Compromises Limit Appeal of Apple's MacBook Air Laptop

Thin and Light

It's clear that Apple 's engineers followed a specific set of design constraints for the MacBook Air . By retaining the dimensions of the regular MacBook , the MacBook Air can offer a full-size keyboard as well as a generous widescreen display. (As a former user of the 12-inch PowerBook G4, I can attest to the fact that Apple's recent user-interface design decisions--lots of big, wide windows with toolbars, palettes, and slide-out drawers--can make using Mac OS X on a small display a painful experience.)

With the keyboard and display set, then, there are only two other ways for the MacBook Air to distinguish itself from its cousins: thickness and weight.

Let's start with weight, as this is one measurement where the MacBook Air truly excels. Prior to the Air's release, Apple's lightest laptop was the MacBook, which weighs five pounds--a full two pounds heavier than the three-pound Air. In fact, Apple has never released a laptop lighter than four pounds: the PowerBook 2400, PowerBook Duo series, and even that 12-inch PowerBook G4 all weighed somewhere between four and five pounds.

If your laptop lives most of its life on a desk, weight isn't an issue. If you carry it with you at all times, weight can be its most important characteristic. Most people's laptop use falls in between, and depending on the vagaries of your commute, the number of miles in your frequent-flyer account, and the strength and health of your arm and back, weight may or may not matter to you.

Me, I'm a relatively healthy male in my mid-to-late 30s, but my laptop is my primary Mac at home and at work, and I carry it on my back for at least 20 minutes every single weekday, to and from work. The lighter my backpack, the better. Shedding two pounds out of my backpack is something that noticeably lightens my load. (If you own a 15-inch MacBook Pro and have never really considered its weight an issue, consider this a serious hint that the MacBook Air might not be your cup of tea.)

One reason I loved the 12-inch PowerBook G4 was that it crossed some hard-to-define weight barrier, one I hadn't even been aware of until I started using a laptop that crossed it. The 12-inch PowerBook was so small and light that carrying my laptop around with me became an afterthought. Instead of lugging a 15-inch PowerBook from place to place, I could idly hold the 12-inch model in one hand.

The MacBook Air takes that easy feeling to an extreme. Though it's not quite as solid in my hand as the 12-inch PowerBook (owing to the latter's additional width), it feels as thin and light as a manila folder or a couple of magazines.

That brings us to the MacBook Air's thinness. This product was undoubtedly designed specifically to be as thin as possible, with an eye toward making the marketing claim that the MacBook is "the world's thinnest notebook." And there's no disputing this. Even my six-year-old daughter--not exactly the world's foremost expert on laptops--couldn't resist telling me how "really flat" she thought it was.

So, there is no denying that the MacBook Air's thinness makes it visually striking. But I'm not convinced of the utility of that thinness. Other than allowing Apple to declare the Air the current winner of the race to design the thinnest laptop, it seems that the Air has slimmed down in the least important dimension.

Yes, I'll grant you, I can almost slide the MacBook Air under my office door. But I don't believe the extra thinness is going to gain me much working room when I'm wedged in a coach airline seat behind someone whose seat is fully reclined. Or on my daily bus commute, which makes coach airline seats look like business class. In these situations, reduced depth would be more likely to improve the angle of my screen and keep the front of my laptop from pressing against my chest. But in that dimension, the MacBook Air is no different from the MacBook.