Mac|Life - Notebook

15-inch 2.2GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro Review

Ray Aguilera — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:49:00 +0000

More bang, same bucks

Apple launched its latest iteration of the MacBook Pro rather quietly, with no media event or even a press release. Instead, they quietly bumped up the specs in their flagship laptops. If you’ve recently bought a MacBook Pro, you’re not missing much. But if you’ve been mulling over a purchase, now might be the time. The improvements are modest, to be sure, but Apple has also brought back an option that we’ve been chomping at the bit to have for quite some time.

The outward appearance of the MacBook Pro remains unchanged. The unibody is still there, along with Apple’s now-standard compliment of ports: USB 2.0, FireWire, an SD card slot, and of course, Thunderbolt. Unfortunately, Apple may be on their second generation of Thunderbolt-equipped laptops, but Thunderbolt devices are still slowly trickling onto the market. There aren’t many consumer-level devices that take advantage of the new port, although several manufacturers have hinted at new products that could be arriving by the time you read this.

On the inside, this refreshed MacBook is quite similar to the model it replaced, except for a slight processor bump to 2.2GHz, and an upgrade to the Radeon 6750 HD graphics card. With the modest upgrade, our benchmark results were mostly in line with those of the previous MacBooks. The 2.2GHz model posted a Geekbench score of 10,269, compared to averages of 9,531 for the previous model. The new graphics card got a workout in our Call of Duty tests, hitting 82.7 frames per second. Overall, the performance was what we expected.

One very welcome surprise, however, is the return of the matte screen option. For designers, photographers, and, well, anyone who works under bright office lights, Apple’s insistence on glossy screens can be frustrating at times. Thankfully, they’re offering a high-resolution anti-glare 1680x1050 display option for $150 on the 15-inch models. You can also opt for a hi-res glossy screen for $100 extra. The 17-inch model can optionally be fitted with an anti-glare screen for 50 bucks, although the smallest MacBook Pros are still left to endure the harsh, glare-filled realities of your desk.

The bottom line. Modest updates make small improvements on an already-great machine, but the optional anti-glare screen is something many Mac users have been clamoring for.

Review Synopsis

Product:

15-inch 2.2GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro

Company:

Apple

Contact:

apple.com

Price:

$1799

Requirements:

Specs: 2.2GHz Core 2 i7 processor, 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 6MB shared L3 cache, 750GB SATA hard drive, AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, 1440x900 glossy 15-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, 2 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, Thunderbolt port, SD card slot, HD FaceTime camera, 802.11n AirPort Extreme, Gigabit Ethernet, headphone minijack with support for Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic, stereo speakers with subwoofer, omnidirectional microphone, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR

Positives:

Speedier processor. Improved graphics performance. Optional high-res glossy or matte screen.

Negatives:

We’re still waiting for Thunderbolt to pay off.

Score:

4.5 Excellent

Review: Aviiq Portable Quick Stand

Susie Ochs — Tue, 17 May 2011 18:15:29 +0000

The promise of a laptop is to let you work anywhere. But their dirty secret is that the "comfort" of being able to answer email from your favorite coffee shop often isn't that comfortable at all. If you've ever tried to type a long missive on a totally flat keyboard, bending your wrists weirdly to do so, or suffered a sore neck from titling your craning down to focus on the screen, you know what we're talking about.

Aviiq makes some well-constructed and handsome full-size laptop stands, but the new Portable Quick Stand is designed to go wherever the spirit takes you and your 'Book. When folded up it's 11 inches long, 3.25 inches wide, and not even 0.25 inches thick—not to mention a mere 5.5 ounces. So it takes up next to no space in your laptop bag, and you could even shove it into a laptop sleeve right next to your Mac.

Once you pick out your table at Peet's Coffee and Tea, the Aviiq pops up to a triangular shape, rising 2.25 inches high. This keeps your laptop's keyboard at a comfy 12 degrees, just right for typing with nice, straight wrists like your typing teacher (do they still have those?) taught you. Your precious 'Book is held stable by rubber caps on either end of the Portable Quick Stand, and Aviiq offers those in five colors: gray, black, green, blue, and magenta. They're glued on, so you can't switch them out, but who cares?

The bottom line. At first glance, $40 seems a little on the steep side for this relatively basic piece of hardware. But it works well, it's solidly made, and it's cheaper than Aviiq's Portable Laptop Stand ($59.99 original, $79.99 premium). If you took this one away from me now that I'm hooked on it, I would probably pay $40 to get it back. Maybe. Once my wrists started to hurt.

