retail therapy: foiled

[jazzfish]

I stopped by the Apple store today intending to engage in some high-end retail therapy and pick up one of them shiny new 11" Macbook Airs. The Apple website certainly strongly implied that the Tysons store had them (listing them under "featured in store," for instance). But no, the internet has lied to me.

So I spent twenty minutes or so with an actual Apple Store employee, getting a brief and surface-y guided tour of MacOS and chatting about what machine is Right For Me. She's not a fan of the Air in general: the two that she knows of in the wild have both worn out from use (display on one, hinge on the other), while her aged Macbook is in excellent shape. Plus the Air's not all that buff a machine in general. She recommended the much more durable Macbook, or a 13" MBPro.

She also brought up the Mac Mini, which I'd more or less discounted when I decided against trying to use an iPad as my primary portable. However, she got me thinking. I could go the two-computers route. I'd feel a bit safer having one available if the other decided to crash and burn, and having a ready-made backup of my data.

I'm not really going to be in a position to use a desktop system until I get a new chair anyway, and I'm putting that off until I get relocated. And I may end up deciding that Macs are just Not For Me. So, I think what I'll do is, once the 11" Airs show up at the store, go down and play with one for awhile, decide whether it's Just Too Small or what. And if it is, or if it won't work out for whatever reason, I'll go with either the Pro or the Macbook. (Probably the Pro, since it's expandable later.) And if that works out, and OSX and the general Mac-ness don't drive me batty, I'll get a Mini and a good desktop setup after I move.

At least the story has a happy ending. I brought home Cakelove cupcakes for dessert, and they were delicious.

Comments

[plumbob78.insanejournal.com]

I think playing with it at the store is a most sensible route. It's how I decided on getting my Mac. The new MacBook Airs (or is it MacBooks Air?) look very nice. Apple excels at making very pretty computers.

[jazzfish]

heh. Like mothers-in-law. (Macsbook Air? no, nevermind, that doesn't work at all.)

The only thing my current laptop has going for it, tech-wise, is a 15" screen. I'm already a bit nervous about dropping down to a 13"; I need to figure out whether 11.6" is going to be too cramped.

The other problem, of course, is that the non-Air laptops are all due for a spec bump in the very near future. Must... hold... out... for... better... components...

(And yes, very very much with the pretty.)

[vond.net]

Both of the new macbook airs pack more pixels into the same size screens than Apple has generally done in the past. For example the new 13" MBA has more pixels than the 13" MBP. That may or may not be good for you, I don't recall excactly how your glasses/contacts interact when you're using computers.

To be honest I am now a little concerned about the Mac platform based on the Lion announcements. My work is usually highly multitasked and often has me copying and pasting from one Terminal window to another, so making Mac OS X more like the iPad with a new emphasis on fullscreen apps is not a direction I am thrilled with. For a writer like you, it might be a real positive though. Yet more for you to think about while waiting to see one in person :)

[jazzfish]

Yeah, part of the 'look at an actual machine' that I want to do is to see whether the size of the text on the screen will drive me nuts.

Although GODDAMMIT Apple why are all your screens glossy? I do not need to see what's coming up behind me.

"Fullscreen" apps seem like a huge waste of the space on a monitor that's bigger than a laptop, and a moderate waste of space on a laptop bigger than 13".

[rockynomad.livejournal.com]

The Air is a fantastic machine if you don't need high-end gaming graphics or the most powerful processor. It can also be a roadworthy, two-machines-in-one item: my previous job required carrying a laptop all over the place on a regular basis, and the happiest guy I worked with had an older Air that was running Windows 7 via BootCamp. He said Win7 ran faster on the Mac than on any of the Windows machines he used in his computer consulting business.

I'd still go for the Pro if I wanted a "not gonna replace it for at least a decade" machine: its processing muscle will keep it from functional obsolescence for a long time, and it's got a built-in optical drive. Then again, for what little I use my personal machine for, the Air would more than cover the bases.

13" > 11". You'll be a lot happier in the long run.

[jazzfish]

That's a good point about the Pro's longer functional lifespan, I'd not considered that. Hmm. Honestly, the main thing holding me back there is that the laptops are all due for a spec bump Any Week Now.

I expect 11" will turn out to be too small for me to deal with, but I want to see one for myself before I make that call.

[rockynomad.livejournal.com]

I'd kinda like to see the ultraportable laptop merge a bit with the iPad. Currently, you can take a laptop from any major brand and dock it to an external monitor, full-size keyboard, speakers, and whatnot. I'd like to see a fully functional Mac (as in OS X, not the iPad/iPhone "iOS") in just the screen half of a laptop, so I could use it like an iPad on the go but still have a muscular machine when docked.

Life span isn't anything I really considered until I looked back and realized that I got my PowerBook *before college.* I've installed more RAM and a bigger drive, but it's still going strong.

[jazzfish]

Hm. I'd thought that was the point of various tablet PCs (didn't scraun23 have one at one point?). It's sort of the point of the Air as well, especially with the direction that OSX 10.7 seems to be going.

And /wow/. I had the same desktop system in a sense from 2001-2007, but that was through three different motherboard/processor issues and a couple of forced OS reinstalls. The idea of having /the same machine/ for all that time... wow. You may have just sold me on the MBP.

[rbandrews]

Macs tend to last longer / be useful longer, in my anecdotal experience.

The mirror door G4 I bought in 2003, I used until 2008, and sold it to my friend Kevin when I moved out of Austin, he still uses it.

I don't use my iBook from 2003 any more, but I did until November 2008, with no problems at all. I only replaced it because I was able to get a fixer-upper Macbook for $500 (which is still a very respectable machine, I only want to replace it because the MBP at work has spoiled me).

[jazzfish]

I am, incidentally, really looking forward to missing that sense of "crap my machine is three years old and starting to chug badly i guess i need to replace it now."

[rbandrews]

I really don't know what the deal is, whether the OS offloads more on to the GPU or the compiler is better tuned, or it is somehow better at memory management, or what. I refuse to believe that Apple OS programmers are just that much better than Microsoft OS programmers. But the machines do stay useful way longer. You'll upgrade because the new ones are shiny, rather than because your old one sucks.

[absolutliz.livejournal.com]

And me...well...I'd rather hear more about the cupcakes. =)

[jazzfish]

Happy to oblige. :) Orange frosting on yellow cake and lemon frosting on yellow cake. (Unless it was white cake. I forget. They didn't really last long enough to see.) I would have gotten only one of those and a Toffee Crunch, but I couldn't decide between them.