Life with the 13″ MacBook Air – Two weeks down

I have always used the time to upgrade computers to buy the biggest, fastest, bestest computer I could get. I typically keep them for 3-4 years (and use them hard) so skimping on the price is not a really a priority.

My macbook pro is getting a little long in the tooth (but by no means giving up the ghost), and I was flirting with the MacBook Pro Retina display. But I took stock of my needs, and realized that I don’t need the biggest and fastest. For Father’s Day, Apple seemed to think that my boys should get me a MacBook Air. They were just refreshed, with new, low power use CPU’s, and some pretty impressive specifications.

I was piqued. I took a trip to the local Apple store (there are several here in Phoenix, one about 5 minutes away) and did some hands on.

I was smitten. The idea of a very light, very compact package with outstanding battery life was very appealing indeed.

So I took the plunge, bought the 13″ version, and ordered it with the 8G of memory (soldered on the board, it is not upgradable post purchase), and the 256G SSD.

I have blogged about getting it up and running, and figuring out how to live within the space constraints (it is a bit of a shock to go from a TB to 1/4 TB of storage (hint: my music, movies and Aperture photo library didn’t come across. But my MBP will suffice for that!).

I was tempted to buy a second charger when I picked this up, but I refrained. I am getting a real 10 – 12 hours of use between charges. That equates to two – three days of my usual use.

The display is smaller than the 15″, and although it dismayed the Apple watchers that Apple didn’t drop a retina display in this, I am not disappointed. Yep, the retina displays are crisp, and awesome, but they have 4x the pixels, and that does impact battery life.

The build quality is typical Apple. Solid. great screen hinges, and no blemishes.

So far, I love it, and will probably be an ultra portable user for life now.

With the shifting allegiances in streaming music, I found myself re-enabling my Apple Music subscription. There are some benefits, and some less desirable aspects. This is relevant as I again ponder the mix of music that I have in my collection, as well as the convenience of streaming. In the following post, I lay out the pro’s and con’s of Apple’s Music subscription plan. $9.99...

Along the recent grumbling and the pending cancellation of my Apple Music subscription, a wider topic is how the Apple Ecosystem has become less an asset and more of a liability in the world of Apple. At one time, the bundling of great applications, like Garage Band, iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie was a huge benefit for those who bought Mac computers. These applications just worked, were plenty...

As a long time Apple user, (one could say fanatic) I have just used TimeMachine as a set-it-and-forget-it technology. Buy a big external disk, plug it in, and point TimeMachine at it, and let it do its magic.
Once, I had deleted a file, and I recovered it, pretty painlessly, but apart from that one incident, it has been in the background.
Until recently.
New iMac for Barbara

When you wake up in the morning and see that your iPhone is giving you a “No SIM detected” error, you know it is going to be a bad day. My iPhone 5s is well aged, but it has performed quite well for almost 2.5 years. I was hoping to get another year out of it, but alas, it decided to give up the ghost. It worked well, but the “No SIM” error was a harbinger of doom. It is...

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Life with the 13″ MacBook Air – Two weeks down

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