Review Synopsis

Product:

Portable Quick Stand

Company:

Aviiq

Contact:

http://aviiq.com/products/laptop-stands/portable-quick-stand/

Price:

$39.99

Requirements:

13- to 17-inch notebook

Positives:

Light and portable. Folds down thin. Angles keyboard to 12 degrees. Rubber bumpers come in five colors.

Negatives:

A little steep at 40 bucks, but it's well made and should last.

Score:

4 Great

Mercury Extreme Pro SSD Review

Florence Ion — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:30:07 +0000

Fast…but there’s not much legroom

The future of the MacBook can definitely be seen in the thin form factor and speedy performance of the MacBook Air -- two huge benefits that come in large part from the Air’s onboard flash memory. Unfortunately, you can’t magically turn a MacBook Pro into an Air, but you can swap out a Pro’s platter-based hard disk for the flash memory of a solid-state drive (SSD). To give the MacBook Pro the kind of pep of its thinner sibling, we traded out the stock hard drive for a Mercury Extreme Pro SSD from OWC. In certain circumstances, the performance gains were significant, but we had to trade capacity for speed.

If you care most about performance, the Mercury Extreme Pro can be blazingly fast. In our Photoshop Actions test, the SSD-equipped MacBook sailed through in 18 seconds -- half the time of the same machine (a 2.8GHz MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM) running off its stock drive. In Final Cut Pro, we encoded a 2GB file in 15 minutes, which halved the 30 minutes it took with the disk-based drive. But don’t go thinking that upgrading to an expensive SSD is like bolting a rocket onto your MacBook; not every operation benefits from the speedier drive. For instance, a massive import of high-res JPEGs into iPhoto was only 10 seconds faster with the SSD.

Just like a Lamborghini, this SSD’s got plenty of speed but hardly enough room for all your stuff.

In our read/write benchmarks, the SSD’s speeds were more than twice the original -- with the stock 5,400-rpm drive, our MacBook Pro hit read and write speeds of 64MB/s and 37MB/s. Running from the SSD, speeds skyrocketed to an astounding 175 MB/s and 125 MB/s, respectively. Impressive for sure, but if you’re not rendering video or doing other disk-intensive tasks, these numbers represent best-case scenarios, not real-world performance gains.

While the Mercury Extreme Pro SSD is definitely faster than our MacBook Pro’s stock 300GB hard drive, it’s time for the catch -- the relatively affordable 120GB model we tested won’t meet the storage needs of pro users. Fortunately, OWC offers several capacities, but as the gigs grow, so does the cost per gigabyte. The top-end model hits 480GB -- but at $1,500, it’s out of the reach of mere mortals. To be fair, that major caveat holds true for SSDs in general, not just OWC’s.

The bottom line. Power users can rejoice at the speed and performance increase this SSD delivers, but file hoarders should opt for something with a bit more room -- and that’s more wallet-friendly.

Review Synopsis

Product:

Mercury Extreme Pro SSD

Company:

OWC

Contact:

macsales.com

Price:

$99 (40GB); $139 (60GB); $229 (120GB); $497 (240GB); $919 (480GB)

Requirements:

MacBook with 2.5-inch SATA drive bay

Positives:

Significant performance increase—video-encoding time cut in half.

Negatives:

High cost per gigabyte, particularly at the top end.

Score:

4 Great

13-inch 2.3GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro Review

Susie Ochs — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:37:26 +0000

Tons of power for the same price as the 13-inch MacBook Air

MacBook Pro refreshes aren’t as predictable as the faithful yearly launches of the iOS devices. They tend to come out of nowhere, like a bolt of lightning—and this one brought a surprising bolt of thunder, too. Yes, the MacBook Pro now sports a Thunderbolt port. Developed by Intel and Apple, it lets you attach external displays with a Mini DisplayPort connector, delivering audio and video. Existing Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI (or VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort) adapters also work.

But Thunderbolt isn’t just about displays. It also serves as a direct PCI-Express connection, giving super-fast throughput speeds to desktop drives, video capture devices, and more. Just not today—at press time, no Thunderbolt peripherals were available, though they’re coming soon.

Our review unit, the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro ($1,199), features a dual-core 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor. (The 15-inch and 17-inch models are available with quad-core Core i7 processors.) HyperThreading runs two threads on each core for four virtual cores total. And TurboBoost 2.0 boosts the active core up to 2.9GHz during processor-heavy work. It feels Road Runner speedy, which isn’t surprising—Apple doesn’t make poky MacBook Pros.

