As with previous Air models-and the new Retina MacBook Pro-the new Air’s display suffers much less from glare than the standard MacBook Pro models, which have a large, reflective layer of glass over the entire screen and frame. With a resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels on the 11-inch model and 1440 by 900 on the 13-inch, it’s not a Retina display, by any means, but it’s bright and clear with outstanding colors and viewing angles. The MacBook Air’s feature evolution (click for full-size chart)
(The differences? The Air’s F-key row uses half-height keys compared to the desktop keyboards, and its bottom row of keys is ever-so-slightly shorter.) There’s also the large, Multi-Touch trackpad that’s ideal for using gestures in OS-it remains the best trackpad I’ve used on any laptop-and an LED-backlit, widescreen, glossy display surrounded by an aluminum bezel.
The 13-inch Air weighs just under 3 pounds, with the 11-inch version weighing in at just under 2.4 pounds.įlip open the screen, and you reveal a full-size, backlit keyboard-even on the 11-inch model-that uses the same low-profile, flat keys as Apple’s current desktop keyboards. Both the 11-inch and 13-inch Airs are thin wedges of unibody aluminum-just under 0.7 inch thick in the back and just over 0.1 inch thick in the front-though obviously with different footprints: The 13-inch model is 12.8 inches wide and 8.9 inches deep, while the 11-inch Air is just 11.8 inches wide and 7.6 inches deep. Through the Air’s now-six iterations, the laptop’s external design has remained essentially the same. In fact, the new models might just be making the MacBook Pro line a little nervous. This year’s models improve the appeal of the Air by increasing performance, enhancing expansion capabilities, and lowering prices. In a few short years, the Air has gone from an expensive technology demonstration to a successful product firmly established as the heart of Apple’s laptop line. The company turbocharged the Air last year by upgrading to Intel Core i5 and i7 processors and adding a Thunderbolt port.
STEAM FOR MAC RETINA UPDATE
In 2010, Apple gave the Air its biggest update by adding a second USB port, improving performance, standardizing on flash storage, lowering prices, and-in the biggest move of all-releasing a road-warrior-dream 11-inch model priced at just $999. The third generation got faster and cheaper. The Air itself has also evolved: The second iteration gained some speed, better video capabilities, and more storage. It’s safe to say that before long, all of Apple’s laptops will be direct descendants of the Air. As Jason Snell wrote at the time, “laptop design has always been about compromise,” and the original Air required some painful compromises.īut that Air also gave us a glimpse at the future of Mac laptops: incredibly thin, blissfully light, and surprisingly sturdy, with reliable, fast, flash storage-attributes that have made their way into Apple’s Pro laptop line with the new MacBook Pro with Retina display ( ). At the time, it was revolutionary in terms of its size and weight, but it also was slow, had little storage, had only a single USB port for expansion, and was very expensive-it started at $1799, and if you wanted solid-state storage, the price increased dramatically (by $999!). Believe it or not, it’s been nearly four and a half years since Apple released the original MacBook Air.
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