MacBook Air

1. wicketyone January 17, 2008

   what do you think about the durability of the macbook air? Will it break if it falls just once? Have there already been studies to show how much it can withstand?
2. Alexis Brion January 17, 2008

   Great machine. I also wrote an article about it, but from the usability point of view, if you want to check:

   http://www.designvsart.com/blog/2008/01/16/macbook-air-good-for-the-impaired/
3. Todd Zaki Warfel January 17, 2008

   @wicketyone: not sure yet, as I haven’t had a chance to put my hands on one, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ve had a few MacBook Pros and PowerBooks and haven’t had any durability problems. I’ve had colleagues who have dropped theirs off of tables resulting in small dings, but nothing that killed it.

   One of the PowerBooks I had had a 32 oz big gulp spilled across the keyboard accidentally by a friend. I picked it up, turned it over to let the keyboard dry out and removed the battery. A few hours later, it booted right up and never showed any signs of a problem. I still have that PB, four years later and it’s running fine.

   So, based on past experience, I’d imagine it’s going to be quite durable.
4. Austin January 23, 2008

   I’m glad everyone is fine with the absent optical drive ‘feature’ because I’m not.

   I’m still holding onto to my 12inch Powerbook (which I subsequently dropped for the first time yesterday - & yes it still works too), I love it because I travel a lot and love to watch a DVD from time to time. I was hoping they’d unveil its successor at Macworld… I guess I’m just not giving in to the hype on this one.
5. Darcy McGee January 26, 2008

   It seems strange (disingenuous even) to say this:

   > This is a fully featured notebook, not a sub-notebook
   > as many rumor mills suggested it might be.

   and then go on to point out two key features that the MacBook Air is missing:

   > there’s no ethernet or CD/DVD-R drive

   while the world may be going wireless, and the optical drive may be gently nudging towards the dustbin of history both of these would be features I would expect to see in a “fully featured” notebook.

   Not to mention a user swappable battery and RAM, and a hard drive larger than 80GB (which is positively anemic for a *primary* machine at this point.)

   So it’s most definitely a sub-notebook, and not even as fully featured as the ones available with that other operating system.

   Nice product, but also a niche product.

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