Looks the same on the outside, but it’s got thunder inside.

The FaceTime camera is upgraded too, letting you make 720p HD FaceTime calls, but only to other brand-new MacBook Pros. If you’re calling any other device, you won’t notice a difference. We didn’t see much difference taking snapshots with Photo Booth—skin tones are still a little off, for example. But you can record 720p video directly into iMovie, great for video blogs.

When the MacBook Pro line was refreshed in April 2010, we tested the 15-inch 2.4GHz Core i5, which retailed for $1,799. Those specs aren’t too far from this year’s 13-inch MacBook Pro—our test unit has a 2.3GHz Core i5 with the same 4GB of RAM and 3MB L3 cache. The new, cheaper 13-inch Pro performed better, burning a DVD 6 percent faster, importing photos 30 percent faster, and running Photoshop actions 28 percent faster.

We also compared it to the latest 13-inch MacBook Air (1.86GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 6MB L2 cache), in case you’re trying to decide between them—they both cost $1,199, after all. The MacBook Air was bested across the board, with the Pro converting video files 87 percent faster, audio files 89 percent faster, and exporting GarageBand files 63 percent faster.

This new 13-inch MacBook Pro features Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 processor with 384MB of shared DDR3 SDRAM. In testing, the MacBook hit just 38.5 frames per second in Call of Duty 4, 10 percent less than the 13-inch Air (which has an Nvidia GeForce 320M GPU with 256MB of shared DDR3 SDRAM), and a whopping 37 percent less than last year’s 15-inch Pro (which has dual graphics chips, including an Nvidia GeForce GT 330M with 256MB of dedicated DDR3 SDRAM). So if you plan to do serious gaming, consider stepping up to a 15-inch or 17-inch model—they both include the Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU as well as an AMD Radeon HD GPU.

Battery life is awesome—another thing we’ve come to expect from Apple. The Pro is rated at 7 hours of wireless productivity, and in our DVD rundown test, it lasted a jaw-dropping 6 hours, 54 minutes.

The bottom line. The MacBook Pro is a dream laptop, delivering more power than the Air and more bells and whistles too—the FireWire and Ethernet ports the Air lacks completely, plus that fancier FaceTime camera, and our personal favorite, the backlit keyboard. Thunderbolt is cool to have, but not a reason to run out and upgrade today if you have a Mac laptop you’re happy with.

Review Synopsis

Product:

13-inch 2.3GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro

Company:

Apple

Contact:

apple.com

Price:

$1,199

Requirements:

2.3GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 3MB shared L3 cache, 320GB SATA hard drive, Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics processor with 384MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory, 1280x800 glossy 13-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, 2 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, Thunderbolt port, SD card slot, HD FaceTime camera, 802.11n AirPort Extreme, Gigabit Ethernet, headphone minijack with support for Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic, stereo speakers with subwoofer, omnidirectional microphone, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR

Positives:

Speedier processor. Thunderbolt port for a little future proofing. High-def FaceTime camera records 720p video in iMovie. FireWire is still around.

Negatives:

At 1440x900, 13-inch MacBook Air has a higher-resolution display. Built-in battery can’t be removed. No matte display option.

Score:

4.5 Excellent

Intel Goof Should Only Cause Minor Delay For MacBook Pro Refresh

Matthew Tilmann — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:42:48 +0000

While Intel's error on their latest chip design has certainly been the subject of much publicity, it has also unfortunately put a slight bump in the road of Apple's plans for a widely expected MacBook Pro refresh. However, there is some good news. The bump should only be slight, and any delay should only be minor.

In case you had missed it, Intel announced late last month that there had been a design flaw within all of its 6 Series Cougar Point chipsets -- which was caused by supporting new Sandy Bridge Core processors which had been on their way to mainstream laptops and desktops, such as the MacBook Pro and iMacs -- which would ultimately delay launches of those chips because of a lapse in production while the glitch was corrected.

AppleInsider is reporting that a person familiar with the matter is claiming that only some of the MacBook Pros were affected by the glitch, not all. The source is claiming that Apple has elected to make minor fixes to the logic boards of these models, however these changes would only mean a delay of less than two weeks.

It certainly looks like Apple may have received an early shipment of the Cougar Point chipsets from Intel, and any changes involve only tweaks to SATA ports that those MacBook Pros would use.

