I bought my MBA (top of the line) last week, it is amazing. It does everything I need it to do. When I take out my MBP 15inch now...it feels like a huge brick.
MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
101–110 of 212 posts
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this obsession for backlit keyboards I've been reading about a lot lately on forums. It definitely looks nice but its just a battery drain and I assume most HN people don't look at their keys. I always keep mine off for the sake of my battery.
backlit keyboard aren't just for looking nice. they're for working at night in dark rooms. before touch typing you need to glance quickly at your hand's position above the keys, to make sure your hand position isn't transposed slightly up, down, left, right--which happens easily when you're blinded by a monitor in the dark, and the key bed is pitch black. yes, you can fold down your monitor till the light illuminates…
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Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#103Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that:
- The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well.
- The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the heads on a drop. Ideal setup is to put an SSD in the optical bay and a HD in the internal.
- Battery life doesn't seem affected by two drives. I suspect cpu/video/display power significantly outweighs power from an SSD.
- The optical bay is 3 Gbps, the HD bay is 6 Gbps. Don't bother with the extra cost of new 6 Gbps SSDs if you put it in the optical position.
- If you do this on a new machine, do your boot camp install before you remove the drive. MacBook Pros have some kind of hard-wired device order that makes it impossible to install Windows from an external USB/FireWire optical drive.
I run a 250 GB SandForce SSD + 500 GB 7200rpm drive. SandForce does on-device garbage collection, which helps since OS X has no general-use TRIM support, and I do photo editing on the road so the faster HD is great.
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#104Every time I get on a plane I wish I had an Air, but it's just not justifiable. Not only do I have and use my 8GB RAM (Photoshop, Parallels, browsers, Rails + large test suite), but the peripheral ports are critical. I don't think my Time Machine backup would ever get off the ground without the initial Ethernet plugin, not to mention the times when the DSL goes out at the office I can just plug into the hardline normally reserved for our Mac Pros. Also Firewire is another thing that may not be needed every day, but hurts bad when you don't have it (need to transfer a couple GBs between Macs quickly? Compare to wifi to Firewire Target Disk Mode). Even the SD card reader is quite handy. I'll leave the optical drive out because honestly that would be fine as a peripheral (although I do salivate at the thought of a top-tier 64GB SSD boot drive + 1TB data drive in optical drive bay).
I do have a bit of Air envy from time to time, but then I count my blessings that I live in a time where I have a portable workstation that I can use as my primary machine and carry from home to work every day. That is amazing in and of itself.
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the only one in our company not using any external monitors. The added screen real estate would be nice, but the downside is that then you have a different setup in the office and on the road. I rather get used to a single screen I always have with me.
I'm the same way. I actually have an external monitor on my desk; it sits unused. I used to use it but over time I became so used to a single screen, and context switching within it, that I don't bother plugging it in any more. Ditto my external keyboard, though I confess to occasionally reaching for my bluetooth mouse. I have co-workers who are the exact opposite; 3 or 4 screens, it's never enough, but I just feel l…
This would be true for me if not... RSI. Alt-tab gets painful.
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
If by "almost" you mean "over twice as big", sure. (I happen to have an HDMI connector sitting next to my MBP's Thunderbolt (nee Mini-DisplayPort) port. Edit: They have "mini-HDMI" out, which is an entirely different beast than the mini-HDMI adapters included on many Android smartphones. A mini-HDMI port would require similar adapters to connect to anything useful. A normal "type-A" HDMI port is a sizeable connector,…
Several mobile phones have HDMI out. For me that is "small enough". I think HDMI would even make the ports on different sides more balanced, as the size is more similar to the magsafe adapter
No they have "mini-HDMI" out, which is an entirely different beast. It would require similar adapters to connect to anything useful.
A normal "type-A" HDMI port is a sizeable connector, larger than a USB port.
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use an iPad as a touchable external monitor... http://avatron.com/apps/air-display
Holy shit, thank you for this! edit: 5 minutes (and -$10) later, I now have a portable third monitor that I can bring with me anywhere in the house. Plus I can easily test my iPhone app in the simulator using real touch gestures, without building to a device (not every gesture is working, but this is still awesome).
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Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use an iPad as a touchable external monitor... http://avatron.com/apps/air-display
Holy shit, thank you for this! edit: 5 minutes (and -$10) later, I now have a portable third monitor that I can bring with me anywhere in the house. Plus I can easily test my iPhone app in the simulator using real touch gestures, without building to a device (not every gesture is working, but this is still awesome).
My pleasure. I use, and love, it daily btw. For windows it isn't as good so I use http://ipad.displaylink.com/
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#109Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that: - The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ - Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well. - The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the h…
I have almost the exact same setup, save for a 120 GB SSD. But everything you've said is correct. I would add that the setup is surprisingly straightforward and that the OptiBay product comes with great installation docs. Unlike 2007 and earlier Apple portables, this generation is pretty easy to crack open.
I love my 15" MBP configured as described. No, it's not especially light or sleek compared to a MacBook Air. But it's the fastest, most responsive machine I've ever used in my life. And the processor is a smidge fresher, so I feel better about obsolescence.
One tip if you're going to go the two drive route:
You can symlink heavy files that apps expect to be on your startup disk to your HDD. So in my case, I've symlinked my iTunes movies, iTunes U, iPhoto library, and a couple of other things and store them on the HDD. I don't touch these often and when I do, time isn't of the essence, so there's no point consuming my precious SSD capacity.
Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
#110Computing power-wise there are few machines that can't do the job for most people. I recently had a friend get the ASUS 1015B[1] for $289. For everything he does (he's not a developer, rather a policy wonk) it works just fine. He loves the form factor for travel, weight, everything.
But the problem with MBA, netbooks, and laptops in general is that they're less productive for some classes of work. Generally due to the display size/resolution. I find that even a 24" dislay is not adequate to really work at full steam. I need at least 2x24" when doing serious dev work. I can work on my laptop in a pinch, but its like writing a long email with T9. Sure, you can do it, but its not the way you like to operate.