Matt’s Desk: Editor’s Blog

When the MacBook Air debuted in 2008, I wanted one in the worst way. I had been considering moving from a Windows laptop to a MacBook for some time, and the commercial showing the ultra-thin Air being pulled out of a manila envelope had me at “hello.”

Using one, though, shattered any hopes I had of actually owning one.

The first generation MacBook Air and the two revisions that followed were, for my purposes, virtually unusable. Slow and sputtering, they offered sexy sleek, a high price tag, and little else. So I passed in 2008 and went with a unibody MacBook instead. 

But time passed and hardware improved. Last year when the Air moved from the Core 2 Duo to the Intel Core i5, I tried one again, and was blown away with the improvements in performance.

The 2011 MacBook Air was the best laptop I’ve ever owned. It was blazingly fast, had great battery life (at least for me) was thin and light, and did everything I needed a laptop to do as well as I could imagine it being done.

But time passed and hardware improved. I’ve just upgraded to the new 2012 Ivy Bridge MacBook Air and it’s even better than last year’s model, and with a lower price.

Here’s a brief rundown of the improvements:

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Apple’s new 2012 MacBook Airs are already cheaper than last year’s models -  the 13-inch MacBook Air with a 1.8GHz Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU and 128GB SSD (model  MD231LL/A) has an MSRP of $1199, $100 less than the comparable 2011 model when it was released.

But $1199 isn’t the best you can do if you’re in the market for a new MacBook Air.  BestBuy stores have the new 12-inch MacBook Air for $1139, $60 off the Apple direct price.  But, of course, at BestBuy you have to pay sales tax.

Amazon.com has the same model for the same price, but without sales tax and with no shipping costs.  This is the best price I can find for this new laptop, and probably will be for some time.

I’ll be posting my review of the 13-inch 2012 MacBook Air in a few days…

-M

Amazon has Apple’s new 2012 13-inch MacBook Air for $1194; that’s only a $5 savings over Apple’s direct price, but you don’t have to pay the sales tax you would through Apple’s web store, which can save you around $100. 

Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t have the new Airs in stock – but they expect to in the next two days, so if you want to get in line you should order now.

The 2012 MacBook Air has Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processor and graphics, USB 3.0, and a faster SSD.  Plus, if you purchase a new Air now you get next month’s Mac OS Mountain Lion upgrade free.

Apple updated its existing MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineups today with moderate improvements including Ivy Bridge chips and USB 3.0, but the big news is the “Next Generation” MacBook Pro with a retina display. 

The new ultimate MacBook Pro has a 15.4-inch Retina screen with a resolution of 2880×1800.  Other features include Ivy Bridge quad core CPUs, up to 16GB of DDR3, a Kepler NVIDIA GT 650M GPU with 1GB of RAM, HD Facetime camera, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, up to 768GB SSD, Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, and an SD card slot.

The base model next-gen MacBook Pro has a 2.3GHz quad-core Core i7, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of VRAM, a 7-hour battery for $2199.