Follow this article's author, Matthew Tilmann on Twitter

Saddleback Leather Briefcase Review

Ray Aguilera — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:40:26 +0000

Beautiful and imperfect

Do you remember that person you dated in high school--the one your mom hated because she knew they were no good for you? They were a bit too much for you to handle, they didn’t treat you so great…and you couldn’t care less because they were just that hot? This bag is like that.

Just so we’re clear, Saddleback bags aren’t for everyone. For starters, they’re heavy. Saddleback uses full-grain leather, which means they’re made from the thickest, heaviest, most ass-kicking part of the cowhide. And the hardware is all heavy-duty metal. Completely empty, our large Briefcase (medium and extra large also available) weighs 7.5 pounds, which is more than the backpack I usually use—with my laptop in it. If you’re using a 13-inch or smaller MacBook, you can get away with the medium size (it’s smaller and about a pound lighter), but anything bigger and you’ll need to go large. The bags are also imperfect. The leather scratches and scuffs with daily use. Frankly, I think the lived-in, Indiana Jones look is cool, but if you’re looking for pristine soft leather, this ain’t it.

Saddleback's bags are pure 100 percent leather power.

The Briefcase itself is a fairly simple affair. The main compartment is divided in two by a couple of small internal pockets, and a key strap is riveted inside the bag. Small external pockets also lurk on the ends of the bag, perfect for quickly stashing smaller items. On the flap, three heavy buckles close the bag, although we only used the center strap for the sake of speed. This bag is designed to be carried over one shoulder, but the adjustable 59-inch strap can also be routed through a ring on the top to create backpack-style straps.

In daily use, we got more compliments and curious questions about the Saddleback Briefcase than any other product we’ve ever reviewed. Rest assured—it’s a drop-dead gorgeous bag. But from a practicality standpoint, it’s 15 pounds when loaded with a MacBook and a few extras…so we always felt as if our spine was on the verge of snapping in two. And the stiff, hard leather maintains its shape, so the bag is almost the same size empty as it is stuffed with gear. So yeah, it’s heavy and bulky.

The bottom line. Saddleback’s Briefcase isn’t always practical. But if you’re looking for durability and rugged style more than convenience—and have the ample finances and sturdy backbone to be able to swing it—this will be the last bag you ever buy.

Review Synopsis

Product:

BRIEFCASE

Company:

Saddleback Leather

Contact:

www.saddlebackleather.com

Price:

$519, medium; $555, large; $607, extra-large

Requirements:

Stuff to carry, strong back, fat wallet

Positives:

Beautiful and durable. Lifetime warranty. This bag wil outlive you.

Negatives:

Incredibly heavy. Not much in the way of pockets or other organizational frills. Expensive!

Score:

3 Solid

Q&A: My Month with the MacBook Air

Susie Ochs — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:56:33 +0000

It's been a month and change since Apple released its new MacBook Air line, and since they were nice enough to hand me a review unit on my way out of the October 20 event, I've been using it every day.

I wouldn't say it's changed my concept of what a computer is, or revolutionized my life, or anything as lofty as that. It's a great little machine, though. And even with the reviews written and verdicts given and the television commercial running near-endlessly, people still have questions. I asked our 20,000 Twitter followers what they wanted to know, for example, and found plenty of things you're still curious about.

Which one to buy?

I'm using the 11.6-inch model with a 128GB of storage -- it retails for $1,199. This unit has the stock amount of RAM, 2GB, which comes soldered to the motherboard. So if you want more RAM, order the 4GB upgrade from Apple from another $100. I recommend this. My stock Air didn't feel sluggish with just 2GB of RAM, but the more the better.

If I were buying one tomorrow, I'd get this same one -- I like the 11-inch size and extreme portability, but I definitely need 128GB of storage over the entry-level's 64GB (more on that in a bit). I would bump up the RAM, though, for a total of $1,299.

Is the 11-inch screen too small?

That's of course subjective, but for me, the answer is no. The Air's 11.6-inch screen is the smallest I've ever used. It's only 5.75 inches high, and a hair over 10.1 inches wide. The top-to-bottom dimension feels the most limiting, and it did change the way I work a little bit.

For starters, I moved my Dock to the left side of the screen and set it to hide automatically (System Preferences > Dock). That frees up the whole screen for application windows, and I resized those to use all available space. I used the Command-Tab shortcut to cycle through applications, and if you're a ninja with Spaces that would help here too.

