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

[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".