Comments
FaceTime for mac makes sense, not sure why it wasn’t included right away.
Here’s the beta: https://swdlp.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SoftwareDownloadApp.woa/1864/wo/XdecAta1aD5th4FtxZUjK0/2.5
Kev: this should make video chatting with the in-laws a bit easier… Not sure they have so many issues, but ideally, this will present fewer.
Mac App store is also nice, Flight Control has already been announced.
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/20/and-so-it-begins-flight-control-hd-coming-to-mac-app-store/
Should I buy a Macbook Air?
Should you? I dunno! But I did. Selling my macbook and upgrading. I’d been considering installing a solid-state hard drive in my macbook for near-instant on boot-ups and longer battery life. Figured that’d cost a couple hundred bucks and a lot of time and effort. After selling my macbook, it’ll cost a hundred or two more and save me the time and effort with some other upgraded specs, too.
Super curious about how hot it gets with the new battery system and the unibody. My macbook always got uncomfortably hot. I’ll let you know in a few days when it arrives.
my experience with the polycarbonate unibodies is that they don’t get nearly as hot as the old whitebook
OK, so now that I’m over the whole initial shock at how cool the Macbook Air seems, I can’t understand for the life of me why I, or anyone, would buy one over a Macbook Pro. It just seems like a slightly smaller, slightly lighter, less powerful version of the Pro.
The one question I can’t seem to get a definitive answer on is whether or not the touchpads on these two systems are the same. Does the touchpad on the Pro have all of the cool multi-touch functionality that the Air has? I guess I’ll find out at the Apple store this afternoon either way.
I was under the impression that they all had the multitouch touchpads now.
Jay, I can’t understand why most people would get a macbook pro. Unless you’re a designer or industry person, you won’t use 1/10th of the pro in your day to day usage. Yet you spend $1,000 or so more. But if it weren’t for the people that don’t get the whole 3-5 year “sell-and-buy” upgrade path for mac stuff who feel the need to own the top of the line and “make it last” or whatever, it probably wouldn’t be economically feasible to sell.
I got an Air cause it has more things that appeal to me on a day to day basis: instant-on, lighter, less hot, more battery life.
They’re all multitouch. And Snow Leopard put some of the multitouch functionality in the old MacBooks, too, because I can now scroll down a list with two fingers (unless this was here before and we just had it disabled in our old disk image).
OK.
A 13" Macbook Air with 128GB flash memory and a 5+ hour battery costs $1,299.
A 13" Macbook Pro with a 250GB hard drive and a 8+ hour battery costs $1,199.
So, by purchasing a Pro I’m getting a much more powerful, fully functional/connectable computer with longer battery life, albeit one that is slightly thicker/heavier and takes awhile to turn on, for $100 less. Am I missing something? Even if I don’t use the Pro to its full potential, it’s still cheaper. I don’t get it.
I was really hoping someone would respond to my post above. I’m not trying to discount the Air, I think it’s fucking sweet, I just don’t get it and was hoping ya’ll could enlighten me.
Well, the battery life you’re comparing isn’t quite equal. The standby battery life on the macbook pro is 8+ hours Actual use will be lower. Whereas the standby on the Air is 30+ hours.
The Air’s built for people who plan to travel with it. In this day and age, just about any machine you get is going to be more than enough power for whatever you plan on doing. So for some people (i.e., me), there’s more value in portability and convenience than raw machine power. That’s partly why the Air comes in an 11" model — it’s the machine for people who just want something for the bare essentials but aren’t quite able to fully switch to an iPad as their travel machine.
So, in short: portability vs. power.
At what point does it make sense to sell a mac and upgrade? And does that apply to desktops as well as laptops? My imac is 3 years old next month. It still runs just fine. But if it makes sense to sell it and put that towards an upgrade I’d consider it.
I don’t think there’s any real science to it. I just keep up with what comes out and if it looks like something I could use, I check the prices for what I have on Craigslist and Ebay and Amazon. My macbook was getting to the point where I couldn’t run VM Ware windows machines for browser checking and my last battery exploded (Apple kindly replaced it for free) so I was due for an upgrade.
OK. I just realized that my desktop which I’ve had for four years only has 109GB used. The tiny HD that comes on the 13" air was a major sticking point until I realized that. 128GB plus the cloud should be plenty for me.
That said, I’m still a bit hesitant about dropping that much cash for an old processor and still don’t see the downside to the Pro. I honestly don’t get the portability difference. 1.5lbs is negligible and the footprint is basically the same. The air is so damn cool though.
I’ve got an Asus netbook that I fucking adore which cost about a third of a Macbook Air. Yes, I know you’re looking at Macs & they’re superiorblahblahblah and all that, but this little thing has served me really well in the past few months I’ve had it. I’ve got all my photo & video-editing stuff loaded onto it and it works like a champ if you can deal with the smaller screen (I have a desktop w/much larger screen if I need to go there).