I didn't bother with Spaces, but did find myself using Exposé a lot more than usual, both Dock Exposé and the F11 keyboard shortcut. I don't mind having to press the Fn key while pressing F11 (otherwise it's just the volume-up button), but you can always remap Exposé to F5, since that function key doesn't do double-duty. Lion's improved full-screen application mode and Mission Control feature will make window management even easier, I imagine.

Adobe's Photoshop CS4 and InDesign CS4 -- which we use to create our pretty print magazine here at Mac|Life -- were both somewhat annoying to use on the 11-inch Air's screen, just because their interfaces have so many toolbars and palettes. If design applications like that are your bread and butter, you're probably not considering moving to a MacBook Air full-time anyhow. But I'm here to tell you it's possible. Just a little annoying.

One more note: The 11-inch Air's native resolution is 1366x768, which is pretty close to the 13-inch MacBook Pro's 1280x800 -- but of course the 13-inch Pro has more screen space for those pixels. So icons and type on the Air just look a little smaller, and I found myself bumping up text sizes in Outlook and Safari to compensate.

Does it have enough storage space?

Also subjective, and also for me, "Yes, it does." Again, I have the 128GB model. And as of this writing, I've got about 31GB of free space to work with. That's after installing Microsoft Office 2011, Adobe CS4, a couple of hefty games via Steam (Left 4 Dead 2 and Civilization V), my 7GB Dropbox folder (work stuff, mostly), 32GB of various files in the Documents folder, one really small (4 minute) iMovie project, and a 9.5GB chunk of media in the Music folder.

Obviously, you won't be able to keep everything on the Air. If you have gigs and gigs of photos, music, and videos, you'll do better to keep them stored elsewhere and just move them to the Air's built-in storage as needed. For example, I kept my main 300GB-plus iTunes library on my iMac at home, and used Home Sharing to move essential albums over to the Air over the network. That also let me purchase iPhone apps on the Air and get them back to the main iTunes library for syncing to my iPhone and iPad.

If you want the Air to be your only machine, and not just a portable companion to another Mac, be prepared to tether to an external drive for housing big media collections. You might consider using multiple iPhoto and iTunes libraries, one really small one on the local storage and a full collection on the external. Hold down Option while launching either iPhoto or iTunes to create a new library, and use the Preferences to point it at your external.

I was happy enough using Home Sharing for iTunes, and supplementing that with Pandora.com when away from my home network. And for photos, I bypassed iPhoto entirely, uploading right to Facebook and Flickr.com from my iPhone. Your mileage will vary -- serious photographers would want at least 13 inches of screen space for editing; most of the ones we know go for the largest screen they can get.

Will it play Civilization V?

I was surprised and pleased at the Air's gaming performance. I installed Steam and used that to download Left 4 Dead 2, and Sid Meier's Civilization V. Note that the Air doesn't officially meet the system requirements of either game.

Left 4 Dead 2 requires a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and this Air's is just a 1.4GHz. But the Air's Nvidia Geforce 320M graphics chip is better than the bare minimum Nvidia 8600M required. When I plugged in a mouse and USB headset, the game fired up just fine and ran pretty smoothly. I saw some stuttering in online play, both in the audio and the video, it was still playable for the most part but not a flawless experience. But playing an offline single-player game was smooth sailing.

And Civilization V has even steeper requirements, asking for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM. Our Air meets the RAM requirements, but not the processor. Still, it downloaded from Steam, launched, and ran just fine. It defaulted all the Video Options to Low/Minimum (textures, the "fog of war," etc.), but I pumped them all back up to Medium and it still ran fine. Still, keep in mind that it isn't supported officially -- even though I didn't run into crashes or weirdness, I can't promise that you won't.

OnLive also ran fine, even though I was relying on Wi-Fi, which is still technically in beta. And OnLive is fully streaming -- you don't need to download the game to your Mac, as you do with Steam. So nothing is stored locally, which is perfect for the MacBook Air.

Games that require a disc in the drive can still be played if you have the $79 Apple MacBook Air SuperDrive, which connects to your Air via USB. I didn't have access to one of these. But Steam and OnLive gave me all the gaming I could handle.

How well does it stream video? Any fan noise?

I watched tons of streaming video on the Air, from Netflix.com, Hulu, Vimeo, you name it. And to answer this question, I still had to turn to iFixit's teardown to confirm, that yeah, this 11-inch Air does have a fan. It's a thin, tiny fan, like everything else inside the Air, but it's there. Well, I wouldn't have noticed.

