Welcome to the Air Owners Club! For those of us that it suits, it is peerless. I am never away from mine, it goes with me everywhere. May you never look back 
Eddy
Have ye named the bairn yet?
My HP Mini is called Harriet (don’t ask), and my Mac Mini answers to the name, well, Mac. 
“Sawtooth Funk Shine”
I don’t generally name machines… Since I named my Escort Mark II “Camillo de Cavour” when I was 17 and realised that my proclivity for pretentiousness should not be explored further.
Hmm, but maybe “Re’l M’Air” after one of my new favourite fictional characters (but that’s much too lowbrow for you linguistics sods 
).
My various machines do have names for network purposes and to identify them on back-ups to multi-partitioned external hard drives. For the latter, I bought the disappeared MacBook Air just when Apple was changing from .mac to MobileMe; given that one of my computers is the 17" MBP, a rather large “laptop”, that prompted a link to Harry Potter, one of which I had just been reading, so the MBP became “Maxime”, à la “Madam Maxime”, so the MBA had to be “Minime”. It then spread to my various iPods, “Microme” — I did not go for “Touchme”! — and “Nanome”, and linguistically appropriately, when connected, my iPhone is of course “Phoneme”.
The computers have different names for network purposes; no way was I going to have “Mark’s MBP”, “Mark’s MBA” visible on a public network as in a coffee-shop, and I don’t want to have to remember MAC numbers when they’re on my home network.
But when I talk about them, they’re just my “MacBook Pro”, or my “MacBook Air” … in this country, simply having a Mac puts you somewhere on a scale of pretentiousness.
Mark
Prosaically, my MacBook is called “my machine” or (sometimes) “my computer”. But I might stray further into the uncharted jungles of imaginative personification if I were lucky enough to own a MacBook Air…
I’m not normally inclined to hanker after new products just because they’re there, but these new machines look like a fabulous piece of kit and I want one, want one, want one. Sadly, I’m also broke, broke, broke, more or less in direct proportion to the degree of technolust I am experiencing. I don’t suppose it’s prudent to buy exotic gadgetry with the money set aside for my children’s education, is it? No, I thought not. Tempting, though.
Keith, I know you’ve been locked in a dark cupboard doing Scrivener 2.0, but have you had a chance to take the MBA out of the house yet? And (if so) does its portability (and wider functionality) remove the need for an AlphaSmart, or does the AlphaSmart still have its place?
I have not named my MacBook, but the various Windows machines I’ve owned over the years have garnered various colorful and not-to-be-repeated-in-public appellations.
Steve
I haven’t had chance yet, no, sadly. I haven’t even had much chance to set it up as I would like - I’ve installed Scrivener and that’s about it. With it being release week I’ve had to stay on my development machine for most of the time. But I’ll be taking it away somewhere in a couple of weekends. I think the main thing the Alphasmart is going to have over it is lack-of-distractions and battery life. You don’t need to take an adapter with you when you carry the Alphasmart, but the MBA only has about four-six hours of battery life. On the other hand, the MBA is smaller and only about a tenth of a kilogram heavier than the Alphasmart, and obviously I have Scrivener on it. So I think my choice will be the MBA unless I am just going to be hammering out words and will be away for a while with no way of plugging it in, in which case the Alphasmart will still be the better choice.
All the best,
Keith
While looking forward to not-Kevin’s actual review, I’ll second Eddy’s observations about SSD Air life after a year or so. I have the 2nd generation SSD Air as my only computer, and it’s been a marvel when I travel around the country on journalism assignments, and also when I’m sitting on the couch or recliner with a laptop desk. The 13" screen is adequate for Scrivening with a vertically split window. I haven’t seen the new ones yet – trying to avoid temptation – but it seems likely the higher res screen would provide enough room on the 11" for Scrivener projects as well.
I share one of the apple CD/DVD drives with my wife, who also uses an Air, but we seldom use it. The single USB port has never been a problem; she bought a cheap USB port expander that gives you two more ports, but rarely uses it. I don’t need it when I travel, and when I’m home working at my desk, I use the three ports on my 24" apple LCD display to hook up external hard drive, mouse, iPhone sync etc. I do most of my scrivening on the external display and wireless apple bluetooth keyboard, which is wonderful for that. Alas, the monitor has since been discontinued in favor of a twice-as-costly 27" model.
BTW both the display and the air were bought through the apple refurb store at substantial discount – the whole package was around $1800 USD, so anyone concerned about pricing might want to look there – I saw previous generation Airs selling there for $850, I think, after the new beauties were announced.
