Life with the MacBook Air

It's been almost two months now, and life is still almost perfect living and working with the MacBook Air. To recap, for those of you just joining us, in previous articles I told you my reasons for ordering a MacBook Air. Then, after having it for a few days, posted a fairly well-regarded review of the new Mac.

Now, after a bit of time has gone by and I've had a chance to use the MBA on a daily basis, it's time for an update on my experiences, both good and bad. To recap just a bit more, my MacBook Air of choice is the 1.6 Ghz version with the 80GB PATA HD. I did not spring for the solid-state drive model, although I really wanted it. But even for a Mac-lover like myself, the cost was just a bit too high.

At the moment, the MBA has various applications installed on it including Adobe Photoshop CS3, the iLife '08 and iWork '08 suites, Office 2008, and it's recently been updated to OS X 10.5.2 with all other various updates applied. Ok, that's it for the recap, let's get to the update.

The Good

Size and Weight - First off, and yes I'm going to start with this, the MBA is still very light and very thin. Even though it seems obvious, you really need to try and appreciate what that means to a user such as myself. After previously using a 15" MacBook Pro for many months as my laptop of choice, I can safely say that one of the best things about the MBA is its lack of weight.

Of course, I'm pretty strong and could carry around a larger, heavier laptop without much effort. But the question is, why would I want to? Lugging this computer around every day as I go about my business has been a great comfort to my back and has also allowed me to take a couple other things along in my bag that I didn't take before.

Prior to using the MBA, I did not want to take along my digital camera or an extra notebook to write things in as I wanted to minimize, as much as possible, the weight of my bag. Now, with the MBA, I carry my camera and my large Moleskine notebook all the time and not just on "special occasions." Sadly, having my camera with me all the time has not made me actually use it more often -- but that's a subject for another article.

Until you've had the MBA in your bag for a few weeks or months and realized just how much of a difference those couple of pounds makes, you'll just have to take my word for it. Bottom line: Size (and weight) matters.

Battery Life - Perhaps it was just the newness of the battery, but I wasn't getting spectacular battery performance when I first got the MBA. My times were averaging only around 2.5 hours on a full charge. Now, after a couple months of use, my battery life has actually improved drastically and I now get over 3.5 hours on a battery charge. I would say that's a trend in the right direction.

Usage - The MBA, like most Macs of its generation, is pretty easy to use. When it was first announced and after it arrived at my door, I was a bit concerned about using it on an ongoing basis. This was mostly due to the glossy screen and the keyboard, which at first glance looked to be the same as the one on the MacBook, which as a person who hits those keys for a living, I really didn't like.

Fortunately, the MBA's keyboard turned out to be far superior to the one on the MacBook and after the two months of almost constant use, I still find it very usable and comfortable. The glossy screen also turned out to be a non-issue for me as well. It isn't nearly as reflective as other glossy screens I had seen in the past and as such objects in the background or strong lights don't really mar its usability at all. It's certainly a lot easier to use than the previous MacBook I had, at least to my eyes.

I also find that the MBA has enough processing power to handle most of what I throw at it on a daily basis (with some exceptions outlined below). These days, this consists mostly of writing, email, web browsing, working with photos in Photoshop and my new favorite image editing application Pixelmator, video editing in iMovie, and various other "normal" activities most users would be doing on a Mac. In all of these tasks, the MBA performs very well. Certainly, it would make a fine computer for almost anyone whose workload and demands are similar to mine.

The Bad

Airport Connection Issues - As I've mentioned previously in another post, the MBA has wireless issues on occasion. At some wireless hotspots, for example, it will drop connection after several minutes and then I must join the network again to establish the connection. This had been a repeatable issue until recently.

However, I'm happy to report, that after applying the recent Airport updates I've gone back to the same coffee house where I was trying to connect the MBA to an AT&T U-verse router and the connection now works as it should. After several different attempts on different days the connection will stay connected with 100% reliability. In usual Apple fashion, the Airport updates or security updates don't address this issue specifically, but they do, at least for me, appear to have fixed it.

Network Performance - As much as I'm delighted with the above fix, I'm still a bit miffed about the MBA's decided lack of wireless data throughput. Putting it another way, the MBA is very slow when copying files to it via wireless. In my home office I have the Airport Extreme N base station as my router and the MBA is connected wirelessly to it via pure 802.11N @ 5Ghz wireless goodness.

