Travelsheep

I write this on 9th of July 2009 and I talk about my new MacBook Air 2.1 Ghz 128Gb SSD. On which I’m typing this.

I’m not a rich guy. I work part time for a university of applied sciences, I work in research (eLearning and knowledge management). I also write software professionally, but I do only one or two projects a year (for serious, big clients). I really prefer time over money. But I understand that I need money to have time. So that’s how I roll.

I’m into web development. I love ruby on rails. So I come up with my own projects (e.g. okimup or institutut). I use textmate and mysql. Some photoshop. I run several servers locally. Sometimes I have 20 tabs open in Firefox, I use the developer toolbar and a hungry Java client to conveniently browse my databases.

I used to have the latest MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz with 4 Gb RAM. The perfect machine for developing. But I take my MacBook Pro to work every day and back home, I commute a lot, I work part time, so I visit friends in their office in yet another town, I take my MacBook Pro there, I take it with me when I visit my dad. Especially when I was studying in Shanghai the MacBook Pro turned into a heavy brick for me, no fun to haul at all.

That’s why I was interested in the MacBook Air. The light weight and the 2.1 Ghz computing power intriguided me. But alas, I couldn’t find any decent report in the Internet. Of course I have read David his report from Feb 2008, and all the latest benchmarks (which say that this MacBook Air is the slowest of all time), but none of it sounded overly convincing that the MacBook Air would be suitable for serious web programming.

I’m telling you, I have a trauma from my first Powerbook (which was the latest and most powerful model back then, when I switched from maxed out desktop PC with 2 big screens to mobile computing). It was just too slow, starting a server on a huge rails project, with loads of other programs running in the background, took almost a minute. Let alone the overall experience. Possible but in high pressure situations with daunting deadlines and 14 hours days a nightmare.

Anyways

To make it short: my shoulder and back was aching from hauling the MacBook Pro at least twice a day. I couldn’t resist. After browsing for 2 days for convincing reviews (which I didn’t find),  I went into the next MacShop (a 2 hours drive) and just bought the MacBook Air 2.1Ghz.

In the morning I migrated. Moved my CS3, my Office 2008, textmate, all my stuff. Upgraded to OSX 1.5.7, installed developer tools (for which I “borrowed” the CD-Drive from my MacBook Pro, which worked like a charm) updated ruby, gems, mysql. I ran many of the software updates. I moved some GB of music and some videos. And I still have 60GB of free disk space. Fast diskspace.

I’m telling you. This baby kicks ass. It’s beautiful. It’s frikkin fast. It gives me great experience. I keep on skyping to my friends how much I love the MacBook Air. I insert a lot of :-) :-D and lol. And (happy). Everything is smooth. It does everything fast. It works smoothly. I can do all the programming  stuff I did on my MacBook Pro.

The Air feels great on my lap. In the beginning I thought it’s too small, since I was used to my warm, comforting Pro (it’s cold in Austria, and rainy). But the Air is great. I even think it’s female. It got perfect curves, a most beautiful shape. She feels great when I run my fingers over her.

The battery is ok, just like my 16month old Pro, maybe it even lasts a bit longer (2-3 hours for programming).

When I have to build stuff (which I hate. Thanks to everyone who distributes dmgs haha :-) the fan jumps on. It’s not too loud, it’s noticable, but not tooo loud. Outerwise the MacBook Air is just quite.

I also learned to use more tricks the last couple of days. To use Quicksilver more intensively. I removed almost all Icons from my Dock, moved the dock to the button and switched it to autohide. This way the 13.3″ screen is big enough for me. Actually I feel more free now, my view is not all screen anymore, I have the environment in my peripheral view. It’s a good feeling, I feel connected.

Hm, ok, maybe you want to here some bad things too:

The sound is like you pump up the volume on a cellphone. Not like the Hardan Kardon on the Pro. But to be fair, I have to say it must be a good cellphone. For speech totally all right. I listen to chinese language learning audio-files. I talk on skype. It’s cool for this, just like the Pro.

1 USB port. Ok, I’m thinking about replacing my Mighty Mouse with a cordless one. Maybe, one day, I’ll buy a 35 Euro aktive USB hub. But I thought I’ll wait until I really need one. Now I just *think* I need one, but I unplugged the Mighty Mouse when e.g. I used my external harddrive to transfer some music. Actually I don’t use my mouse much. Right now I’m at a friends house, we listen to Neil Young and I type away on my lap, no mouse, no USB stuff plugged in.

And the Air feels light, and smooth.

Ok, to tell you the truth, in the beginning I was thinking David lied about the Air. I was thinking Apple bribed him, gave him a shitload of money to write some good postings about the MacBook Air. But then, I trust David, I use his software every day. Not only rails, but I also use basecamp, I read his book. I admire his work and it changed my life (I was programming Python for 7 years. Although I liked it, it never made me feel awesome).

But it’s all true. The MacBook Air is an amazing web-development machine and a light beauty at the same time. It is my primary machine.