The applications I use: Scrivener, Bean, Safari, Mail, iCal, iTunes, occasionally Pages (iWork came bundled with the Mac). Time Capsule for backup and router. Yesterday I used Keynote for the first time to deliver a presentation, along with iTunes for music samples, and the Air’s single USB port was all I needed.
So anyone worried about whether a 13" Air can suffice as her only writing companion can be assured that’s it’s certainly possible. Adding an external display, as with any laptop, is a good idea. And it’s hard to explain just how much of a difference the weight difference makes – it’s qualitative more than just quantitative. I take the Air places I’d never have taken my old MacBook or PowerBooks. It feels much sturdier than they ever did. I do love the backlit keyboard but the lack of one on the new ones won’t be a deal breaker.
I’ll certainly consider an 11" model when it’s time to upgrade but that’s probably 2 years (and improved Air models and OSX versions) away. I’ll likely get an iPad in the meantime (so I can browse while using my LCD and computer to watch movies or internet TV, as I don’t have a TV set), but that’s another post…
Anyway, please keep those new Air reports coming! My minuscule budget renders me immune to temptation, but I like reading about 'em anyway.
Hi all,
I’m hoping someone experienced with the new MacBook Airs (11 and 13-inchers) can give me some sound advice. I am starting a major research and writing project that will demand portability and great battery life. I will routinely capture data in Devonthink Pro Office and organize and write in Scrivener. Daily WiFi usage will be very limited, and I have no problem with a screen intensity of, say, 30-50 per cent. Since both units are very portable, to me the real question is about battery life. I have read that the 13-inch gives you an additional two hours, but I am fonder of the 11-inch’s size. So my question is this: given my usage scenario, could I reasonably expect to work on the 11-inch 6 to 9 hours a day on a single battery charge? If not, does anyone know of a small external battery that might do the trick? Any other advice you may be able to offer would be much appreciated.
Thanks for your help.
Cheers,
Barry
Shame I will have to move around with the whole Adobe CS5 with me. This ties me to heavier, ugly, old-fashioned notebooks. But I WANT an Air 11. I WANT one, NOW!!!
Paolo
Not gonna happen.
evil laugh
I have a MBP, one of the core 2 duo unibody types, so a “brick” compared to the new airs which I have to admit do look really nice. I’d probably go for a 13" though if I had the cash just for the extra screen real estate, I know its not the same type of comparison but my colleague at work had an 11" netbook (or was it 10"?) and ended up selling it as the screen was too cramped to work on.
I really, really, really like the instant on, I am playing with the idea of getting a SSD drive for my MBP, just so I can enjoy it to, unfortunately at the sizes I need it would require me to sell my house and my kids (I currently have a 640GB drive with 200GB free). Or have a smaller main drive and carry a portable around with me. Although if I ever do take off as a writer and end up mostly just writing on my machine, I believe I could reduce this a byte or two 
By revision 3 I think that MBA’s will become the main portable comps for Apple, as the drive sizes should be reasonable then and I’m sure they will bump the processor’s too.
Sad fact and public confession time: I love my MBP just as much as I loved my Amiga. (No, not the spanish gf though at that age I was wishing I had one ).
Ok, enough of my tired rantings, I’m jealous of all you new MBA owners, so I’m going to sit in the corner and wait for IOS 4.2 on my iPhone.
p.s.
I’m running my 15" MBP on battery right now, its a 2.8ghz C2D, I’m using the weaker GPU the 9400m I believe and I have just Safari and Scrivener open in the dock, otherwise running I have F.Lux, Little Snitch, Knox, the sync component of BusyCal, NetworkLocation, Wifi and Watt, my battery is showing 5h:12m, screen is on half brightness.
Just thought I’d throw that in there for comparisons sake.
It would probably be unfair to compare Apple’s 11" screen to your average 10/11" netbook screen, by the way. It’s not like working on my external monitor, of course, but I don’t ever find myself feeling that it is vertically cramped. It shows about the same amount of text that a smaller regular-sized computer would show, like the MacBook.
I have a 13" MBA and I’m in luuuurve. (My wife persuaded me to get a mac so I didn’t lug my work laptop home all the time.) Still learning OS-X strangeness but I think I like the dark side (they have chocolate).
Regarding battery life, I regularly see >9h on the meter with screen at 40%, Bluetooth off but WiFi on just doing text entry or internet browsing. (Turning off WiFi lifts that to 10-11h. Maximum continuous CPU + disk access has seen that drop to 3h, but it’s still not bad.) In practical terms, though, 10 hours is actually about 7 hours since it’s a Really Bad Idea to continually use batteries like those in the MBA to exhaustion.
