{"id":214,"date":"2011-09-17T11:13:57","date_gmt":"2011-09-17T16:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/?p=214"},"modified":"2012-04-10T23:45:39","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T04:45:39","slug":"the-macbook-air-it-was-supposed-to-be-so-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/2011\/09\/17\/the-macbook-air-it-was-supposed-to-be-so-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"The MacBook Air: It was supposed to be so easy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finally bit the bullet and picked up a MacBook Air. Ubuntu 11.04 had a problem with remote folders breaking after waking up from a suspend. That was the last straw. I&#8217;m fine with paying more so I can spend time hacking on web stuff instead of troubleshooting desktop issues.<\/p>\n<p>For all the hype, I expected a machine descended from the heavens; a laptop from the desk of Zeus. These religious aspirations for a notebook were a bit misplaced because there are a number of problems with the Air&#8217;s experience. This is not a critique of Lion, the hardware, or any one organization in particular, but a quick dialectic on the overall user experience, including third party applications.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Problems:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No out-of-the-box support for remote folders via SSH. Ubuntu makes this a breeze. I spent way too long following blogs to find out how to set this up. I eventually bought an app called transmit that does the job.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m expected to pay money for a decent text editor? Notepad++ and Gedit are both fantastic and free. TextMate better be the best thing since canned bread.<\/li>\n<li>Homebrew depends on Xcode which is over 3 gigabytes. There isn&#8217;t a ton of space on this SSD.<\/li>\n<li>Have to buy $15 Thunderbolt to VGA adapter to use with my LCD screen.<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes the command key\u00a0\u2318 functions like a Windows control key, as in copy-paste, but other times it doesn&#8217;t, like when switching through tabs in Chrome.<\/li>\n<li>Mail doesn&#8217;t work. Gives IMAP error when trying to log in to Gmail. Probably due to my Gmail settings, but no indication of this.<\/li>\n<li>When compiling stuff the fan really makes a fuss. The hot area is small, but too hot to touch.<\/li>\n<li>Brew fails to compile dependencies for SSHFS. Not going to troubleshoot this.<\/li>\n<li>When computer speakers are plugged in, I can hear very faint interference from a TV or radio station. Seriously.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Delete&#8221; key appears to do nothing in Finder. I assume this is because it&#8217;s really the backspace key.<\/li>\n<li>When using a USB mouse, the scrolling direction is reversed. I can change this in the settings, but then all the touchpad gestures are reversed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Bright spots:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Boot time is unbelievable. I tried to time it but it completed before I started the timer.<\/li>\n<li>Terminal included, Chrome and FF easy to set up.<\/li>\n<li>Keepass + Dropbox work exactly the same way as they do on Windows, Linux, and my Android phone. Way to be consistent.<\/li>\n<li>Heat is contained to the area above the function keys.<\/li>\n<li>Dead silent when fan isn&#8217;t spinning.<\/li>\n<li>Supportive community with lots of recommendations<\/li>\n<li>Keyboard shortcuts and gestures will save a lot of time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A number of positive things go without saying. I didn&#8217;t have to hunt down Wi-Fi or video drivers and I didn&#8217;t have to re-install the OS just to get rid of bloatware. But, for $1,343.79 I expected a little more divine intervention.<\/p>\n<p>On the whole, the problems listed are pretty minor. I was able to get a comfortable working environment set up in a few hours. I&#8217;ll be spending inordinate amounts of time with this machine for the next few years, so send some OSX productivity tips <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/nickc_dev\">my way<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Edit: Disregard everything above this line. This is why it was worth it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/963\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"XKCD X11\" src=\"http:\/\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/x11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"319\" height=\"261\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Update 11\/24\/2011: Buying any other computer would have been a poor choice. I carry this machine everywhere. Keyboard shortcuts and gestures really are worthwhile; I don&#8217;t use an external mouse anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally bit the bullet and picked up a MacBook Air. Ubuntu 11.04 had a problem with remote folders breaking after waking up from a suspend. That was the last straw. I&#8217;m fine with paying more so I can spend time hacking on web stuff instead of troubleshooting desktop issues. For all the hype, I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/2011\/09\/17\/the-macbook-air-it-was-supposed-to-be-so-easy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The MacBook Air: It was supposed to be so easy&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[41,39,40],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical","tag-apple","tag-macbook-air","tag-user-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trillworks.com\/nick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}