Did you install Flash?

Yes, I did. Flash Player doesn't come preinstalled on the OS, so the first time you "need" it you'll be prompted to install it. I figured that most of our readers probably would, so I did too. Apple's battery life quote of about 5 hours was made with Flash installed, they said, and I found it to be pretty accurate in my experience. The MacBook Air feels cooler to the touch than my 15-inch Core i7 MacBook Pro, and I don't recall hearing that jet-engine-takeoff sound from the Air when a Flash video started to roll. So YouTube away, my friends.

Can it handle light music and video editing?

It sure can! I shot a four-minute video in HD with my iPhone 4, transferred it to the MacBook Air, and opened it up in iMovie '11, which worked just fine. In fact, it felt quicker and snappier than editing on my Pro -- very few beach-ball moments outside the initial clip loading. The Air's storage space will make it impractical for editing, say, a feature film, but for Flip videos, iPhone videos, those slick new iMovie trailers, you're fine. I did a little tinkering in GarageBand and also had no problems -- unless the 2-USB-port ceiling is a problem for you.

Did you have problems with the physical hardware?

I missed the backlit keyboard. Typing on the keyboard is great, and the trackpad is plenty large, but I just like computing in low light, and I missed the glow behind the keyboard. The speaker isn't so powerful, but that didn't bother me much.

I did miss the Ethernet port a few times. You can get a 10/100 USB Ethernet Adapter for $29, but I didn't. And I ran into a couple of instances (once at work, once in a hotel) where I really, sorely wanted to connect via Ethernet when Wi-Fi wasn't available or working right. Having 2 USB ports and nothing else (no FireWire, and the 11-inch Air doesn't have the SD card slot that's on the 13-incher) wasn't an issue. My external drive I use to back up my MacBook Pro with Time Machine uses FireWire 800, so I couldn't connect that to the Air, but I instead opted for cloud storage like Dropbox to keep important stuff backed up, rather than archiving every single thing.

One note about Dropbox: It was a breeze to keep all my work files synced and backed up. But it would have been smarter to go for a cloud-storage service that lets you archive files online without keeping a local copy synced. Dropbox keeps a version on your hard drive. So does iDisk. (Well, both can be used exclusively through their web interfaces without that local copy, but that's not how you'd typically do it.) SpiderOak will let you archive files to your online account (where they're available to all the other computers in your network) and then delete them from your machine, which is great for the MacBook Air because you can "save" without taking up local storage.

Has it replaced your iPad?

Honestly? Yeah. Poor iPad, between the one-two punch of my iPhone 4's superior Retina Display and the 11-inch MacBook Air besting it as a couch-bound Internet-and-entertainment machine, my iPad just doesn't get used as much anymore. I had been using it a lot to watch Netflix videos in my TV-less bedroom, but the MacBook Air's just as good as that, and doesn't need to be awkwardly propped up with a stand or pile of pillows.

As a Internet machine, the Air has made me see the appeal of netbooks -- you know, the category, not the actual netbooks themselves. Mobile Safari's all right, and it's fun to navigate by touch, so the iPad gets points for that. But it was so great to have a real keyboard, a full browser, easy uploading and downloading, true multitasking, and yes, plug-ins and extensions including Flash Player, in a small, light machine that feels like nothing on your lap and rarely needs to be plugged in. I get why people buy netbooks, and I'm glad Apple made a small Mac that can fit those use patterns and still be a Mac.

But my iPad isn't. I'll still use it for games and videos (and I'll come crawling back on that sad day when I have to relinquish this MacBook Air, which after all belongs to Apple), but the iPad can absolutely be replaced by the Air. If anyone is trying to decide between them, I'd say unless you really love iOS gaming, or you know you need something that will reliably go 8-10 hours between charges, choose the Air.

Review: Crumpler Moderate Embarrassment Messenger Bag

Nic Vargus — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:13:18 +0000

A perfect laptop messenger only needs a few features. It needs to fit your laptop and accessories, it needs to be comfortable, and it needs to not be so brain-numbingly ugly that you don’t want to wear it for fear of humiliation. So it’s with great delight, and a small dose of irony, that we present to you the “Moderate Embarrassment” messenger, a bag that fills all three criterions.

