(However, the MacBook Air is far more attractive than the MacBook Pro, thanks to the curved edges that make it look like the offspring of a MacBook Pro and an iPod nano.) It’s got the shiny aluminum shell of the MacBook Pro ( ), along with a backlit keyboard the likes of which has never been seen before in a small Apple laptop. The look of the MacBook Air is an interesting hybrid of Apple’s other two laptops. And in many ways, the story of this laptop is the story of a series of compromises, all made in order to fit an entire Mac in a three-pound package that’s three-quarters of an inch thick at its thickest point. The MacBook Air, Apple’s latest Intel-based laptop, is the lightest, thinnest laptop Apple has ever constructed, and according to Apple, it’s the thinnest laptop ever made. And the smaller and lighter the laptop, the more compromise there needs to be. In order to squeeze an entire computer into a portable shell (and have it be power-efficient enough to run on a battery for hours at a time), computer makers have to throw features overboard. Though they’ve come a long way in the past few years, laptops have never been able to offer the features available in desktop computers, and certainly not at comparable prices.
Laptop design has always been about compromise.
