MacBook Air Now Staking Out MacBook Pro Turf, But Lion Software Non-Support A Stumbling Block
InfoWorld’s Paul Venezia says that despite its many compromises and limitations, he was an early-adopter of the original MacBook Air as his primary laptop, and when the next iteration appeared with a significantly lower price, a solid-state drive, and a faster CPU, he jumped at the upgrade.
However, he concedes that while the Air steadily improved, it had more in common with the MacBook than the MacBook Pro — a good fit for users with general computing workloads, but not those requiring support for heavy-duty, CPU-intensive apps. However, with Apple offering an Air powered by a hyper-threaded, dual-core Intel Core i7 CPU, that’s no longer the case, with the Air vaulting into the category of a mobile workstation rather than an ultrathin terminal, although the 4GB RAM and 256GB solid-state flash drive limitations still pertain.
Those modest to mediocre specs. notwithstanding, Venezia says he expects to see MacBook Airs in places he never would’ve before like the recording studios and video production houses that have been the domain of Mac Pros and MacBook Pros.
On the other hand, a downside is that the new Air ships with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installed, and doesn’t support OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which is likely to cause problems wit a variety of existing power-user/professional applications due to Lion’s jettisoning of the Rosetta emulation software that allowed previous versions of OS X to run programs compiled for PowerPC processors on Intel Macs, noting that there are many tales of MS Office 2011 having bizarre problems with Lion.
Venezia laments that in many instance those who could benefit most from the new Air’s prodigious power boost won’t be able to make the leap until their apps catch up to the new OS, but his qualified verdict is that these Core “i” machines are the best MacBook Airs yet, so long as you don’t require Rosetta. In his case, he’ll have to keep his older Air running Snow Leopard in service for the foreseeable future.
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