Living Day-To-day With The 11-inch MacBook Air And The iPad 2 – A Definitive Verdict Still Elusive

CNET’s Brooke Crothers has been using an 11.6-inch MacBook Air in tandem with an iPad 2 a on a day-to-day basis in an ongoing study in high-mobility computing and the pros and cons of both devices.

This piqued my interest as I am weighing the pros and cons of buying the anticipated Sandy Bridge Core “i” MacBook Air as opposed to switching partly to an iPad 2 and holding off on replacing my current Core 2 Duo aluminum MacBook. Or, as a more expensive alternative, buying both an Air and an iPad. Decisions, decisions.

Consequently, Crothers’ report on his experiences is helpful, although it has mostly confirmed deductive impressions I’d already formed, and has not provided any clearly definative answer to solving my personal quandary.

Crothers finds both machines useful, strongly favoring the Air for production work and serious computing and calling it “the ultimate productivity platform,” but finding the iPad irresistably seductive for more casual interfacing with the Internet, as a note-taking platform, and for most mobile computing.

As for my dilemma as to whether I need both, defined by the question of whether these two machines are mostly complementary or mostly redundant, Crothers says that even after experiencing the reality of living with both for some time, he still finds himself wrestling with that conundrum, but that on the balance he thinks there are two gigantic differences making him lean toward complementary – eg: one has a keyboard, one doesn’t; one runs OS X, and the other iOS – making the iPad more convenient to use for some tasks and the Air better for others.

He says the immediacy of the iPad is highly seductive, and its extreme portability and touch interface, make it irresistible anywhere else than in his office (where there is “no role for the iPad”) or formal business/journalism settings. However, he points out that the iPad’s virtual keyboard and the iOS’s manifold limitations (such as even simple and basic tasks like doing a simple cut-and-pastes in certain mission-critical applications being impossible) create major obstacles to productivity very quickly.

Crothers details his usage preferences in a variety of different circumstances, and summarizing, concludes that the iPad trumps the Air in a surprising number of cases but often quickly slams into a productivity wall, making its coolness is irrelevant, and the takeaway for me at least is that if he had to choose just one of these devices, it would be the MacBook Air hands-down.

Commenting on Brooke Crothers’ musings, Online Social Media’s Debbie Turner says that as a MacBook Air user herself, she can’t imagine being persuaded by anything else and that like your editor she hasn’t yet been lured to the tablet side, and continued to weigh if it’s better to opt for either the laptop or the tablet, or whether they are indeed complementary, and draws a provisional conclusion that having both devices will give you the best of both worlds.

Personally, I’ve been waiting impatiently for iPad 2 stock to arrive at my local Apple reseller, which has received the princely total of two machines since the intro in April and has a long waiting list. I am finding that I do need something more powerful than the old Pismo PowerBooks I’m currently using in a number 2 production/utility role. The old laptops have provided stellar service for the past 11 years, but are becoming increasingly compromised with there puny video support and Web browser development leaving Mac OS X 10.4 behind.

The thing is now, with a refreshed MacBook Air evidently poised for June or July release, I’m now hesitant to commit to an iPad as my next hardware purchase, and am inclined to wait and see even if that iPad 2 stock does arrive in the next few weeks.