The MacBook Air Is Probably Doomed, But Not Quite Yet
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
by Charles W. Moore
The Apple Blog’s Charles Jade thinks the MacBook Air is on the bubble, citing as precedent the demise of the erstwhile and much-loved 12” PowerBook G4 that Steve Jobs unveiled in 2003’s Macworld Expo Keynote, touting it as “the smallest full-featured notebook in the world.”
The 12” PowerBook had a slightly longer production run than Charles recalls (he says it was canceled in 2005, but it actually soldiered on until May, 2006, when it was replaced by the MacBook, having the distinction of being the very last PowerPC Mac system ever sold), but its arc from flamboyant Jobsian debut to quiet termination was much too short in the minds of a fanatically loyal cohort of enthusiasts.
I was and am a fan, and the 12” PowerBook probably ranks highest on the list of my favorite Mac laptops I never actually owned, along with the PowerBooks 2400c and 3400c, and the clamshell iBook. However, I think the 13” unibody MacBook and now the 13” MacBook Pro, are the logical and completely worthy Intel-powered successors to the 12” PowerBook. I put my money where my mouth is, buying a 13” MacBook last February.
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While the unibody MacBook (and Pro) with its 13’3” display of necessity has a bit larger footprint than the old 12-incher did, otherwise it compares very favorably as a machine for serious road warriors, being even slimmer at 0.95-inches thick, and at 4.5 pounds it’s a tenth of a pound lighter than the 12” PowerBook. Here are the respective spec. numbers:
13” MacBook Size And Weight
• Height: 0.95 inch (2.41 cm)
• Width: 12.78 inches (32.5 cm)
• Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
• Weight: 4.5 pounds (2.04 kg)
12” Aluminum PowerBook Size And Weight
• Height:1.18 inches (3.0 cm)
• Width:10.9 inches (27.7 cm)
• Depth:8.6 inches (21.9 cm)
• Weight:4.6 pounds (2.1 kg)
In all aspects except the nearly two inches greater width, the MacBook stands in very favorable light by comparison. And of course in terms of performance and display resolution the MacBook blows the 12” PowerBook into the weeds. My point here is that Apple still has a lightweight, fully-capable workhorse notebook for serious road warriors. The 13” MacBook/MacBook Pro is a much closer analog to the 12” PowerBook than the MacBook Air is — much more so than the heavier, bulkier black (original polycarbonate) MacBook that initially superseded the 12” PowerBook G4’s price slot in Apple’s laptop lineup. The question posed by Charles Jade is whether the 13” MacBook Pro is also replacing the MacBook Air.
Personally, I doubt that such a dynamic is in play right away, although if the rumor barrage recently about an Apple tablet (albeit likely running the iPhone OS and not the full Mac OS X) being in the pipes for an intro possibly as early as September bears out in fact, it will complicate matters by crowding the lower end of the Apple portable spectrum further.
However, the MacBook Air never was a really credible replacement for the 12” PowerBook. It has its market niche, but for serious road warriors who need a “full-featured notebook,” as Mr. Jobs accurately described the original 12” PB as being, the Air just doesn’t measure up. It has a sluggish 1.8” 4200 RPM iPod-type hard drive of meager 120 GB capacity, or you can get an only slightly more capacious 128 GB SSD by ponying up more cash. The RAM ceiling is fixed at 2 GB -- marginal by today’s standards -- and then there are the Air’s manifold I/O deficiencies, its woefully oversubscribed single USB port, lack of built-in Ethernet, no SD Card slot, no internal optical drive. A couple of months ago I also would’ve cited the lack of battery swappability, but that now applies across the board save for the holdover white plastic Macbook.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the MacBook Air, Its razor-thin form factor is a aesthetically seductive with incredible lightness of presence. I’d love to have one, but not as my everyday workhorse Mac, and not for $1,500. My Low End Mac colleague Andrew Fishkin recently bought an Air, and says he’s using it probably more than he expected to, but would not recommend it if you’re only having one computer (he has a PC laptop as well).
On the other hand, the 13” MacBook Pro is perfectly adequate to serve as a first-line production computer, and indeed that’s the role my MacBook fills for me, and it is proving completely adequate and pleasurable for my needs, which a MacBook Air would not be. And notwithstanding that the MacBook Pro has both an internal DVD drive and an SD Card slot, it’s only a pound and a half heavier than a MacBook Air, with a virtually identical footprint, although it’s thicker, but so much more powerful. connectable, and complete.
13” MacBook Size And Weight
• Height: 0.95 inch (2.41 cm)
• Width: 12.78 inches (32.5 cm)
• Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
• Weight: 4.5 pounds (2.04 kg)
MacBook Air Size and weight
• Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
• Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
• Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
• Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)
The 13” MacBook Pro has a faster Core 2 Duo processor, a faster 5400 ROM full-sized 2.5” hard drive with 40 GB greater standard capacity and upgrade potential to a whopping 8GB, longer battery life, a multitouch buttonless trackpad, and is $300 cheaper to boot. That few millimeters thinner dimension and pound-and-a-half less weight begin to look awfully expensive and crippling by comparison.
I would say that if the MacBook Air’s days are numbered (and remember the demise of the Mac mini has been rumored imminent for more than two years now, and it’s still with us and even had a recent refresh), it’s because it pales in raw value and performance to the not-much-bigger 13” MacBook Pro.
Speculative deduction becomes more intriguing when one factors in potential for slimming down the MacBook Pro even more by leaving out the internal optical drive and focusing more on SD Cards for the sorts of things CDs and DVDs are used for now, as I discussed in a recent column. Do that, and you could, as Charles Jade suggests, pretty much match the MacBook Air’s form factor with no loss of performance or connectivity, in which case the Air would indeed become redundant.
Like I said, I don’t think the MacBook Air is going to disappear in the near future (of course I didn’t see the G4 Cube’s abrupt termination in 2001 coming either), but at the time of the next major generational MacBook Pro revision, which I think is more than a year away, the Air could indeed be subsumed into the MacBook Pro matrix.
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