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Review of the 11" MacBook Air

mattgemmell.com

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Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#71

Post by tchock23 »

bnewton wrote: post #67

I've checked out the Macbook Air at the Apple Store a few times and I'm so close to just selling my i5 MBP for a fully spec out 13" Air. I like the idea of having such a light and still powerful system for web and ios development. From the sounds of it I wouldn't be giving up to much going with the Air over the MBP.

That's exactly what I did, and I couldn't be happier. It's so light that I find myself checking my laptop bag just to see if it's still in there. I went with the highest-end 13" configuration so I didn't lose any performance in the transition, and haven't noticed any discernible difference in "real world" use.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#72

Post by stcredzero »

vibhavs wrote: post #64
stcredzero wrote: post #7

My alternative: Put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD 300 in a 13" Macbook and max-out the RAM. It will be bigger and heavier, with less battery life, but if you already have a Macbook, this is a much cheaper move. The RealSSD has background garbage collection, so you don't have to worry about TRIM. You only need to do two things: 1) noatime and 2) make sure you're using less than 220GB. I did this, and the performance is fant…

So I had to go look up noatime. Here's what I found: "Linux [and presumably Mac OS X] has a special mount option for file systems called noatime that can be added to each line that addresses one file system in the /etc/fstab file. If a file system has been mounted with this option, reading accesses to the file system will no longer result in an update to the atime information associated with the file like we have exp…

I used the method shown here:

http://blogs.nullvision.com/?p=275

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#73

Post by paragraft »

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?

I'm always having to stop and check that I'm pressing the right function key (volume control, play/pause), particularly if I'm watching a movie in the dark

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#74

Post by wyclif »

there wrote: post #14
nasht wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using the 11" for a couple of months now. I also love it but I am more productive at a real desktop with large screen and large keyboard. I have never seen the apple logo shine through the screen. Take that unit back for a replacement.

i have two of them, and one had its entire display replaced. all three displays show the logo through under certain lighting conditions.

That is completely unacceptable, and Apple needs to fix it fast.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#75

Post by yuvipanda »

I have a 10" Samsung N210 - proper 'netbook' (Atom, 1G RAM, etc) - and is fast enough for my dev needs (HTML/CSS, C, Python). I do need to farm compiling out to my main machine (a quad core) with distcc if I need to compile anything >10k LOC though.

I'm happy with it.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#76

Post by samatman »

verisimilitude wrote: post #66
MikeW wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure the Unibody Aluminum Macbook (Macbook 5,1) supports 6GB of RAM? I have this laptop and both the apple specs and crucial say it can only support 2x 2GB.

Macbook 5,1 absolutely supports 6GB, NOT 8GB. The best summary I've found: http://blog.macsales.com/3291-putting-a-rumor-to-rest-owc-su...

Typing this from a Macbook 5,1 with 8gb onboard. Been running this way for months with no problems.

Under Snow Leopard, at least, this limitation does not apply.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#77

Post by chrisbroadfoot »

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?

I had this opinion, too, until I got a keyboard that was backlit.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#78

Post by nagnatron »

frou_dh wrote: post #17
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 font-rendering beefs seem quite transient, I've been a detractor and appreciator of plain aliased, ClearType and Mac style at various times. The only consistency has been Linux distro defaults looking gash ;)

You can easily set it to be pretty nice(hinting to slight or none, subpixel rendering). One very nice thing about linux is that it works very, very well for high-dpi screens.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#79

Post by jckarter »

danilocampos wrote: post #45
nzadrozny wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's actually a dedicated Script menu available in the OS. Instead of deploying .apps and taking up space in the Dock, you can start up AppleScript Editor and check "Show Script menu in menu bar" in its Preferences. Then place your scripts in ~/Library/Scripts (or ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/ to have them only appear while a certain application is active).

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#80

Post by dedward »

cma wrote: post #70
PStamatiou wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, makes me regret my setup even more, price-wise. I have a big early adopter problem. First SSD was $680 for 80GB, it died, Intel sent me a second generation replacement. Then I purchased a second for $400, put them in my 17-inch MBP (older core 2 duo) in RAID 0 via an optibay. Then upgraded to 8GB of RAM when I started using redis locally. System screams but the SSDs are showing their age. I almost always run th…

RAID-0 after having one die? RAID-1 would still get you double read speeds in the cases that tend to matter (small scattered reads), right? And is there a use-case for double write speeds on a non-server machine?

raid-1 may or may not get you double read speeds - it depends on how things are set up. ARe you sure the OSX implementation will take advantage of this?
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