I know that many of you that read this are likely of the opinion that proprietary, closed software is evil and should be banished from the Earth. Likewise, I'm sure many of you are opposed to Apple Inc., and would not approve of anyone using those over-priced, freedom-killing devil machines. Instead of leaving mean comments or giving me a good what-for on Twitter or Google+, please just close this tab and ignore that this post is written.

OK, you think that will do it? That's likely.

I've been researching a lot of laptops lately that I may possibly buy, but each of them that I find somehow disappoints the reviewers. There's always one factor that makes them say, "it's okay, but it's no Macbook Air." For $1200, I'm not looking for "not a Macbook Air;" I'm looking for a thin, light, durable machine that feels solid and works well. Price is also a big consideration for me.

I've had the pleasure opportunity to become quite familiar with the Macbook Air 3,2 (2010) in the past few months working as an intern for a school system that has gone 1:1 (meaning that every kid has access to "their own" laptop during the school year), and they chose to use Macbook Airs.

While I refuse decline to use OS X, and instead use my two-year-old Atom-based Asus EEE PC that's running Ubuntu, I have gotten very close with the system while working on them daily as students (and teachers) run into problems that need to be addressed. So I have spent weeks preparing my official review/rant about both the hardware and what Apple got right and wrong on the software side.

Hardware

I absolutely love this hardware. I've handled both the 11" and 13" Macbook Air, and by far I prefer the 11" form factor. For one thing, I like the 16:9 aspect ratio of the 11". The 13" has a 16:10 display that gives the entire machine a more box-y look that I don't love. Not only that, but the 11" is unbelievably light (2.38 pounds). You wouldn't think that that tiny difference is noticable, but it is.

The aluminum unibody is a thing of beauty. Everything is crafted elegantly, it doesn't attract fingerprints or easily scuff, and has a really sturdy feel to it. The keys have an equally great feel to them. Sure, they're plastic, but they actually feel better than most plastic keyboards. I know that sounds crazy, but in a blind type test I could totally pick it out of a lineup.

The glass clickpad that Apple puts on their machines is hands-down the best clickpad ever made. It's slick (I mean that in several different ways), and requires just the right amount of pressure to depress the button. It also makes gestures work fantastically well (I'll talk about that later).

The display is one of the best that I've seen, but to be fair I haven't paid attention to that many different displays. All I know is that the colors are rich and deep, and that pictures that look crappy on my netbook look wonderful on that display. Because it's an 11" screen that packs in 1366x768 pixels, everything is sharp and crisp. The 13" has a slightly higher resolution to accommodate for the increase in real estate. It's also worth mentioning that the tiny speakers are quite powerful and deliver a fuller sound than I ever expected.

In terms of hardware specs, the machine runs well. We've reached the point where it doesn't really matter what processor a machine has in it, unless you're doing professional work or gaming (as long as it's not one of the aforementioned Atom processors). The ones that I've used have the Core 2 Duo and 2GBs RAM, and I have not once bogged the machine down. I'm not the most rigorous user by any means, but the machine gets out of your way. I also played Portal 2 on it, and it ran really well. Typically, the machine is extremely cool and quiet. While gaming the bottom heated up and the fan ran off and on, but it still kept up, so I have no complaints in the power department (not in that power department, any way).

In short, everything about the machine, from the lid hinges, the "Macbook Air" emblem on the bottom of the lid, the branding on the underside of the case, and the glowing Apple is well-crafted, elegant, and exactly how you would want your laptop to look. If anything it may look a little bland, but perhaps that's just understood elegance.

Ninja edit: I forgot to mention how much I am in love with the charging unit. For one thing, it has a magnetic "Magsafe" power connector, so if some clumsy buffoon like me walks by and trips over the cord it just pops out without taking the laptop with it. The charger has two pieces: it can either be a short-length charging apparatus, or you can attach the extension to give it a longer reach. And, perhaps the most ingenious of all: the brick has two pop-out arms to wrap the cord around, so that it's all one neat, tidy unit. It's the simple things, really.

So, you're asking, is there anything hardware-wise that you don't like? Well, I'm glad you asked. My main complaint is that I wish the battery life was a little better. I know the 13" gets around 7 hours, but the 11" only gets around five. I know that sounds like a lot, but I 'm used to seven or eight on my netbook, and I hate the thought of losing a single second. I wish Apple could make a removable battery, or perhaps a portable one that fits magnetically on the bottom of the case and just plugs in the Magsafe adapter port. I also wish that there were more ports on the case, the main of which being an HDM port. I know Apple loves the mini-Display Port, but we are all using HDMI. Come on, Apple, get with the game here.

