My boss got the Apple MacBook Air 11.6″ from the US for one of our business partner . It is the 11.6″ with 64GB of SSD. Apple Singapore is selling it for S$1,488 while the US is selling for US$999.

MacBook Air 11.6
MacBook Air 11.6″ Box

As the MacBook Air does not belong to me, I did not power it on, only compared the size and weight of it to my iPad, Macbook Pro and my Asus EEE 1000HE.

iPad Weight
iPad Weight
MacBook Air Weight
MacBook Air Weight
Comparing With iPad
Comparing With iPad
Thickest End Of The MacBook Air
Thickest End Of The MacBook Air
Thinest End Of The MacBook Air
Thinest End Of The MacBook Air

My first impression of it is extremely small, thin and light. I took my iPad out to compare the size and the width of the iPad matches the width of the MacBook Air almost exactly. The MacBook Air is obviously longer because of the 2″ difference in screen size. In terms of weight, I weigh the iPad and it weighs 694g vs the weight of the MacBook Air which weights 1,020g.

I would say the MacBook Air is the netbook (in terms of size and lower specs than its elder brothers) from Apple because it is in-between the iPad and the MacBook Pro 13″. I would not say the MacBook Air is an iPad replacement because you will not bring out a MacBook Pro and use it while standing up or walking around with it because the posture is just weird.

MacBook Air 11.6
MacBook Air 11.6″ Specifications
Comparing With Asus EEE 1000HE
Comparing With Asus EEE 1000HE

In terms of processing, it is only a Intel Core 2 Duo with a 1.4GHz or a 1.6GHz (for 11.6″ variant) which does not really gives you that much of a processing power if you compare the price range with the MacBook Pro. If you compare it with the market prices of netbooks, the MacBook Air easily twice the price of a mid range netbook by offering much faster processor and RAM (DDR3) and of course SSD storage.

If you were to get the Macbook Air, I would say go for the 11.6″ instead as it is smaller and slightly lighter.

If you are going to get the 13″ variant, I rather you go for the MacBook Pro 13″ which offer better processing power and more RAM and it is S$600 cheaper than the highest end MacBook Air 13.3″. Do we need SSD at this point in time? I would say it is good to have but not a must have.

A

PS: One of the benefit for working at mig33 is that our boss travels to the US pretty often and he buys back the latest gadgets to Singapore and we get our hands on it!