On The Air

It’s official!  This last Saturday, I hopped over to Grand Rapids, got to the Apple Store as it opened, and made use of my MSU ID (good as gold!) to purchase a brand new MacBook Air.

As I stated in a previous post, I realized that top-of-the-line performance was not a major factor for me and I liked the ultra-portability it offered.  Plus, the price was just right.  So far, I’ve just been setting up apps and moving over data, but it is plenty speedy.  The only time I’ve run into slowdowns is when copying files over the network while running iPhoto from a shared network and copying files from an external hard drive.  Otherwise, it’s been running SO much faster than my PowerBook G4.

I haven’t done any web development on it yet, so I’ll throw up a post when that happens.

My comments so far:

• The build quality is absolutely the best I’ve seen in a Mac.  It’s rock solid and there are no gaps in the seams of the case.
• It’s very lightweight!  I hardly notice I’m using a laptop.  It’s like a natural extension of my body.
• MagSafe is a GodSend.
• The function keys are all messed up..but getting used to it.  The modifier keys combined with the expose key replace F9-F11.
• The black keys make the back-lit keyboard much more functional.  With the PowerBooks, there wasn’t enough contrast between the silver keys and the white lit letters to make the lighting effective, except in pitch black.
• I’m not missing the CD/DVD drive.
• I’m not missing FireWire…yet
• The monaural speaker is on the right side and sort of causes an imbalance when sounds are played – makes you think something is coming at you from the side.  Freaky!
• The iPhone-like touchpad is awesome.  Three-finger swipe to go back/forward in Safari!  The system preferences also shows videos of all the different “moves.”

This really is the ninja’s laptop!  The MacBook Pro/PowerBook is more of an armored knight.

Three Weeks of XP

I’ve moved on from a job cowboy coding (read: shoot from the hip, work alone) ASP.NET websites to a job working at an anti-spam software company using Ruby on Rails, Perl, and sendmail under an agile/eXtreme Programming methodology. It’s heavenly bliss! Definitely worth the hour drive to Ann Arbor each day.

I’m finding that I’m much more productive working with a programming partner. Something about working side by side really spurs me on. When you work with people with open minds (and have an open mind) it’s a continuous learning and improvement process. It also minimizes the stupid mistakes that slow you down as you have another pair of eyes on the situation. Not only do I learn new techniques and ideas from others, but it also helps me to coalesce ideas that I know intuitively, but gain a better understanding by having to explain them.

Working with Ruby on Rails is also a joy. It’s great to be able to whip out features in a matter of hours and spend more time on testing and polishing. Perl, well, it’s no Ruby. It’s definitely better than C, but given the choice, I’d go for Ruby.

Ditching Windows has improved my life. I think my blood pressure has gone down. My workstation runs Fedora. Now I don’t have to worry about antivirus software causing my user interface to crash. It’s no Mac OS, but any sort of UNIX works for me.

I’ve also enjoyed the company pool table and the coolness that is Ann Arbor!

Completely Unteathered?

It’s not very often that I get to seriously consider what my next Mac will be.  My 4.5 year old PowerBook is on its last leg with a broken display and dwindling performance.

I’m stuck trying to decide between two options.  Option 1 is to just get a MacBook Pro.  A workstation in my lap.  Option 2, however, is a bit more intriguing: get a MacBook Air. 

I know, you’re saying to yourself, “Derek, for only $100 more you get a wider screen, a ton of ports, a lot more storage, and improved performance.  As a developer why would you even consider a less powerful machine?”  It’s because I’ve been toying around with the idea of becoming untethered. 

Performance

It’s true that MBP is significantly faster than the MBA.  The 7200RPM BTO hard drive option would blow the MBA’s puny 4200RPM drive.  The MBA has its video memory shared with the main RAM.  Games on the MBA wouldn’t be very good and I wouldn’t want to do any serious video editing.  But when I think about it, when’s the last time I played a computer game or edited video?  In all honesty, web development is more memory intensive than anything.  Macworld recently found that, while the MBA is slower than the MBP, it’s still significantly faster than the last PowerBook (which was significantly faster than my current machine).  So any of Apple’s current offerings would be an improvement over what I have now. 

Storage

The largest hard drive you can have installed on the MBA is 80GB.  I’m already filling up my 100GB drive and as I watch more online video, take more pictures, and listen to more music, my space requirements are only going to increase.  This is probably the primary factor that’s holding me back.  However, I’ve found that storing my photos on a network share over a 54Mbps wireless connection offers no serious penalty.  With an 802.11n connection, it would be even snappier.  Thus, storing all of my photos on our home server will leave me plenty of room (21GB) to work with on the MBA.

Efficiency

This is where the MBA shines.  The MBP is quite heavy.  I haven’t held the MBA yet, but from what I hear, it’s amazingly lightweight.  It would be nice to have to lug less weight around.  It would also be nice to have a more compact laptop for on the plane.  I loved my 12″ iBook in college and the MBA’s 13″ screen would be an adequate size. 

The MBA only uses a 45W power adapter while the MBP uses a whopping 85W.  That’ll save me money on utilities!

I also like the idea of a multitouch trackpad.  However, it’s expected that the next MBPs will have that as well in the next couple of weeks.

Overall, it’s the portability that really draws me to the MBA.  While the power of the MBP is compelling, to me it seems like buying a Ford F-350 for my commute to work.  I’d rather go with the Honda Civic.