Well-designed internals keeps your accessories organized and in place, even after a bit of shaking. There’s a spot for pens, two zipped-off pouches, and plenty of Velcro to keep your stuff in place. By supplying its own built-in padded protection sleeve, the Crumpler alleviates the need for a case for your Macbook at all (13 & 15 inch only), and can easily fit an iPad as well.

The strap is sturdy and has an adjustable spongy pad to keep your shoulder comfortable during long treks. It opens and closes in a snap thanks to well-placed Velcro. Even the plastic buckles seem to be made superiorly to a majority of bags we’ve tested.

Our only beef is the bag’s bright-green interior, which is fine on its own, but when coupled with the “rotten orange” (their words, not ours) and grey exterior, looks a bit out of place. There are other color options out there for those not wishing to be moderately embarrassed - each slightly less garish than our beloved “rotten orange” version – ranging from all black with green interior, to brown and red with blue interior.

Review Synopsis

Score:

4 Great

First Look: 11.6-inch, 1.4GHz MacBook Air

Susie Ochs — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:33:48 +0000

The new MacBook Air instantly made friends with my 15-inch Core i7 MacBook Pro. Well, until they started to battle. (See the video below.)

We walked out of Apple's "Back to the Mac" event today with a shiny new MacBook Air on loan from the mad scientists at Cupertino. In fact, I'm writing this on the new 11.6-inch, 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Air right now.

What's it like? So glad you asked.

For starters, it's hott. As in gorgeous, not that it heats up your lap. (It really doesn't.) The president of our company and the chief executive of our parent company happened to stroll by my desk a few minutes after I'd set up the Air, and both these titans of industry stopped dead in their tracks, and then spent the next couple of minutes passing the Air back and forth and marveling over its svelte beauty. Measuring 11.8 inches wide, 7.56 inches deep, and merely 0.68 inches high at its thickest point, it tapers down to a practically-invisible 0.11 inches at the thinnest point, down near the thumbscoop.

The screen measures 11.6 inches diagonally, but it's a true 16:9 widescreen, a little shorter than the iPad's 4:3, 9.7-inch diagonal screen when the iPad is in landscape mode. I wish Apple had followed the design precedence set by the current MacBooks, Cinema Displays, and the iPad by surrounding the MacBook Air's screen with a glossy black bezel instead of the regular aluminum unibody bezel, but Apple most likely opted for a unibody with no extra parts stuck onto it to keep the Air thin and light as possible. The iPad weighs 1.5 pounds (Wi-Fi only; the Wi-Fi + 3G model is 1.6 pounds), and this 11.6-inch Air is only a little heavier, at 2.3 pounds.

The full-size keyboard is a pleasure to type on, although we already miss the backlit keys of the MacBook Pro. Apple positioned the internal stereo speakers directly underneath the Air's keyboard, with no visible grill or perforation. An Apple rep explained that the sound comes up from below the keyboard through the tiny bits of space around each key. That's a super-cool idea, although when we blasted some music through iTunes, it sounded a little on the tinny side. Still better than the last MacBook Air, though. The glass Multi-Touch trackpad is a little shorter than on the larger MacBooks -- it's 4.1 inches across by 2.5 inches high, for about 4.7 diagonal inches total. But it's a breeze to use, with all the one-, two-, three-, and four-finger Multi-Touch gestures working like a dream.

The LED-backlit display is plenty bright, a high-res 1366x768 pixels natively, and visible from a wide angle. Apple put the MagSafe port, one USB 2.0 port, the audio in/out (Apple's Earphones with Remote and Mic are supported), and the integrated mic on the left side of the Air, and the Mini DisplayPort and a second USB 2.0 port on the right side. Our 11.6-inch Air doesn't have the SD card slot that's on the 13.3-inch Air, but other than that the ports are the same. We were able to connect the Air to our new 27-inch Cinema Display, where it ran great in lid-closed mode at a maximum resolution of 2560x1440. But in mirrored-display mode, the 27-inch display could only show 1366x768 pixels, which made things look big and blurry. So stick to extended or lid-closed mode for the best experience.

The 27-inch Cinema Display's three-headed cable has Mini DisplayPort and USB connectors that go in these ports, and a MagSafe power tip that stretches around to the left side of the Air. But it fits.

There's no optical drive, so Apple included a tiny USB stick with your software on it in case you need to reinstall any included applications or the Mac OS itself. (Yes, this runs the full Mac OS, not some watered-down version or iOS hybrid.) You can also borrow the optical drive of another nearby Mac -- just insert your disc, then launch a Finder window on the Air and select Remote Disc from the sidebar. There's no Ethernet port, just 802.11n Wi-Fi, but Apple sells an USB Ethernet Adapter for $29.

