Going through airport security isn't normally one of life's more enjoyable experiences (no frisking jokes, please), so I would imagine that missing your flight due to your new, $3000 MacBook Air would be even less pleasant. The firsthand account of one flyer's Air-induced delay was quickly posted on the TSA's Evolution of Security blog, and Blogger Bob was on the case. To see what all the fuss was about, Bob got his hands on a MacBook Air, ran it through the X-ray machine, and even posted video of the test.
Actually, by video of the test, I mean some glamour shots of Bob leaning on the X-ray machine. After doing some testing (in what appears to be the TSA secret bunker), Bob's conclusion is that the MacBook Air does, in fact, have a different X-ray profile than other laptops. And those, folks, are your tax dollars at work. Although Bob doesn't go into much detail, he does say that there are a few areas that screeners would notice. Of course, he can't actually show us the X-ray, since that's "sensitive security information," so I guess we'll just have to trust him.
The positive outcome from this little experiment is that because the SSD MacBook Air looks so different from existing laptops, the X-ray image will be distributed to all of the TSA's screeners. Once the image percolates through the ranks, TSA employees should be a bit more hip to the new SSD drives, hopefully leading to fewer (or preferably no) MacBook Air delays in the future.
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