MBA....my first thoughts :-)

Oh my god! This is the first Apple computer that I have ever owned and have admittedly at times dissed Apple owners for their Odball OS. In the last few years I have fallen in love with OSX while playing with friends Macbooks and my own OSX86 (hackintosh) machine.

First off...this thing is amazing! It is everything I hoped it would be and perfect for playing around with. I have put a few hours in with it and I just have to say that the overall user experience is the best part about using an Apple product.

By user experience some Windows lovers (I'm not going to use the word fanboy because some people just prefer their own ways) would assume that I like the pretty graphics zooming and rotating and such blah blah blah...NOPE! **** I spend alot of the time in OSX in the terminal. Actually...I love OSX's terminal! Its great! Its the things like the screen automatically dimming for me, the backlit keyboard coming on all by itself when it is dark and the great fit and finish of everything.

To sum it up best: everything here was meticulously thought out and nothing seems like an afterthought.

To anyone out there considering switching to Apple....DO IT. Get a MacBook or an iMac and test it out to see if you like it.

sdelano

 

Please do not bring up using OSX on non-Apple hardware. It is a violation of the EULA and of our forum rules.

 

lol glad to see your enjoying it, i recently made the switch for a MBP and lke you say EVERYTHING JUST WORKS it really makes you feel good to know your computer was intended to be used....not like *cough cough microsoft cough*

 

microsoft smiles with your money in their pocket

 

baha they dont smile with my money. never will i ever buy a microsoft again

 

First off sorry Greg didn't mean to break the rules.

Something just came to mind. The last laptop I owned was a Dell Inspiron 700m, and when I first saw pictures of that laptop I knew I needed it. I was just heading to college and figured it would be perfect to take to class.

Well when I got it I was thoroughly underwhelmed. That may be an understatement actually. From the silver look, I was expecting a metal-ish laptop with great build quality. I expected it to be way better than the big grey boxes that Dell was replacing with these.....haha so much for expectations.

I could barely type on that tiny keyboard and boy was I glad when that thing got stolen. I barely ever even took it to class so I replaced it with a desktop.

Now that I actually have a use for a laptop during the day while I am on campus, I love the fact that I have this thing to take with me. I have none of the feelings that I had about that Dell in the first few hours after I opened the box. What I am experiencing with this MBA is what I was expecting from the Inspiron 700m over 3 years ago. At least someone finally did it right!

Thanks Apple!

 

I used to laugh at the "it just works" motto of apple, not understanding its scope. I recently posted this in another thread and it really does sum up the apple experience for me. (long read)

=====================================================

My wife and I bought a Sony DVD camcorder two years ago for a trip to Hawaii. It was an awesome camcorder, small, easy to use, touch-screen display and it used mini re-writable DVDs.

The camera didn't have firewire but USB instead. It came with a software DVD and that required windows XP - the only supported OS. You had to install the software to be able to import video to the PC for editing. It consisted of a Sony driver, an application to detect and preview the camera video content and another app for capturing the video - 3 pieces in total.

The audio stream was a dolby digital format that we found out later to be incompatible with most video editors. Luckily the Sony software package had a utility bundled for audio conversion so the video could be edited.

The whole thing worked well enough although the software were a little cumbersome to use.

Vista came along and Sony decided not to update the software so I was pretty much out of luck. I was able to randomly run the software in XP SP2 compatibility mode but it was a pain to say the least and wasted many hours on it, not to mention the bugs and errors that came with that.

Anyhow, two nights ago, purely out of curiosity I decided to plug the Sony camcorder in my MBP. I knew the camera did not support mac OS as clearly stated on the Sony site and on the box of my camera, but when someone becomes desperate they try weird things. After all, we spent $800 on this camcorder and loved using it but now we wanted to edit the video.

Well low and behold, as soon as I plugged it in, a little windows popped up in OSX saying "A Sony DVD device has been detected - would you like iMovie to be the default application when you plug in this device?". I was shocked but managed to click OK.

Then iMovie started and loaded thumbnails of all the video on the camcorder. I hesitantly clicked "Import" and watched it download the videos, clip by clip into iMovie. And the audio worked right out of the camera ready for editing. No drivers, no additional software, nothing.

Have you heard the term "tickled pink"? lol Well that sums up that moment for me. For the life of me I cannot understand how a product designed from the ground up to be a windows-only product can just work when plugged in to a mac.

"It just works" they say. It sure does.

 

Apple has impressed me tremendously in my switch...I'm looking at a 23 cinema to compliment my setup!

 

I'm waiting for the iMac to get an LED-backlit panel to switch my desktops to macs. I'm hoping the next refresh will have that.

 

I'm going to get the Cinema next time I'm at the apple store....SOON!

30 or 23?

 

I'm seriously considering getting one of these two. But seriously the only reason I would get one of the current ones is just for the looks. I don't feel that they are all that practical for my uses. Yes, the screen real estate is nice, but I already have a 20-inch (4:3 1600x1200) Samsung SyncMaster 204T...NICE monitor by the way.

I really have no need for the IPS panel because the only thing I really do on my computer is code and watch movies. Real estate is a godsend when coding and I know how great a 24" monitor is though. We have a ton in the CS lab at school and every time I'm in there I make sure I use one of those computers (also because those are the ones with Linux and not Windows hehe).

I'm looking at getting another monitor and here is what I have narrowed it down to:
-another 204T to sit next to the one I have (currently around ~$200 on ebay)
-Apple CinemaDisplay 23"
-Dell UltraSharp 2407/2408

The Apple and Dell are comparable in prices, and I've heard that the Dell uses S-PVA panels (like the 204T) which are nice as well. But the big up-factor of the Dell is that is has a ton more ports than the Apple, and I can use it as a USB hub for my air if needed.

What do you guys think? I could save a ton of money and look into getting a Samsung (kind of a risk on eBay but I got mine refurbed and it works great), be stylish and get the Apple, or get the Dell (which I am leaning toward at the moment).

Thanks,
sdelano

 

If you do photo editing at all, and the difference in price isn't a huge issue for you, I'd recommend the 30". Actually, I own both but usually use the smaller screen. Trying to read text on the bigger monitor can be a PITA, but it's beautiful, and really works well if you're dealing with graphics, commish. Small details which you might overlook on the smaller screen are much clearer on the 30" screen.

 

Besides osx, how do you like the mba? hows the size? battery life? did you get the ssd or hdd version? If you got the hdd, is it too sluggish or is the performance fine?

I've been having mba cravings lately...

 

The speed is perfectly fine. I got the regular HDD because the sub-par speeds of the SSD didn't warrant the extra $1000 that it would have cost me. Battery life is fine. I was using it late into the night last night and didn't notice any issues. Within the next week I will be able to vouch more for the battery life because I right now I am just at home and don't really have a need to take it off AC....When I start taking it to school and such then I will have a better idea of how the battery performs.

I don't notice much sluggishness at all but all I have been doing really is browsing the web and watching web video and such.

sdelano

 

Have you tried running Windows via Parallels or Fusion?

 

I have a macbook air, and have installed vmware Fusion to run a scientific graphing software. I've done no quantitative benchmarks, but the performance seems fine. In general, I'm surprised about the MBA's performance--it really does not feel slow!