Best of 2011 Nominations: The best Mac model of the year

During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011.

For our first category in the TUAW Best of 2011, we'd like you to nominate what you consider to be the best Mac model sold by Apple during the year. You don't need to give us the RAM amount and size of the SSD -- just list the model name (and screen size, if applicable) in your comment, and add your personal reasons why you think that your nomination deserves to win.

Which Mac will take home the honor for 2011? Will it be the diminutive 11" MacBook Air, or the equally tiny Mac mini? How about the 17" MacBook Pro or the 27" iMac? Perhaps it's the aging but still powerful Mac Pro that is the Apple of your eye.

Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 7, 2011.

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During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad

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Yuusharo

I think the Air has a lock on it this year, but I'm still casting my nomination for the Mac mini 2011 edition. For the first time, Apple has positioned this little thing into an affordable, powerful workstation made for serious work. The higher-end consumer version has an AMD 6630m dedicated graphics chip, first time discrete graphics has ever been an option on it. Plus, the server model comes with a quad core Core i7 Sandy Bridge chip which has a cozy place inside anyone's render farm.

I can see three things holding it back, however. First, you can't get the quad core processor *and* the discrete graphics into the same unit, forcing you to pick one over the other. Second, there's no option for an SSD that's less than 256gb, which starts at an additional $600. That's insane. There's no reason you couldn't offer a 128gb model and save $400, and use USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt drives for added storage in the future. Third, there's no option for an optical drive any longer, even if the chassis size hasn't changed from last year's model.

Given those issues, I'm still *very* tempted to replace my aging Windows Desktop tower with a mini. A $40 cable from iFixIt and about 30 minutes of my time is all it takes to put in a second drive, preferably a more reasonably priced SSD, and I'm good to go.

December 07 2011 at 3:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Martin

11" Macbook Air. For the most part as powerful as a full sized notebook without all the cruft. When no Apple computer will provide the computing resources necessary, the 11" Air, SSH and a cluster or Linux box is where it is at. Also the same weight/size class as the iPad but without the limitations of iOS and the iPads input options. Totally revolutionized my computer lineup.

December 05 2011 at 6:03 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Zak

13" Macbook Air.
Sexy. Fast. Super sleek. Beautiful layout. Long Battery Life. Ultra-Thin Unibody design.
Perfect for all uses:
Professional Photography or editing: use 27" monitor. Runs beautifully.
Surf the web at a Cafe or write a paper: Perfect. Lightweight.
Watch Movies: 13" display or combined with the 27" monitor you can't go wrong.
i7 allows for all the power that a power user wants, while the ultra thin profile allows for unsurpassed portability with power.

December 05 2011 at 4:37 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

thirkej

13 " mac book air. just the most beautiful computer ever!

December 05 2011 at 3:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply