February 6th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 7: The best sleeve case

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 12:18 pm

Categories: Cases, Diary, Luggage, MacBook Air

Tags: MBA, Problem, Apple MacBook, MacBook Air, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

The MacBook Air is so tiny that you’ll be tempted to just toss it into a portfolio, briefcase, backpack or whatever you happen to be carrying at the time–but I have to caution against this. With miniaturization come inevitable tradeoffs in durability and ruggedness. The MBA should never be mistaken for a Panasonic ToughBook and will not be able to take the abuse that even a normal five pound notebook can withstand.

That being said, a quality padded sleeve is a requirement for the MacBook Air. Like some of you, I got swept up in the hyperbole surrounding the MBA announcement in San Francisco last month and couldn’t resist plunking down my US$30 for the AirMail sleeve from Manila Mac. It’s that padded sleeve that looks just like the manila folder that uncle Steve’s pulled the MBA from during his keynote address. The problem is the it’s delayed and I can’t wait around for them to ship.

The best sleeve case for the MBA, hands down, is the MacBook Air SleeveCase from WaterField Designs. The size 13-2 SleeveCase is designed specifically for the MacBook Air and fits it like a glove. They brought sample cases to the first day of Macworld Expo anticipating a new subnotebook and hastily put them into production after they confirmed the fit. The Waterfield 13-2 SleeveCase began shipping on 25 January 2008.

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February 5th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 6: Size comparisons

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:07 am

Categories: Diary, MacBook Air

Tags: Apple MacBook, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

After you get over the size of the packaging you can’t help but to notice the size of the MacBook Air itself (it is, after all, the thinnest notebook computer in the world). After using it for six days, the size difference between the MBA and pretty much every other notebook computer is pretty dramatic. Especially when you’re coming from a 15-inch MacBook Pro.

One small annoyance with the MBA keyboard is the they replaced the Enter key that was to the right of the space bar with an Option key. I’m always hitting it thinking that I’m hitting Enter (like it is on the MB and MBP). I could have sworn that Jobs said that that the MBP had the same keyboard as the MacBooks. Hmm…

I decided to see how the MBA stacks up size-wise to the MacBook (MB) and MacBook Pro (MBP) and took a few pictures.

Stacked from top to bottom: MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro. Four more photos after the jump.

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February 4th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 5: Battery observations

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 7:44 am

Categories: Battery, Benchmark, Diary, MacBook Air

Tags: Apple MacBook, Battery, Apple Inc., Engineering, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple quotes the MacBook Air as having a 5 hour battery, but as with most OEM statements about battery life, it should be taken with a grain of salt. The battery life figures quoted by most manufacturers are measured under perfect, almost never practical, circumstances.

They usually use a brand new battery, turn off all wireless (WiFi, bluetooth), no external peripherals connected (monitor, USB), they have the Energy Saver preferences ratcheted all the way down, keyboard backlights off and the monitor brightness set to one bar (the lowest setting.)

The MacBook Air ships with a sealed 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery and charges via a 45W MagSafe power adapter with a new right angle connector. According to Christopher Sinai’s excellent coconutBattery 2.5.1 the MBA battery has an original battery capacity of 5200 mAh.

I did some informal battery tests on the MacBook Air over the weekend and came up with the following results:

Test 1 - Intense use
In this test I set the MBA Energy Saver settings to never sleep the hard drive, and to never sleep the display because I wanted to use the machine the entire time. Display brightness was 12 out of 16 bars (about where I like it), WiFi and Bluetooth were turned on (although I wasn’t connected to any BT peripherals), playing a music stream from iTunes radio and installing software over Remote Disc (read: lots of WiFi and disk access). I also rebooted the MacBook Air once.

• First battery low warning: 3 hours, 26 minutes
• Forced sleep: 3 hours, 39 minutes

It’s not the 5 hours that Apple promises, but not bad given the admittedly intense usage pattern. I think that it should be pretty easy to get 4 hours of battery life out of and MBA with a modicum of conservation.

My MacBook Pro–2.4GHz Santa Rosa–running the exact same test got only 2 hours, 45 minutes of battery life, which the MBA bested by almost a full hour.

Charge time for a completely dead MacBook Air battery was 4 hours and 30 minutes while the machine was in use. You can expect it to charge a little faster if the machine is sleeping and a little faster still if it’s completely shut down.

One annoyance with the battery (after the fact that it’s non-removable) is that there’s no battery indicator on the bottom of the case as with previous MacBooks and PowerBooks. This is a really handy feature for travelers because you can quickly flip over the machine, touch the button and quickly see if you have enough charge to make it where you’re going. The MacBook Air forces you to open the lid and read the battery icon in the menu bar, which can be a hassle if you’re in a hurry and the MBA isn’t logged in–or worse, shut down.

February 4th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 4: The packaging

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:52 am

Categories: Diary, MacBook Air

Tags: Apple MacBook, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

After (finally) getting my data migrated over to the MacBook Air (hint: use Ethernet) I took yesterday off to watch the SuperBowl. The MacBook Air was the life of the party I attended and kinda has the “new gadget” novelty that the iPhone first had. Typical reactions were “ooh, I want one” and “how much did it cost?”

One thing that Jobs touted about the MacBook Air during Macworld Expo was the diminutive size of the packaging, so I decided to compare the boxes of the MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro–stacked top to bottom below.

The dimensions are as follows:

• MacBook Air (MBA)–12.25 x 14.25 x 2.25-inches–393 cubic inches
• MacBook (MB)–15.5 x 14.75 x 3.25–743 cu. in.
• MacBook Pro (MBP)–16.5 x 15.5 x 3.25–831 cu. in.

Correction: I previously listed the depth of the MBA box incorrectly as 5-inches (it’s actually 2.25-inches) which over-stated the volume measurement.

 

 

 

As you can see from the photos the MacBook Air box is smaller in overall dimensions than the MBP and MB boxes and is almost half the volume of the MacBook box, which should make the people at Greenpeace a little happier.

 

 

February 2nd, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 3: Migration assistance

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 7:08 pm

Categories: Diary, MacBook Air

Tags: Apple Macintosh, MBA, Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., Migration, Ethernet, Notebooks, Network Technology, Networking, Hardware

I received my MacBook Air on Thursday (unboxing photos here) and have spent the last few days learning a thing or two about Apple’s Migration Assistant software. It’s that handy little application the auto-runs when you start up a new Mac for the first time or re-install Mac OS X.

The concept is simple, Migration Assistant helps you move your data from a previous Mac to a new one, and for the most part it’s brilliant. The MacBook Air however is a different story.

Because the MacBook Air doesn’t have a Firewire port and USB doesn’t support Target Disk Mode Apple had to update Migration Assistant to allow for migrations over wireless networks. The problem: it doesn’t work (at least for me).

I can probably save you several hours of wasted time if you’re migrating to a MacBook Air with one simple tip.

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