The Dust Has Settled - MacBook Air

Yes, it is real, Apple has introduced a supper slim notebook, the MacBook Air. With the thickness of 1.94cm and weighed just over 1.3kg, Apple claims it "the world's thinnest notebook". However, just by the look of it, it reminds me of the SONY X505, a sub-notebook that introduced over a year ago. 

I'm quite sure that the X505 has the comparable thickness, and definitely lighter (Well below 1kg) and much more compact (with a 11" display) than the MacBook Air.

I don't understand why on earth Steve pick up the TZ series from SONY. At the same prize, you get much more compact laptop at roughly same weight, with a same CPU (TZ90), same RAM but more on videos, most importantly two storage options (SSD + HD or HD + Optical). What the SONY doesn't have is really the MAC OS X. 

Well, do I like the MacBook Air? Yes, I have been waiting for a slim MacBook for years. And yes, I have been hoping for SSD on MacBook. But not quite on this MacBook Air. So what is missing here, let us role out price factor for the moment. What could Apple have done to make it a better product. 

First the design: 

• Thickness - Good enough, I don't care as long as it is below 2cm. 
• Size - 32cm x 22cm (Not the thickness here), why the hell did they make it so big! You can almost fit a 15inch display in there. The design seems to be the main reason of this, the extra material to make the supper slim edge. 
• Weight - Good. 

Features: 

• Display - 13.3" could be a good choice for such notebook, but with so much space around the display, I'm not so sure. 
  
• CPU - seems to be the low power version of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor, should be powerful enough for most of the applications. 
  
• Graphics - on board Intel X3100 chip set, pretty standard. But the 144Mb shared memory is disappointing. You get 256Mb on the SONY TZ. 
  
• 2Gb Memory - Good, enough for most tasks. But no room for expansion, not so surprising on this type of notebooks. 
  
• 1.8" HHD/SSD - Good choice. But with that price ... 
  
• keyboard - Full size, floating design like that on the MacBook and the TZ. 
  
• Trackpad - multi touch employed first time. Cannot comment on this for now. 

The most disappointing: I/Os 

• Single USB port, can't you out one more there? 
  
• No Firewire support, I think it is the first time in MAC history. 
  
• External Ethernet port, need to buy a separate accessory. I can't imagine anyone can live without it for the next few years. 
  
• No audio input, sometimes could be critical. 
  

To sum up, the MacBook Air is really a apple version of the X505. In my opinion, they had sacrificed too much for the slim-factor of the design. We have to wait and see whether it was worth it.