Just a coupla cents from the PC minority.
And you have to use windows. I’ve considered getting one of those cheap netbooks and putting Ubuntu Linux on it. I’d still be a lot better off, but it’d still involve far too much tweaking for it to work well.
I’ve used both main platforms and they’ve each delivered me the results I’ve needed. That’s all I really ask for.
This would be my first mac, for the record. I have a 4 year old HP desktop running XP media center that works fine, I just want a laptop and figure I might as well go mac so I can enjoy both worlds. The little bells and whistles in snow leopard are really selling me. If I could get a PC to recreate the mac trackpad experience I’d be all over it.
I’m going on 3 years with my imac and about 9 months with a macbook (no air, just a regular 13" macbook). I can’t imagine ever going back to a pc for any reason. In fact last Christmas we bought my daughter a laptop and even just using it for basic stuff to set up for her is a chore and a pain and so ridiculously slow. And maybe it wouldn’t seem so if I weren’t so used to macs at this point. But I am and it does. Hell, Emma’s only 8 and even she says “Daddy my computer runs to slow and has too many things popping up. Can I use your computer.”
Hutch, you do intent to post an extensive review of your Air when you get it, right?
Hahahhaha, er…. I hadn’t, no? I’ve been using it for a week now and it’s great. I had it at Tom’s over the weekend and didn’t have to charge it once, which was nice. But more importantly, the solid-state hard drive flies. The whole thing boots from a cold off in about 5-6 seconds. In sleep mode, it boots instantly. While in sleep mode for over a day, it only lost 3% battery power, which is pretty awesome.
Amazingly, and mostly because of the solid state drive, it feels as snappy and responsive as my iMac. I’m not playing games more advanced that Minecraft on it, mind you, but I was able to open several VMWare machines with no discernible lag.
The thing barely gets more than “pretty warm” when using it — certainly not the uncomfortable hot temps my old macbook reached. And it’s crazy light and feels super sturdy. I dig all the new trackpad gestures and it seems more responsive than my old trackpad.
Other than that, it’s pretty much a mac.
Apparently I’m not done asking questions about this. I have 100% convinced myself that I want a 13" Air, but I have some serious reservations (mostly due to the fact that I am an overanalyzer and buyer’s remorse sufferer). I was hoping Hutch, or any of you Mac owners could answer these questions:
1. Is it necessary to upgrade to 4GB of RAM? I doubt I’ll ever use the machine to do anything other than what is native to it (internet/iLife), but I’ve always been a “you never know” kind of guy. $90 for the RAM upgrade seems like a good investment, but I’ve also heard that it can affect battery life. The RAM/battery life connection makes more sense to me when a mechanical HD is involved, but I’m less educated about the system level effects with an SDD,
I also can’t get the 4GB configuration in the store so I’d have to order it online, which I don’t want to do. Should I just get the 2GB model?
2. I’ve also just heard a rumor that installing Flash on the Air reduces the battery life by almost 2 hours. I don’t understand why this would happen, so Hutch can you confirm?
:)
1. This is an interesting question. More interesting because it’s the Air. If it were any other machine, the answer would be “yes, of course, it’s a no brainer. do it.” But the impact might be felt less on the Air. To understand why, you have to understand a bit about how your computer uses memory.
To grossly oversimplify it, any time your computer processes something or works on something, it needs it in RAM. Whether it’s a browser and all the images in the web pages, or your photoshop documents or whatever, it all needs to sit in RAM. So what happens if you run out of RAM? Well, in the old days (and on iPhones and Blackberries and other computers without hard discs), you just can’t oepn anything else. Or an app will crash. But in our macs, it uses “virtual memory” wherein it designates a part of your hard drive as overflow for your ram. So you might already be seeing a problem here: hard drives are sloooooow. And if you’re processing data stored on your hard drive, it’s going to be slooooooow. And if you’re moving things back and forth, between RAM and the hard drive, that’s also going to be sssslllllooooow. But the Air doesn’t have a mechnical hard drive. So I really can’t say what sort of speed difference you’ll encounter.
That said, I did upgrade my RAM to 4gb and you can put to rest fears of greater battery power consumption. It’s in the 0.0001% increase. Totally negligible.
2. Flash consumes massive amounts of CPU time. CPU requires power. Power comes from your battery. But in order for any of this to matter, you’d have to actually RUN flash for the entire length of time the machine is running off the battery. Flash tends to use all of your CPU (this is why it sucks and why they won’t let it on iPhones or iPads [in addition to lots of other very good reasons]), but putting a number on how much battery life you lose, especially one as drastic as two hours, seems far-fetched to me.
You’ve got analysis paralysis. Just get your machine and use it like you’d use any other machine. It’ll treat you kindly.