The screen is an utter delight, bright and clear with good colour rendition, and a very wide range of brightness adjustability. The gloss screen is nowhere near as annoying as some others; it must have some kind of magic treatment.
Regarding 4GB memory, that cannot be added after delivery and nor can it be had over the counter; it’s a build-to-order only option. I wouldn’t bother unless you plan to do programming, or run Parallels/Fusion, or Photoshop on the poor thing; the default 2GB should be fine for most text work.
Overall general-use performance (of my 1.8GHz, 4GB system) is really snappy; for editing and general work, it’s easily faster opening applications than my 2.8GHz Windows laptop, and more or less on a par with my fairly grunty (!) desktop system which is mainly used for photoshopping.
The only real shortcoming I can see with the MBA is that it’s a laptop. By this I mean the screen’s too small and too close, and the keyboard too close to the screen for long, intensive work sessions. But I bought myself a MD->HDMI adapter (A$35), plus a HDMI cable, and plugged in my 27" monitor. The MBA drove the huge monitor no problems at all, though I haven’t tried it at full native resolution yet (a technical matter requiring far too many words to explain to a probably-disinterested audience).
So would-be MBA owners, don’t hesitate!
Dave.
Thanks for mentioning that, I keep forgetting to bring it up. Apple finally saw the light and is using an anti-glare texturing on the screen. It’s not the old frosted matte, but’s definitely not the MBP, which could be used to stand in for the Hubble mirror, in a pinch. We can only hope they continue with this practice in their other laptops and screens.
You shouldn’t have a problem unless your 27” has a different resolution than mine (the standard Apple one). I tried plugging it into that monitor and it ran the entire display at 2560 x 1440 with no problems—an astounding performance considering the graphics card available. It also didn’t seem to really draw that much power. Your luck may vary with the HDMI solution, as mine was just the MD cable coming straight out of the monitor.
My biggest gripe with it so far seems to be some firmware glitches that hopefully Apple resolves in the coming months. I’ve had the trackpad lose connexion after awaking from sleep; requiring a reboot to resolve (thank goodness for LaunchBar); and on occasion it takes a while for the keyboard to “wake up” too. I consider both of these flaws to be very minor (assuming they do not indicate deeper motherboard problems), especially for a gen 1 machine.
Hey … I got it! … With the most phenomenal amount of luck.
Between me and my friends we’d rung half a dozen Apple Shops, and virtually all the independent registered Mac dealers in Hong Kong — about a dozen; they all said, none in stock, two to three weeks. On the Saturday morning, we went looking … 5 shops, no go, same thing. Then male-half of friends said let’s just try this one more before we give up.
First answer … none in stock. I was about to walk out but Romney said, “When do you expect more?” The chap said, “Monday or Tuesday” … “Too late,” I said, “I’m leaving on Sunday afternoon.” Hang on, he said and disappeared to telephone. He came back and said, “5 o’clock this evening”, so I plunked down the deposit on the 13" 256GB SSD model. It arrived — with one other only — at 4.45 …
Phew … mission accomplished … and it’s really great!
Mark
For those of you thinking about an MBA and concerned with battery life, the 13" is rated by Apple at 7 hours. This morning, I had my new one start with a fully charged battery; I gave four hours of lectures with the MBA driving the projector, with bluetooth running and a private network set up so I could control the presentation from my iPhone. At the end of the morning’s lectures, the battery indicator was showing more than 4 hours still available. I shut down, because I had to disconnect it from the projector.
When I restarted in the afternoon, the indicator was just under 3 hours left. The brightness had gone up to over 60% so I lowered it to around 35%, switched off bluetooth, as I didn’t need it, internet was running. Time available went up to well over 5 hours. I did just under 3 hours, reading the Scrivener forums, then editing in Scrivener and when I stopped, it was saying around 2.5 hours left …
So on one charge, doing all that, it was active for 7 hours, with airport running, no bluetooth, the screen turned down for 3 of the hours, and driving a projector for 4 of the hours, and I still had over 2 hours of juice left.
Pretty good, eh? No need to carry around the power pack and cord … fantastic.
Mark
While my usage with the 11" has been much more modest (mainly just writing and composing e-mails), real world usage does seem to suggest Apple’s new method of calculating battery efficiency might be, if anything, overly aggressive. Having the WiFi antenna on is one thing, using it is another, and I think for their tests they were using it nearly non-stop, which probably isn’t realistic unless one has a serious problem with procrastination, or it is their job to be on the 'net.