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Apple Macbook Air video review
A small, shiny, powerful and expensive laptop
Fri Jul 29 2011, 11:33
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WE GOT OUR HANDS ON this year's Apple Macbook Air so we took a look at the shiny, expensive and wafer thin laptop.
The updated model is no thinner or lighter than before but it comes with upgrades in other areas.
The model we were given had an Intel Core i7 dual-core processor running at 1.8GHz. It has 4GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage. There are new multi-touch gestures that perform new tasks in the latest version of Mac OS X Lion. The keyboard is backlit and the pint-sized device includes the fruit themed firm's Thunderbolt port. µ
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I have a spring 2011 13" MacBook Pro. It's the Core i7 model, and it's big enough and heavy enough so that I won't pick it up in a pile of newspapers and put it in the composter by mistake. I also like the built in burner, and this MacBook Pro may be the last one with a burner, as Apple strides into the glorius post CD/DVD era.
BillyFB, The reason the iPad is not a "tablet Mac" is because Mac OS applications are not designed for direct multi-touch manipulation. They have UI elements that require the pinpoint precision of a cursor controlled by trackpad, mouse or other pointing device. The presence of a physical keyboard is assumed, so apps often rely on operations triggered by control-, option-, and shift-clicks.
In contrast, iOS was designed for direct finger manipulation, for example, employing larger buttons, absence of overlapping resizable windows, and a text editing UI employing a magnifier, that works even when the selection is obscured by your fingertip. Touch screens don't support rollovers because, on devices lacking a mouse button, there is no way to distinguish between a drag and a rollover.
There are enough significant differences that, for a reasonable experience, apps need to be written specifically for tablets.
I still don't get'it why Apple hasn't done an iPad version from this, just ditch the keyboard a put a touch-screen in there, and you got a i7 iPad, full blown OSX, and it even runs Flash, something along ASUS Slate.