The images Anand took for the first 2010 Air review keep coming back to me-the size difference really isn’t that much. It’s just as easy for me to carry the Air 11” as it is for me to carry the iPad, it even fits into the iPad pocket in my backpack.
Sure, the iPad has a better display and is touch capable, but this is a real computer. And given that there’s just a $200 price difference between the 128GB iPad and the 128GB Air 11”-$100 if you factor in the cost of an iPad keyboard-it’s really something to think about. Not only is the Air 11” dimensionally similar to the iPad, but now with Haswell it has roughly equal battery life too. Thunderbolt, 2x USB 3.0, SD card slot, headphone jack Where the 11” Air becomes really interesting though is when you stop thinking about it in terms of its larger sibling, but in terms of the iPad. It took a few years, but it finally became possible to recommend the base 11”er without any caveats. I will say though, it’s far easier to recommend an Air 11” now that the base model has the 4GB/128GB combo I’d consider the minimum for any ultraportable computer.
And honestly, the 13” is not only a more usable primary computing solution, but also a better computer overall, so I’ll just get that part out of the way first. The price difference has dropped to $100, with the 13” falling to $1099-making it feel like a way better deal, considering the extra battery life (12 hours versus 9 for the 11”) and larger, higher resolution display. But even so, the 13”, with its higher screen resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, and larger battery, seemed to be the way to go, especially after the price dropped to $1199.įor 2013, the entry level 11” and 13” SKUs have the same basic specs: 1.3GHz Haswell ULT processor, 4GB LPDDR3, and a 128GB SSD.
The base 2011 model having only 2GB RAM was basically laughable, and the standard 64GB SSD got a whole lot more indefensible as time went on, but the experience was significantly improved by the switch to modern microarchitectures in the newer 11” Airs. (Jarred’s thoughts at the time: “It has an Apple logo on it, so of course you bought one!”) And then I returned it. It wasn’t really perfect: the base SKU with a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo ULV CPU and 2GB of memory seemed painfully inadequate at the time, the 5 hour battery life wasn’t great (the 13” Air was rated at a much better 7 hours), and $999, though cheap by Apple notebook standards, was a lot to justify spending on roughly year-old specs. At 2.3lbs, it wasn’t even that much heavier and the $999 pricetag made it the least expensive mobile computer in Apple’s lineup. It was nearly as small as the iPad, but as a full notebook it was considerably more useful. When Apple launched the second generation MacBook Air in late 2010, I was definitely more interested in the 11” model.
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