had to leave out a lot to flatten this computer to a maximum thickness of three-quarters of an inch."
"One of the oddities of the MacBook Air is, as a system without a FireWire port, an optical drive, or an accessible hard drive, the act of reinstalling Mac OS X and migrating your files from your old system to this new one is more complicated than it has been in the past."
"The Air is a tough call. On the one hand it proposes to be a no-compromises ultraportable, but on the other hand it compromises many (but not all) the things road warriors want... Give us the lovechild of the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, and it's all over."
"The design is revolutionary, but Apple's MacBook Air will appeal to a smaller, more specialized audience than the standard MacBook, thanks to a stripped-down set of connections and features."
"Yes, you can officially call the MacBook Air the slowest machine Apple makes -- but you already figured as much, right? No one buys an ultraportable for its real ultimate power."
"If you value thinness, and a large screen and keyboard in a subnotebook, and don't watch DVDs on planes or require spare batteries, the MacBook Air might be just the ticket. But if you rely on spare batteries, expect the usual array of ports, or like to play DVDs on planes, this isn't the computer to buy."
"The Air is sexy, but just like those impractical roadsters a lot of people own but keep in the garage except on sunny afternoons, it's not really meant to be your only means of getting about."
"Though I can quibble with a few of Apple's choices of what to take off, the product's dimensions and design make the case that the losses were not in vain. The things that Apple left on were the ingredients for a quality computer."
"The MacBook Air is a strong entry in the race to build a green PC. As a mercury and arsenic free laptop it exceeds European Standards (RoHS directive exemptions) and raises the bar for the rest of the industry." - Greenpeace
"The bottom line is that the Air has a cool design that sets Apple apart from the pack. It is not for everybody and not entirely practical. In that sense, it is quintessentially an Apple machine."
"Maybe the Mac OS is a little better than Windows, but if I can save my business several hundred dollars at the cost of a pound or few — with more storage to boot — you know the way I’m goin."
"The MacBook Air is clearly an awesome piece of engineering, Apple should be proud of itself. I don’t see the Air as a replacement computer though— this is a secondary notebook for travelers. "
"If all you need is a display, a keyboard, and a WiFi interface, and you don't mind paying a slight premium for high style, maybe the MacBook Air is for you, too."
"This seems at first glance like a solid addition to the MacBook lineup. However, we'll have to keep waiting for a true ultraportable, something that's been missing from the Apple lineup for several years."
Reviews
