The 11" Ruler

I downgraded to an 11" MacBook Air in November last year from a 15" MacBook Pro, and I didn't upgrade my 1st generation iPad with an iPad 2 this year. These facts are connected.

Before I got the 11" Air I would always take the iPad if I was spending a business day on foot in London. The iPad was a welcomed relief to lugging 5.4 lbs of MacBook Pro around for the day. However, my iPad has mostly gathered dust since I got the 11" Air. In fact, I only opt for the iPad if I suspect I'm going to need more than two or three hours of battery life. The size and weight difference is negligible, the Air's full size keyboard is preferable and now, with OS X Lion, the Air has a bunch of iOS UI conventions and tricks.

I won't be upgrading my iPad anytime soon, and should probably sell it or permanently surrender it to my daughter.

With the refresh of the MacBook Airs this week, in particular the inclusion of i7 processor option, something really interesting happened at the other end of the scale. Having taken a chunk of the jusitifcation to go for an iPad, the MacBook Air is now in a staring contest with iMac desktop users and even low end Mac Pro users.

For a little over two grand you can now get yourself an 11" MacBook Air with Core i7 power, 256GB of superfast SSD, a 27" Thunderbolt display and an external hard disk. And according to Geekbench, a new i7 Air has more grunt than a three year old Mac Pro. That's mind blowing. A Mac Pro weighs 18 times more than an Air.

Apple talks about the MacBook Air range being the future of laptops. 

They're sandbagging.