MacBook Air 11" and 13" (July 2011 i5 / i7 refresh

[Gordon Laing]

Hi everyone, this is a thread for owners of, or questions about, the July 2011 refresh of the MacBook Air line with Core i5 and i7 processors.

I'm the proud owner of the new 13in model with a 256 GB SSD (the 128 was out of stock and they did me a good deal). Believe it or not, it's the first Mac I've bought in 20 years, the last being an LC II with 4MB RAM and a 40MB hard disk, er, coincidentally costing roughly the same amount...

[Joris Van den Berghe]

Congratulations, Gordon . Must be a brilliant tool (or should I say 'toy' ?) to work with. I particularly like the fact Apple added the backlit keyboard to the MacBook Air .

[EvanK]

Congrats on your new computer, Gordon! Upgrading from the ol' Pizza Box LC, eh?

I've personally never owned a mac either, if I need a new PC I'll just build one as it's cheaper and I can customize it to my heart's content. Of course, the new OS-X Lion looks very appealing!

[Gordon Laing]

Thanks! Yes, it is a very nice ultra-portable... in fact it was the form factor which sold it to me rather than the platform. Sony seems to be the only other company doing aspirational ultra-portables, and the new Vaio Z is too expensive for me with too fine a screen pitch and also unnecessary graphics power for what I want.

[Antony]

Congratulations Gordon.

For me, my built-to-order MacBook Air (1.8GHz Core i7, 4GB RAM, 256GB flash storage) marks my 3rd Apple laptop, and in fact, it is the cheapest laptop I've ever bought. (The most expensive laptop was the Dell laptop.)

I chose 11-inch for the portability reason.

[Gordon Laing]

Nice config Antony! I was really tempted by the 11in, but was sold on the bigger screen and higher res of the 13 for doing work while away. I also felt there may be too much overlap wth the ipad on the form factor. But I'm still jealous of anyone with an 11in MBA!

[RexGig]

Thanks for this discussion topic. I am actually hoping to avoid purchasing a laptop (or any computer) until late 2013, but these discussions help me to understand what is available, and desirable for digital photography.

[Antony]

Thanks Gordon,

I had some think between the 11-inch and the 13-inch. Since I knew I would max out the CPU and flash storage, the differences were only battery life, screen size and overall size/weight. At the end, great portability trumps everything else.

BTW, in terms of pixels per inch (PPI), the 11-inch model (11.6") has higher PPI than 13-inch model (13.3").

MacBookAir 11-inch (11.6") 1366x768: 135.09 PPI
MacBookAir 13-inch (13.3") 1440x900: 127.68 PPI

iPad (9.7") 1024x768: 131.96 PPI
iPhone 4 (3.5") 960x640 (retina display): 329.65 PPI

[RexGig]

I am bumping this one to the top, having decided to perhaps purchase a MacBook Air this year. Is everyone still happy with their MBAs?

[Antony]

Yes, still very happy with it.

[Gordon Laing]

Yep, I still like mine, although I've only used it from time to time as I haven't needed a portable for day-to-day work.

[Bob Andersson]

.
Me too, although it gets used a little less often now that I have a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Bob.

[RexGig]

Thanks!

[scott_hukins]

Sounds like the MacBook Air is a big hit with the photographers! Just wondering, I'm in the market for a new laptop to assist me on jobs in my backpack along with my camera gear. I'm on a student budget but then realized the MacBook air 11" 64gb, 2gb Ram i5 is avabile for £780 from amazon! Has anyone had any experience with this model and if it will be good enough for programs like Lightroom?

Cheers, Scott