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Review of the 11" MacBook Air

mattgemmell.com

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Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#41

Post by jrockway »

cageyjames wrote: post #22
there wrote: post #4

i've been using an 11" air as my only development machine for a month or two. a few minor things worth mentioning: - no backlit keyboard - no IR interface, so no ability to use a non-bluetooth remote control - the LCD screen is glossy, but it's just a film over the screen, not a glass/plastic sheet over the entire display. as a result, the glare isn't as bad as the macbook pro. - because the display is very thin, the…

re: backlit keyboard Once you live with it, you can't live without it. I've become so spoiled in my years....

Do macs not have the little bumps on the f and j keys? If so, what do you need to see the keys for?

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#42

Post by slashclee »

srgseg wrote: post #6

Two things that really bug me: 1. No cleartype. I.e. although there is subpixel antialiasing, fonts aren't optimized for the pixel grid. Thus, the fonts are much clearer when I boot to Windows and so I feel like everything is fuzzy when I boot back to Mac OS. This isn't a problem for the web, but for coding and SSH it's terrible. I can't use Windows full time though because Spaces is so outstanding and I don't get tr…

For coding and SSH, you should try using Menlo at 9pt or 10pt with AA turned off.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#44

Post by cageyjames »

jrockway wrote: post #41
cageyjames wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: backlit keyboard Once you live with it, you can't live without it. I've become so spoiled in my years....

Do macs not have the little bumps on the f and j keys? If so, what do you need to see the keys for?

You'd think that wouldn't you, but clearly that isn't how it works. Something about making my index fingers hit those key requires a lighted keyboard now.

Again, I'm aware I'm being soft here.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#45

Post by danilocampos »

nzadrozny wrote: post #36
danilocampos wrote: post #23

I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational drive when needed, and my machine now screams . It's heavier, sure, but I don't travel much and I love having all…

Those AppleScripts sound interesting -- mind sharing a link to more info?

They're nothing special, and I can quote them right here if you like:

To mount a partition:

  do shell script "diskutil mount PARTITION_UUID"
Where PARTITION_UDID is the partition's UUID as returned by diskutil's info command.

To unmount all partitions:

  try
  do shell script "diskutil unmount PARTITION_UUID"
  end try

  try
  do shell script "diskutil unmount NEXT_PARTITION_UUID"
  end try
The try is there in case one partition is mounted and another isn't – won't throw an error in those cases.

Just compile those as self-contained apps, drop them in your dock and you're good to go. It's pretty manual stuff, I have to remember to launch the appropriate script at the beginning and end of a task that involves the HDD, but it's not much of a problem, since I don't use it that often. Meanwhile, you get a silent MBP, with a smidge better battery life, since the HDD isn't spinning needlessly.

Looking into auto-mounting the partition when a symlink is accessed, got a SuperUser question going here:

http://superuser.com/questions/228028/mount-drive-when-symbo...

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#46

Post by enneff »

I bought the 11" when it came out and it quickly became something I don't fo anywhere without. I used to carry my 13" MBP in a nice laptop backpack, but now I have a small satchel bag which can hold the Air as well as my essentials. With 3G tethering it's SO useful to always have a real computer with Internet access at my disposal.

I still have and use my MBP and iMac, but I use them much less. Convenience trumps power 90% of the time.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#48

Post by mark_l_watson »

masklinn wrote: post #27
mark_l_watson wrote: post #5

I bought the entry level 11" MacBook Air 4 weeks ago and now it is the system I use for over 90% of my work, writing,and web browsing. Caveat: most of my work is straight-up Ruby development, Rails development (both using RubyMine 3.01), and Clojure with Emacs. All three of these development scenarios take up little in the way of CPU or memory. I use TexShop for writing. I do sit at my desk with a large external moni…

> I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop for that. Why not use your Air? Expecting insufficient screen space?

Screen space is OK. However, I need to run NetBeans, web app, and DB 2. The 2 gigs of RAM is insufficient. I am happy keeping the Air for everything else and setting up the Pro for this one project.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#50

Post by blinkingled »

srgseg wrote: post #6

Two things that really bug me: 1. No cleartype. I.e. although there is subpixel antialiasing, fonts aren't optimized for the pixel grid. Thus, the fonts are much clearer when I boot to Windows and so I feel like everything is fuzzy when I boot back to Mac OS. This isn't a problem for the web, but for coding and SSH it's terrible. I can't use Windows full time though because Spaces is so outstanding and I don't get tr…

My biggest gripe is OS X not having working high DPI support. This really makes it impossible to use high res displays with OS X. I had to switch my 17" to Win 7 as I was killing my eyes in OSX badly. I have learnt to live with the lack of trackpad features on Windows but that's nothing Apple can't fix in a driver update - hopefully soon.
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