I thank you for your thoughtful response.
Just found the article on that whole flash battery life thing and it confirms exactly what I said: it only matters because Flash amps up your CPU usage when you actually have flash running.
So, long story short, just try not to keep any flash pages open when you’re using your macbook off the battery.
I’m still wavering on this purchase. And I just found out about this deal which is making it even harder:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0334909
A base 13" MBP for $1,035 out the door (includes tax, because Paterson, NJ is scary and needs to reduce tax to entice people to shop there).
I really just want to walk into a store and go home with my Mac. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of possible returns if I buy online. This is killing me because I feel like buying a base 13" MBA with “only” 2GB of RAM is a mistake. The base MBA is also under $1,300 out the door from this place. Portability is not a concern for me, I’ll be using this thing mostly in bed and on my couch, so is the Air and its SSD and awesomeness really worth an extra $260? Couldn’t I put an SSD in the MBP for that amount of money, and would it not then outperform the MBA in every way?
Then there is the looming spectre of Black Friday on the horizon…
Decisions suck.
so is the Air and its SSD and awesomeness really worth an extra $260
Yes.
Couldn’t I put an SSD in the MBP
No.
John said:so is the Air and its SSD and awesomeness really worth an extra $260Yes.
Couldn’t I put an SSD in the MBPNo.
Hahaha. OK. So the bottom line is I should just suck it up and order a 4GB model online. I’ve known this all along. Fuck.
I bit the bullet. 13"/128/4GB MBA is on the way. I ordered it through Macmall which was offering a nice discount – $1,318 shipped.
Buyer’s remorse in 3, 2, 1…
nice!
And let’s face it, you were bound to have buyer’s remorse no matter what you chose. No one analyzes shit that hard for that long and can escape it.
It’s here! Nerdgasm!
REPORT.
Not much to report other than the fact that all of my trepidation about using MacMall to acquire the computer was completely unfounded. I ordered it on Tuesday afternoon and it was at my house, in perfect working order thus far, on Thursday evening.
I’ve played with the thing so much in the stores over the past month that I’m not so amazed by how fast it is anymore, although I’m glad to report that mine is as snappy, if not snappier, than the ones in the stores. I’m completely in love with the track pad – the experience provided by the trackpad/OSX combination sets is so far apart from every Windows laptop I’ve ever touched that it alone completely justifies the price gap for me. Setting everything up was a breeze, and I was surprised to see that hooking it up wirelessly to the iTunes library housed on my PC hard-drive was completely automatic. I do need to figure out a way to actually get the files on the Air though as I want to be able to have my music on the go.
I’m also going to try to avoid installing Flash. I’ve heard of the Click to Flash app, but I want to see how well I can get along without it anyway. I’m pretty obsessive over battery life in all of my gadgets, and that applies double with this thing. Any advice on how to “train” the battery? It came about 75% charged, so I planned to run it down and then do the calibration outlined on the website. Good idea?
One minor disappointment is the fact that the 128GB HD is actually only a 120GB HD, and obviously the native image takes up a decent amount of space, so my fresh install leaves me with only about 106GB of free space. That should still be plenty for me for how I plan to use this machine, but the extra 8GB would have been nice.
Don’t worry about the battery. Most modern batteries can’t be trained like the old-school lithium ions. Just don’t overcharge it. That’s about it. And like I said before, flash only affects battery life by using your processor more. There are plenty of things you do on your machine that ramp up your processor. It’s really not something worth worrying about.
And unless you’re storing all your music on the laptop or storing videos, no way you’ll use all 106gb you have.
Has anyone ever told you you think/worry too much? Just enjoy your new thing and stop thinking about how to optimize your usage. Worrying about all these technical details is the exact opposite reason for buying a mac.
my heart goes out to all the fast food employees who are obligated to ask Jay “would you like fries with that?”
bahahhahahahahahah!
“But how will the fries affect my burger enjoyment? Perhaps if I only eat two fries, then a bit of burger, I can finish both at approximately the same time, thus ensuring my optimal fry/burger-to-mouth ratio.
Maybe I should just go with an apple pie."
“I don’t know…consuming fries may reduce the life of my appetite anywhere between 3 and 5 percent”
Man, I guess I’ve never discussed the concept of “complex eating” with you guys. It’s actually almost exactly what Hutch describes above, and a practice I adhere to quite strictly. It’s the right way to eat, and you’re an uncivilized heathen if you disagree.
Who the hell is Nick by the way?
hahahahahah, wow. That is impressive, Jay.
You may have met Nick at a party or three at Sammy’s. If that jerk would ever upload a user icon, you might get a better idea from his face.
you don’t know who i am? the nerve of this guy. i post 5 comments every year.
Maybe 6. Never more than 10. Your’e one active son of a bitch for being an original scrabbled user.