Sadly, this setup does not perform as you might expect. Instead, files copied from my desktop iMac to the MBA take an average of three times longer to copy than do files copied from the same iMac to my other test laptop: a 12" Powerbook G4 using the 802.11g network I also have set up in the office. As 802.11n is supposedly the faster wireless protocol, you would expect these results to be opposite of each other. However, they are not.

Still curiouser though is the fact that if you copy a file from the MBA to the iMac and initiate the copy FROM the iMac by mounting the MBA's hard drive on the desktop of the iMac and then copying the file via drag and drop, the file copies at what I would consider "normal" speed for the wireless network. In other words, much faster than if you were to mount the iMac's HD on the desktop of the MBA and copy the file that way. Perhaps this issue will also be secretly resolved in a subsequent fix from Apple?

Until then, when copying files from to or from the MBA to my desktop iMac, I mount the MBA's HD on the desktop of the iMac and drag and drop in that direction. It's a bit annoying to have to do it this way as I also have to temporarily disable the MBA's firewall to get it to connect, but at least it's faster. I also use a USB thumb drive when I don't want to make changes to the MBA's firewall settings or deal with the file copy slowness.

Also, this issue does not effect the Ethernet connection while using the USB Ethernet adapter. That copies as fast as it should. So, this seems to be only a wireless issue with the MBA. Hardly the thing you would expect to experience, given Apple's much-touted wireless features of the MBA.

The Beachball - Perhaps it's due to the somewhat limited graphics capabilities of the MBA -- mostly due to its lack of a dedicated graphics card -- but it does, on occasion, have a bit of trouble with quick screen refresh and occasionally just gets bogged down completely. And yes, when it does this, you are treated to the spinning beachball show for several seconds until things get going again.

During my testing, this beachball seems mostly to appear while using graphics-intensive applications such as Photoshop, Aperture or anything else where a dedicated graphics chipset would probably come in handy. Sadly, that's not the only time the beachball appears. It also shows up when working with somewhat less heavy apps such as Apple Mail, Firefox, Scrivener and Mars Edit.

Equally annoying is the beachball's tendency to appear seemingly at random, with no real way of replicating its appearance. One time, an application will be fine and will work properly. Next time, it will pause for a moment, the beachball will appear, and then it will move on. But usually it is during a time when the hard drive is being accessed.

So, this issue may not have as much to do with the lack of dedicated graphics as it does with the MBA's hard drive. Sure, 4200 RPM's should, in theory, be enough to take care of most business. But sometimes it does seem like the beachball and the delay is more a function of disk access than graphics speed. In reality, both are probably contributing factors.

As I primarily use the MBA as a writing tool and use applications such as Mail, Scrivener, Pages and Mars Edit, the beachball doesn't appear frequently enough for me to get seriously annoyed or cause a significant reduction in my productivity. However, when compared to my previous MacBook Pro, which basically never had this problem, the MBA's performance sometimes leaves something to be desired.

In fact, the MBA's performance, in some cases and with some applications, reminds me more of how these same apps and tasks perform on my 12" PowerBook -- which, as we know, actually has a dedicated graphics processor but is, even with its smaller size, still heavier and fatter than the MBA. So no, I didn't consider just continuing to use the 12" Powerbook instead of getting the MBA. In case you were wondering.

Conclusion

Even though the MacBook Air has some issues, it's still a remarkable machine. Sure, in a perfect world where I could design the ultimate portable Mac I might have done it differently and made sure certain features worked as advertised. But on the whole, I'm still extremely impressed with the MacBook Air and very satisfied using it each and every day.

While some might not classify me as a "typical" Mac user, as I can afford to purchase a rather expensive piece of hardware like the MBA, I do consider myself a mainstream Mac user and one who appreciates exceptional design, usability and the true Mac experience.

Obviously the MBA isn't for everyone. It's a specific Mac for a specific kind of Mac user and it does have its drawbacks. Still, the pluses of its design, style, size, weight and features far outweigh any negatives for me.

Is the MacBook Air perfect? No. But nothing is and probably nothing ever will be. However, I can say this: the MacBook Air is perfect for me.