As with most Apple products, the MacBook Air has moved into an annual update cycle, taking it from the original niche product version to its new perch as Apple's mainstream laptop line. With that, we've also seen a continued mainstreaming of the system's components and capabilities over the course of three generations.
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch Summer 2011
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Apple's new Air models hold last year's prices, the 13-inch model starts at $1,299, but while dramatically upgrading the processing power: the new second-generation Core i5 processor in the base 11-inch and 13-inch Air is a jump of two Intel generations, going directly from the older Core 2 Duo CPUs past the first generation of Core i5/i7 chips and directly to the 2011 second-generation Core i-series.
Physically, the new MacBook Air looks and feels identical to the one from October 2010, with one important exception. Both the 11- and 13-inch models now include a backlit keyboard, a much-missed feature in the previous generation (in a CNET poll, 26 percent of readers listed a backlit keyboard as their most-wanted new MacBook Air feature).
Related links
• Apple MacBook Air Fall 2010 (Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz, 128GB SSD, 13.3-inch)
• Samsung Series 9 NP900X3A (13-inch)
• Apple MacBook Air (11in, Summer 2011)
Thunderbolt has been added to the both Airs as well, replacing the Mini DisplayPort (the new combo port acts as a Mini DisplayPort output as well). At the moment, it's more of a novelty than anything else, with few accessories available, but Apple's upcoming Thunderbolt Display, intended for use with laptops, seems intriguing.
The most obvious non-component-related change to the MacBook Air line is the preinstalled OSX Lion software. If getting this new operating system update is your primary goal, it's available for any Intel-powered MacBook for $29--so there's no reason to trade in your last-gen Air just yet.
With 4GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD storage, the 13-inch Air is a better bet for trouble-free mainstream computing than the 11-inch version, which defaults to 2GB of RAM and only a 64GB SSD (of which, only around 48GB is available to use). The trend toward cloud storage makes this less of a problem than it might have been, but you may want a little more breathing room.
Now that it uses current-gen Intel CPUs, the MacBook is definitely a viable everyday laptop, rather than a specialty product--its performance was very close to the 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro in most of our benchmark tests, and its battery life similarly excellent.