MacBook Air Thunderbolt Port Substantially Scaled Down From Standard Model

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New reports have emerged suggesting that, if you bought a MacBook Air with its recent refresh, the Thunderbolt port you were looking forward to using for ultra-fast transfer of data may not be as fast as you thought it would be when you bought it.

What’s happened here, according to reports, is that the MacBook Air is using an Eagle Ridge controller chip in their motherboards. This probably doesn’t mean much if you don’t follow chip makers, but most full-size machines use a Light Ridge chip instead. By way of comparison, the Eagle Ridge system is about half the size–and half the power–of the Light Ridge system. And what this all means is that, according to these same reports, if your MacBook Air is packing an Eagle Ridge instead of a Light Ridge, your Thunderbolt is only about half strength compared to those of full-size Macs.

Reaction to this news is somewhat mixed, with many actually feeling reasonably good about the news–considering that the MacBook Air is the entry-level machine, they say, it’s only to be expected that not all of it is top-notch–and that’s a bit of a surprise in its own right. But still, the current word says that the Eagle Ridge was used over the Light Ridge system as a space-saving measure, and considering how slim those MacBook Airs are, it’s really not so outlandish to think that’s the case. But still, some are likely upset by the knowledge that their MacBook Air isn’t running near as well as its slightly larger and more powerful cousins in areas besides the obvious, like storage and processor power.

But are you one of them? Are you dissatisfied with your MacBook Air’s performance so far? Or did you expect lower capability going in and thus aren’t too surprised by revelations like this? Either way, we want to hear from you, so head on down to the comments section and tell us how your MacBook Air experience is going so far.