But like Ben Brooks, I think that the new 11" MacBook Air is finally what I'm looking for and I'm going all in on it. I ordered a maxed out Air yesterday (with the 1.6GHz processor and 4GB of RAM) and am challenging myself to quit searching and use it for at least two years as my main machine.
You can read the footnotes for details of what I need a computer to do for me1, but I run a cycling team and do the occasional side job in the off-season. I'm typically at my computer six to ten hours a day and and I have the usual eight to ten programs running at all times (mail, calendar, browsers, text editor, twitter client, iTunes). Then there's probably another eight to ten programs that I use throughout the day but usually don't leave running. Three or four days a week I work from home or the coffee shop and then I'm at a race or visiting a sponsor once or twice a week. During the season I also travel regularly for up to three weeks at a time.
I won't bore you with all of my upgrade history2, but I have owned the three previous MacBook Air revisions. Their faults were apparent but the slim, sexy portability won me over (and unsurprisingly I was able to find good deals on Craigslist from disenchanted customers).
The two biggest issues for me on all of the models were the 2GB of RAM limitation and the one USB port. However, I learned to judiciously close programs that I wasn't using and ration the USB port. Here are the main reasons that I ultimately sold each:
- 1.8Ghz, 64GB SSD: The hard drive was too small.
- 1.6Ghz, 120GB HD: The hard drive was too slow.
- 2.13Ghz, 128GB SSD: This computer was close to perfect for me, minus the RAM and USB issues that I worked around. When the new MacBook Air rumors hit a fever pitch and promised to alleviate my two major sticking points I quickly sold it on Craigslist and started saving up my pennies.
I went down to the new Lincoln Park Apple Store on their opening day (kind of crazy, kind of fun) and spent an hour bouncing between the 11" and 13" machines. I even logged in to Dropbox and downloaded some of my bigger Pages and Excel files to work on while streaming HD videos that Tribeca Flashpoint produced for my team.
The 11" performed admirably and I decided that since this computer had a better battery and a higher-resolution display than the computer I'd just sold I was going to be perfectly happy. (The SD slot was not a necessity because I always carry a small card reader in my bag in case someone else wants my pictures). Ultimately, I ordered the 1.6Ghz processor upgrade for peace of mind. An 8% fee for a theoretical 14% speed increase seemed reasonable enough. [Update: Macworld tests have it as a 12% increase.]
So, now it's just the long wait until the computer arrives. The RAM and processor options I chose mean the computer has to ship from overseas, and then it goes through Oregon since I ordered it from PowerMax. I was surprised to discover that Apple isn't stocking the 4GB options in either the 11" or 13" models as it kind of seems like a no brainer upgrade. Is it possible that OS X Lion would actually use less system resources? It's something to think about while I wait for my new computer. At least writing this post passed some time.
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- Usage: The programs I always have open are: Mail or Mailplane, BusyCal, Adium, Tweetie, Safari for Google Apps, Chrome for general browsing, Pages, Preview, Dropbox and iTunes. The programs that I open daily but don't leave running are: iPhoto, Acorn, Photoshop, Rapidweaver, Word, Excel, Numbers, WriteRoom, MarsEdit, Notational Velocity (personal notes) and Evernote (work notes). The programs I run a few times a week are inDesign, Illustrator, iMovie, Dreamweaver and Parallels (for TrainingPeaks WKO+).
- Condensed Upgrade History:
- I bought my first Mac in 2002: a 14" G3 iBook. The learning curve on what was possible with a computer was so quick on OS X that within a year I outgrew the RAM and wanted to drive a secondary display.
- Next up: a refurbished 15" PowerBook G4. At $2250 it is still the most I ever paid for a computer and I will never buy a refurbished laptop again. After four repairs in 6 months Apple gave me a new one that I immediately sold. In addition to the refurb lesson I learned that I don't need that powerful of a computer. I don't play games and don't do anything that processor intensive.
- After the PowerBook I ventured into desktops and used laptops, thinking that I'd have a backup at home. I picked up a G5 iMac and an old titanium PowerBook, but my travel schedule was such that I wasn't using the iMac much, keeping them in sync was a pain, and the titanium PowerBook wasn't quite as durable as I hoped (those hinges!). It wasn't until I found Dropbox that having a desktop as a backup really made sense.
- After the TiBook I found what I thought was the holy grail (and one of Jason Snell's favorite machines): a 12" PowerBook. There was really only one problem with it- in order to use a couple of Windows programs that I needed for work I also had an old ThinkPad X21 (which shunned the optical drive long before Apple did). But whenever I left the house for more than a day I had to take both computers. No matter how small those two computers were, combined with their power bricks they weighed close to 10 pounds. (Now I'll carry a MacBook Air and an iPad, which combined still weigh less than the 12" PowerBook alone.)
- Then the first MacBook came along. It was a little bigger than the PowerBook but it could do everything I needed AND run Windows. However, for RAM, heat and display reasons I ended up jumping off the MacBook bandwagon after about a year and then went through a few different computers before getting my first (used) MacBook Air in the winter of 2008.
- Over the past couple years I've bounced between the different Air models and 13" MacBook Pros (for reasons stated above). The 13" MacBook Pro was still more computer than I needed.