Played with the Macbook Air

My local Apple store finally have some Macbook Airs on demo. I had the chance playing with it.

First thing I notice is, obviously, how thin it is and things seems to be quite responsive (ie. starting apps, multi-tasking, etc). I thought wow, is it this good? Could it be due to the 2GB RAM? Maybe it's just because Leopard is that good? Or maybe because it's a fresh system, nothing in the iPhoto/iTunes library? Probably the latter.

Next thing I tested, boot up time. I turned it off, and turned it back on. This was the model with the 80GB hard-drive. Yup, it took like forever to boot up to the desktop. It seemed to stay pretty long on the "gray" screen. Expected, considering Apple put a slow 4200rpm hard-drive in it. My Macbook definitely boots up faster.

Yeah, I saw people's oooh and aaaah on how thin it is, and then they started playing with the seemingly responsive system (no music in iTunes, no photos in iPhoto, unlike most other demo units of other Apple computers). Wait till they buy one and wait for it to boot up... LOL

Yes, you can't deny how charming the looks of the Macbook Air. It's thin. It's so thin that you don't feel that it's a laptop, especially since most people have the paradigm of laptops/notebooks being thicker and heavier. However, this is just the baseline point for Apple. The moment 3G wireless and/or Wimax becoming more prevalent, SSD being larger and cheaper, 802.11n being more standardized and stable, the future revisions of Macbook Air might make more sense. Until then, you're buying an expensive toy.