Mac OS X

I admit, I'm totally biased towards Linux, Ubuntu specifically, so take this review with a grain of salt. Instead of generalizing about whether or not it's good or bad software, I'm going to nitpick about things that they either got right (and we should copy implement), and what they completely dropped the ball on.

The Good

  • Gestures. Gestures may be the greatest thing about Mac OS X. It's not something that would take a lot of effort to put into Ubuntu*, but is a feature that you sorely miss when going from one platform to another. The "four-finger swipe" to use Expose (the equivalent of "the Spread" [Super+W ] in Ubuntu) is great, and the three-finger navigation makes like so much easier. Plus, the pinch-to-zoom and rotation features just feel so natural. So kudos to them for that.
  • Scrolling with "inertia." The single feature that I miss more than anything while going to another system. In Mac OS X, the scrolling speed is dependent on how quickly you move your fingers. If you're going slow and doing the "come hither" thing, then scrolling is gradual, but if you're doing the "Olympic finger-jump" and moving your fingers fast and furiously to get to the bottom of the page faster, it just leaps to the bottom of the page.
  • The iTunes Store. Feeling towards iTunes, the program, aside (*cough*... crappy software... *cough*), the iTunes store is something I really love. I love the idea of going to a single place to find books, music, movies, podcasts (especially podcasts), and more, all in a clean and easy-to-browse place. Miro Guide attempts to kinda be similar, but falls completely flat.
  • Consistency. Command+Q quits an application (see further bullet). In Ubuntu, it's Control+Q. Probably. Maybe it's Control+Shift+Q. Or Control+W. Or Control+Shift+W. Or something. Blimey.
Ninja Edit 2: You can't tell me everyone in the community didn't read this entry and spend all night working on gestures and multi-touch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt20KjcPVsQ&feature=player_embedded

The Bad

  • The Dock. What can I say? The icons look inconsistent. The magnification is distracting. The "genie" effect is dumb. The minimization to the dock is confusing. Window management is cluttered. And why would I use "stacks" if Finder *has* to be on the dock and open? And Mission Control is nice, but doesn't have the unified feel that Unity has. Love or hate Unity, the experience on Mac is fragmented. You go to different places to do similar things that should all be part of a single user experience.
  • The Dashboard. I think they whole thing is a dumb idea. I don't need a place to stick useless widgets that suck down CPU cycles and battery life, thanks.
  • Pressing the "close" button doesn't quit the application (usually). When I click the close button I want my program to quit, close, die, disappear, abscond, or otherwise GTFO. I don't want it to stay open and leave that dumb orb glowing on my dock.
  • Limited/minimal/no app integration. In Ubuntu, applications and the OS are best friends. Like with the messaging menu, where social networking and e-mail clients hang out to give you a single place to handle messages, or the sound menu, where different music plays let you control them from one pane, or with notify-send, a single method of delivering desktop notifications, or with Unity quicklists, a way of performing functions in software from anywhere using the Unity launcher; in short, there is almost a limitless number of ways (did I also mention lenses and scopes?) in Ubuntu, but in Mac OS X, applications generally play by themselves.
  • The constant whining that I didn't eject that drive properly. I'm a bad person, I should have ejected that USB disk- I know that. Maybe there could have been pending reads/writes. Who knows? What I do know is that what I did was wrong, and apparently what I did was so bad that I'm going to prison, or hell, or something. But I can't help to image that hell is just a never-ending series of improperly ejected disk messages.
  • iWork. I know that it isn't a mandatory part of OS X, but holy crap, I have to mention that here. I don't think I've ever used a piece of software that has made me want to turn it into a human being just so I can strangle it and watch as the last fleeting breath escapes as it slips into a bitter and painful death.

Conclusion

I really love the machine. I don't abhor OS X (I'd pick it over Windows any day of the year), but I would never consider using it unless every free desktop was dead and it was the last option in the entire world other than the big W.
This April/May when I pony up the dough and buy my next computer, I think it's highly likely that it will be an 11" Air. What I lose in battery life I make up for in cost difference and quality of product. With my educational discount, I can get a refurbished 11" for $849. I will, of course, wipe out OS X and jump through the hoops to install Ubuntu 12.04, but I don't think it will be too terribly difficult. The machine has 2Gb RAM and a 64GB SSD, but that's more than enough for me- I'll use an external HDD for my Blu-ray and DVD rips, but everything else I can easily fit in about 20GBs.
If I end up buying one of these machines, I'll be sure to document how easy/hard it is to put Ubuntu on it and will report back later.

*I say that having literally no idea how difficult it would actually be to add, but I assume it would be very easy.