And there's also no hard drive. Apple instead opted for flash memory sticks, the same kind of memory in its iPod line (except the hard-drive-equipped iPod classic), the iPhones, and the iPad. But to save space and weight, they didn't even use a true SSD, or solid-state drive, which is made up of flash memory but in a traditional hard drive shape. Instead, Apple put the flash chips right on the logic board, saving space in the enclosure for more and bigger batteries. Apple claims this 11.6-inch Air will get 5 hours of productivity and a whopping 30 days of standby time. We can't wait to test that spec out, but so far so good...

The flash memory also provides an incredibly speedy experience. The Air comes to life virtually instantly when you press the Power button or open the case. And even with its 2GB of RAM and 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo, this Air launches all of Apple's packed-in applications in, well, in a flash. We did a side-by-side app-launching test to compare launch times for Mail, Safari, iChat, Address Book, iCal, iTunes, Preview, and the iLife 11 applications on the Air and on my brand-new work machine, a 2.66GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM. With that kind of processor speed and double the RAM, you'd think the Pro would smoke the Air, huh? Not so. Thanks to the flash memory, the Air's applications launched almost instantly, while the Pro's apps are stored on a regular hard drive with spinning platters, and took longer to launch. Check out the video below:

We'll have a full review of the MacBook Air in an upcoming issue of Mac|Life, as well as here on MacLife.com, of course. But even after having it for just a few hours, we can say with confidence that it's more compelling than the original (and more expensive) MacBook Air released in 2008, and quite a fun little machine to use.

We still don't know if users can upgrade the RAM (Apple will let you upgrade to 4GB of RAM at the time of purchase for a fairly reasonable $100) or the memory (this 11.6-inch model comes in 64GB and 128GB flavors) after buying the Air. It doesn't seem likely -- there are no seams or doors to access the insides; it's all sealed up like an iPad. But we're still checking with Apple to be sure, and will update this when we hear back. Anything else you'd like to know about the new MacBook Air? Let us know in the comments.

Cocoon Gramercy Messenger Sling Review

Nic Vargus — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:29:54 +0000

A mixed messenger

Cocoon’s Gramercy bag tries to make carrying your iPad into a fashion statement of its own. And hey, why not? The iPad is sleek, sexy, and undeniably cool--shouldn’t it have a case to match? As if in answer to that question, this bag nicks its name from the crazy-fashionable Gramercy neighborhood of Manhattan, but its overall stylishness is more plain and pedestrian. It’s available in black, grey, or red, and provides just enough space to schlep an iPad and the included Grid-It accessory organizer.

The red Gramercy looks like what you'd get if a defribrillator bag and a first-aid kit had a love child.

The Gramercy is a vertical messenger-style bag. The front features a small pocket sized to fit an iPhone or iPod touch, and the clear plastic material allows you to change songs, answer calls, and otherwise operate your device normally without removing it from the pocket. That pocket is a necessity because the bag’s only zippered pouch will be occupied by the included Grid-It organizer, a hardback board created to transport all of your accessories. The back can double as a mouse pad, but it’s the weave of elastic bands on the front that makes Grid-It worth carrying. To keep all your cables, power adapters, and earbuds in place, simply slip your gear under the ribbed stripes. Though it’s not much to look at, the Grid-It works remarkably well. We could barely shake anything free from the Grid-It board when we loaded it with stuff from our desks. It worked fine with both small items and bulkier stuff like sunglasses. With the iPad in the back sleeve, a fully loaded Grid-It fits in the zippered section with room to spare.

This seemingly simple design works better than you'd imagine and makes carrying accessories effortless.

Almost everything about the Gramercy feels solid. The bag is made from ballistic nylon and has a heavy-duty zipper. But the strap is a bit wimpy--we wouldn’t trust it with anything heavy, and the Gramercy is too small for serious loads anyway. Which is basically its major flaw. It won’t help you haul a laptop, and if all you’re carrying is an iPad, you’re probably not going to need to carry all the accessories intended to fit on the Grid-It. This poses a bit of an existential problem for the bag as an object for daily use. If it can’t carry everything you’ll need (and it can’t), then why use it at all? Ultimately, this bag is filling a small niche for people who need a way to haul around iPads but not laptops, books, or even just a sandwich.

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Review Synopsis

Score:

3 Solid