Apple’s newcomer ultra-portable laptop is the MacBook Air. No, I’m not considering buying one but I have a few initial thoughts about it.

Before reading this you should check out the guided tour and the tech specs.

Firstly I will say that ultra-portable units are not for everyone. The key thing to remember with an ultra-portable is mobility, and that requires sacrificing certain features to get to the ultra-portable level.

I have worked with a few ultra-portable units in the past. You should not expect one to perform as well as its standard-sized bigger brother, but you should expect it to absolutely trounce the bigger units for all things mobile. I think Apple has a good entry with the Air considering what it was designed to do.

SSD

The most immediate cool-factor of the Air is something barely mentioned: The fact an optional 64GB solid state drive is offered. The standard is an 80GB PATA but I’d readily sacrifice the space for the 64GB SSD because it has absolutely no moving parts, meaning it absolutely won’t break. In addition to that you’d probably get at least a good 8 years of service out of it. Most standard hard drives crap out after 4 or 5 years.

If you’re thinking "64 gigs is way too small for a primary drive!", you’re not thinking ultra-portable. Remember, sacrifices must be made when you go small and light. And in this instance, 64GB is more than enough.

Micro-DVI

I don’t know if I’d like the Micro-DVI port primarily because it adds yet another cable where one was not needed.

All a "road warrior" laptop user ever wants is a laptop that works with as few cables as possible, or no cables at all (save for the power brick).

The Micro-DVI port exists because of the ultra-portable form factor. This is cool at first, but once you realize you’ve got that cable to deal with, it’s not-so-convenient.

No optical drive

This is one of those sacrifices I was talking about. You want thin? You’ve got thin – but at the expense of no on-board optical drive.

Those who have read my ramblings before know full well I can’t stand optical drives. I believe it’s a dead technology, but I digress.

Can you have an external USB powered optical drive? Yes.

Does it come provided with the MacBook Air? No. That’s an extra added cost.

I know what you’re thinking.

How do I install apps off a CD or DVD if I don’t have an optical drive?

Apple has developed an app to take care of that that works on both OS X and Windows. You mount an optical drive volume wirelessly in order to install stuff and/or get to stuff off/on an optical disc.

The only drawback is that even with wireless n it’s still going to be slow no matter how you look at it.

You will see that a large portion of the guided tour directly addresses what you can do in lieu of having no optical drive on-board.

Price

I’ll tell you up front this is going to be a major turn-off (even for MacBook Pro users).

The starting price is $1,799.

The high-end model is $3,098.

Yeee-owch.

But let’s say you just want the $1,799 with the 64GB SSD (which is what I would configure).

Tack on an extra $999 for that. Goes to just shy of $2,800.

To get the ultimate in Mac portability you have to shell out some major cash for it.

Is the 64GB SSD truly a thousand-dollar option?

That’s a tough call.

You know that the SSD will outlast every other part of that MacBook, no question. You’ve got at least 8 years of good service from that SSD.

But I don’t know anyone that uses a laptop made 8 years ago. Yes, there are units built in 2000 that are still crankin’ along today (most likely after having more than a few things fixed/replaced) – but very few would use any as their primary portable computer as they’re just too slow and old. Furthermore, laptops simply aren’t designed to last that long.

However, parallel ATAs are on their way out – and fast. SSD is going to rule the roost in the laptop world. Said honestly, I welcome that with open arms. You may pay a pretty penny for SSD now, but expect the price to drop significantly in the near future.