Comments on The MacBook Air
As it had been rumored, Apple introduced “the world’s thinnest” notebook computer in an aluminum case, a full-sized keyboard, a 13 inch LCD backlit display, and only one USB port and a micro-DVI port. It’s a sweet looking machine; and it better be for its $1800 price! Personally, I first thought it would be just the thing for a true “road warrior”. But, then, as I looked at the specifications, I found something that could almost be a “show stopper” for me. The machine’s battery is not user-accessible.
It’s probably no coincidence that the battery on my MacBook Pro is giving up the ghost as I write this, subjected to too much power and not enough conditioning as I used the machine as my desktop replacement at home. Using the “Coconut Battery” utility, I checked the battery and it confirmed what I already intuitively knew, i.e., my battery’s capacity had degraded to about half of what it was when new. The battery is between a year and a year and a half old and was one of those sent to me by Apple when the first battery was identified as possibly defective (the Sony fire deal). I dropped by the Apple Store last night and chunked down $129 for a new battery. I’m keeping the old one to use at home when I’m running the MBP as a desktop hooked into a power adapter. The new battery is the one I will use when I take the MacBook Pro to work or hit the road and need the most battery capacity.
Back to the MacBook Air. How long can one expect the machine’s internal battery to last? My guess would be between one to two years, depending upon how the battery is treated. At that point, an owner would have two options. If he was outside the machine’s warranty period, then he might take the risk of replacing the battery himself since there are bound to be third-party suppliers by then. If he was still within the warranty or simply don’t want to do the work, he’d have to turn his machine into an approved Apple Service provider to have them replace the battery. I can’t say for sure how much that would cost, but that’s an invisible cost you’ll need to plug into your cost/value analysis. (Note: Since I wrote this, Apple has published a cost of only $129 to replace the battery in the MacBook Air. The downtime is advertised to be 5 days, but at least the cost isn’t any more than buying a battery for a MacBook Pro. Also, one thing I didn’t think about and has been mentioned by someone at another Mac related website is that many business users carry an extra battery to deal with the torture of extra long flights. You’d have to find an airliner with a power plug or someone will have to invent a new battery attachment to be able to extend runtime with the MacBook Air.)
That’s not to say I feel you wouldn’t find the MacBook Air worth it. It all depends on your needs. If I were ever to graduate to being a full-time fiction writer doing book tours around the country, a machine like the MacBook Air would be perfect. I’d write the battery change-out off my taxes as a business-expense, as needed, and press on. Lots of people will feel that way. It’d be a prefect little machine for a doctor to haul around in a hospital or a pilot to use to stay in touch with his loved ones or check the weather. It might be perfect for a college student if it weren’t for the costs of the battery swap and the associated downtime, whatever that might be. Buying one now though for an entering college freshman guarantees that the machine will be in the shop at least once for a battery swap, if not twice or three times, before the student is done. Meanwhile, their MacBook or MacBook Pro-toting friends will have swapped out batteries while experiencing no downtime.
The other thing Apple didn’t address was how one performs a reload of all the operating software. Let’s assume you need to wipe the machine’s hard drive, so you do that, and you didn’t buy the optional external DVD drive for $99. With absolutely no software on the MBA’s hard drive, how will it know to access another PC’s or Mac’s optical drive? I sincerely doubt the task will be handled in the machine’s firmware or EFI. I’d be nervous about owning the machine without the external DVD drive, which means you’d have to carry that with you, along with a USB Ethernet connector and a USB modem to cover all your bases. The whole mess would probably still weigh less than my MacBook Pro, but the difference might not be enough to justify the greater expense.
My wife and I both think the MacBook Air is really neat, but its lack of functionality and mainly its cost put it out of reach for us. We’ll see what happens in another year when my wife’s MacBook needs replacing or once we see one for real in a few weeks. After all, sexiness sometimes wins out, despite all your logical and best-laid plans.
It’s probably no coincidence that the battery on my MacBook Pro is giving up the ghost as I write this, subjected to too much power and not enough conditioning as I used the machine as my desktop replacement at home. Using the “Coconut Battery” utility, I checked the battery and it confirmed what I already intuitively knew, i.e., my battery’s capacity had degraded to about half of what it was when new. The battery is between a year and a year and a half old and was one of those sent to me by Apple when the first battery was identified as possibly defective (the Sony fire deal). I dropped by the Apple Store last night and chunked down $129 for a new battery. I’m keeping the old one to use at home when I’m running the MBP as a desktop hooked into a power adapter. The new battery is the one I will use when I take the MacBook Pro to work or hit the road and need the most battery capacity.
Back to the MacBook Air. How long can one expect the machine’s internal battery to last? My guess would be between one to two years, depending upon how the battery is treated. At that point, an owner would have two options. If he was outside the machine’s warranty period, then he might take the risk of replacing the battery himself since there are bound to be third-party suppliers by then. If he was still within the warranty or simply don’t want to do the work, he’d have to turn his machine into an approved Apple Service provider to have them replace the battery. I can’t say for sure how much that would cost, but that’s an invisible cost you’ll need to plug into your cost/value analysis. (Note: Since I wrote this, Apple has published a cost of only $129 to replace the battery in the MacBook Air. The downtime is advertised to be 5 days, but at least the cost isn’t any more than buying a battery for a MacBook Pro. Also, one thing I didn’t think about and has been mentioned by someone at another Mac related website is that many business users carry an extra battery to deal with the torture of extra long flights. You’d have to find an airliner with a power plug or someone will have to invent a new battery attachment to be able to extend runtime with the MacBook Air.)
That’s not to say I feel you wouldn’t find the MacBook Air worth it. It all depends on your needs. If I were ever to graduate to being a full-time fiction writer doing book tours around the country, a machine like the MacBook Air would be perfect. I’d write the battery change-out off my taxes as a business-expense, as needed, and press on. Lots of people will feel that way. It’d be a prefect little machine for a doctor to haul around in a hospital or a pilot to use to stay in touch with his loved ones or check the weather. It might be perfect for a college student if it weren’t for the costs of the battery swap and the associated downtime, whatever that might be. Buying one now though for an entering college freshman guarantees that the machine will be in the shop at least once for a battery swap, if not twice or three times, before the student is done. Meanwhile, their MacBook or MacBook Pro-toting friends will have swapped out batteries while experiencing no downtime.
The other thing Apple didn’t address was how one performs a reload of all the operating software. Let’s assume you need to wipe the machine’s hard drive, so you do that, and you didn’t buy the optional external DVD drive for $99. With absolutely no software on the MBA’s hard drive, how will it know to access another PC’s or Mac’s optical drive? I sincerely doubt the task will be handled in the machine’s firmware or EFI. I’d be nervous about owning the machine without the external DVD drive, which means you’d have to carry that with you, along with a USB Ethernet connector and a USB modem to cover all your bases. The whole mess would probably still weigh less than my MacBook Pro, but the difference might not be enough to justify the greater expense.
My wife and I both think the MacBook Air is really neat, but its lack of functionality and mainly its cost put it out of reach for us. We’ll see what happens in another year when my wife’s MacBook needs replacing or once we see one for real in a few weeks. After all, sexiness sometimes wins out, despite all your logical and best-laid plans.
posted by Andy Foster at
5:54 PM
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