Five Miles Out: My thoughts on: the 13" MacBook Air
I didn’t say that to gloat, but to put it out there that I am an Apple product user. Doesn’t mean that I am always thrilled with certain products or certain aspects of a product. Take the iPhone 3G/3GS, the back casing always cracked after a few months of use. Granted I am a bit harder on gadgets, accidental drops, forgetting a 7 pound 17” MacBook Pro is in a bag and tossing it onto a concrete floor (yes, I am absent minded at times), and having lost several iPod’s on airplanes and buses.
Going back to the reason why I listed the most memorable Apple products I owned, I found minute perfections in each product and loud imperfections. I could write a few large posts on the pro’s and cons of various items. But that’s not why I am writing this, the reason for this post: the 13” MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM, and the 1.8 GHz i5 CPU.
Let me sum up this laptop with one word: perfection.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of reviews written for every Apple product, so I’ll keep this short and from my perspective.
My previous everyday computer was a 13” MacBook. It did it’s job. Which was mainly for editing code and checking work email. And from time to time I would use Pixelmator on it.
What I didn’t like about the MacBook was the weight. The build material. The fact that I could possibly forget that it’s in a bag and toss it onto an unforgiven floor.
I’ve had the MacBook Air going on two months, and I absolutely love it. It’s light, the build quality is great, and I have yet to toss it or some other accidental physical damage to it. But I feel that if I did it would hold up a lot better than the MacBook would, and hold up better than my 17 inch MacBook Pro did.
I travel every so often for my job, and I know it’ll be a far better laptop then lugging the HP behemoth work usually loans out to me for these trips. I won’t feel like I should be working on an Excel spreadsheet when I take it out during the flight.
I did notice that the lid isn’t exactly aligned perfectly with the rest of the laptop. But most users won’t notice that. I’ve noticed and every so often the OCD perfectionist in me allows that fact to grate against my brain. Like right now. But as I said, most users won’t notice, and some probably won’t care if they do notice.
Speaking of the lid, some will prefer a sharper display after using an iPad 3/4 or the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I don’t mind the display on the MacBook Air, as I mainly edit code and do light work in Pixelmator, and light iPhoto edits. I have no issues when streaming Netflix movies, I think the 1440x900 display is bright enough and crisp enough. Again there are others that do much more intensive programming and editing than I do and may be turned off by the display. For me it suits my work flow perfectly.
I do wish the Thunderbolt port was on the same side as the power port, but that’s not a deal breaker for me.
Paired with the Apple Magic Mouse, OS X becomes an absolute joy to use. Interesting that a mouse becomes such an integral part of an operating system when its such a joy to use. Others may not like the Magic Mouse as it isn’t as ergonomic as some other mice. It took me a few days to get used to it and once I was used to it, I cannot imagine using a different pointing device. Maybe the Apple Magic Mouse.
For those that are looking for a lightweight, robust, easy to use, and to an extent; powerful enough laptop I recommend this laptop.
Our revenue is surging as brands shift their budgets to social ads and our recent growth is driven more by revenue than VC funding – an amazing milestone for any startup. We still have a long way to go but it has been a great year so far.
Whenever a company has this kind of success the press, competitors, and the public start asking: “how do they do it??!?” Unfortunately, this speculation is often unkind and unfair. The default assumption is that a company must be cheating somehow or using some trick to grow traffic or revenue.
Diane Farr: Don’t order the reindeer
Diane Farr writes:
“On my first night in Alaska I noticed my in-room dining menu offered “reindeer sausage” for breakfast. I actually winced reading this. I am sure the reindeer population probably needs to be controlled and that reindeer-meat distributors deserve to make money like all the other slaughtering industries, but as an ignorant New Yorker who grew up kind of believing that meat was “made” inside a butcher shop, I was not going to be trying any of those Vixen’s legs.
Or so I thought until one sunny evening in Anchorage when I finished work at 11 p.m. and the sky was still bright. I was dreaming of scrambled eggs. When my food server asked for my meat preference to go along with the eggs, “reindeer sausage” just rolled off my tongue as if I had been eating it all my life.
I’m not at all clear where this burst of carnivorous bravery came from. I hadn’t actually eaten anything with a face in nearly 25 years, until last year when I found myself utterly exhausted post-breastfeeding twins. Another former vegetarian mom turned me on to steak with the promise of more iron and more energy — and it was as if she’d fired the starting gun at a 100-meter dash. Suddenly, I longed to eat beef at every meal for months.”
via AlaskaDispatch.com
source ChicagoTribune.com
Sarah Palin
One time mayor of Wasilla, governor quitter, and current media attention seeker.
Back in 2001 her parents were my ‘host family’ when the college that I attended at the time went up to the Mat-Su Valley for a fundraiser. Her parents were, and I’m guessing still are, nice people. A bit eccentric, but this isn’t about her parents so I won’t go into more detail.
I voted for Sarah Palin when she ran for Governor of Alaska. Anybody was better than Frank Murkowski. Any vote other than a vote for him would serve Alaska well. So that is basically why I voted for Palin.
She seemed to be a good governor during the first year she was in office. And then she started to become diva-ish. Replacing good serving commissioners who were qualified, and replacing them with friends and political donors. (Don’t quote me on that, I can’t back it up.)
But even then she seemed like an ‘O.K.” governor.
And then John McCain made his announcement. And then Palin made an embarrassment out herself.
And then she quit.
She quit her sworn position as Governor of Alaska.
She quit working for the people that trusted her with their votes.
She quit Alaska.
And now we know her as a fairly, no fairly is too nice of a word, we know her as a very radical political figure who seeks attention by pretending to run for office. By endorsing political candidates.
What is odd, is some of those candidates have spoken against her endorsement. I guess I cannot blame them. Would you want to be endorsed by a quitter?
NOTE: This is my Thursday Morning Rant, a page I’ll be adding to every Thursday morning. This has not been further edited beyond typographical errors, and does not represent views from anyone else.
