MacBook Air is enough for a work machine
brooksreview.net
brooksreview.net
Man, this is disingenuous. 8GB RAM? As if you can't get it cheaper (or the MBA even offered 8GB RAM as an option)? Or as if the 15" MBP doesn't blow the Air out of the water in every other aspect? I bought a 13" Pro because (a) it's smaller and lighter than the 15" and (b) I don't play PC games.
When we run THAT comparison, well:
13" MBP with 256GB Crucial SSD [0], 4GB RAM, 2.3GHz Core i5 -- $1699
13" MBA with 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 2.13 GHz C2D -- $1799
Sure, I don't have a Hi-Res screen (the one Pro feature I wanted on the 13"), but I can actually upgrade my computer in 3 years when 4GB RAM becomes a bottleneck. Now that's a low year-over-year computing cost.
The MacBook Air is an awesome machine, to be sure, but it's awesome because of the built-in SSD--not because of the value it provides.
[0] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...
You can also upgrade your MBP RAM cheaply today (or tomorrow) to 8GB.
Not only does the MB Air not support 8GB, it's soldered on, so you can't upgrade.
Does he have to always max out his Apple equipment purchases?
If I were to buy a Pro it'd be the 15" for its resolution, and I definitely want 8GB of memory. However the 13" Air is compelling because of the size & weight. If it were available with 8GB of memory that would be the way to go, but it's not.
Personally I'm holding out for the 15" Air. Ideally with a faster CPU (Core i3 or i5 is fine), up to 8GB or 16GB of memory, and a resolution of 1680x1050. While I'm wishing it should also have a matte option. The Air is nice but it's not a portable workstation replacement, yet.
If you take the base 15" and add a 128GB SSD to make it as cheap as possible it's $1999. Unless you really care about the CPU, graphics card, optical drive, or FireWire (which I don't, but others do) you're paying $200 more for a larger, heavier machine. With less storage. If you add the 256GB SSD it's $2399, which makes it even less compelling. I'd rather put that $600 towards a 27" display and still have a 256GB SSD.
The only reasons for me to prefer the 15" are greater resolution or memory capacity, without those I only benefit for the faster CPU. Again this is very much my opinion and I don't expect everyone to agree. I'm not baffled that we disagree, people value different things based on their usage patterns.
The depreciation on Apple laptops is low enough that you can resell it and trade up to the latest refresh once a year for the same cost as trading up once every 3 years. If you're interested in the best bang-for-your-buck and can put up with the hassle, you should definitely think about it.
Thinking a macbook pro with SSD & 8GB has a chance of lasting even longer.
The point is more that rather than running one machine into the ground until it's thoroughly obsolete (three years give or take) and then paying full price for a new one, one could resell a year later when it's still worth nearly what you paid for it and upgrade to the newest model. The price per year works out to be more or less the same, but you have cutting-edge hardware year after year rather than spending two years out of three in comparative obsolescence.
The only thing I use my DVD drive for is movies (but I recently got Netflix), and a recent troubleshooting round on a 1st gen MBA. And I made an install USB stick, so I don't need the drive any more anyway.
This has easily been the longest-lasting computer I've purchased, especially in the laptop realm. I'm thrilled with what it cost me.
I owned my white, 1st-generation MacBook for 5 years. To be fair, I wasn't coding then, so I might take your advice for this new laptop.
Personally, I love my little 12" thinkpad :)
I did the exact same assessment as you 4 months ago and bought the MBA 13" because a) I cared about the high-res screen more than the processor speed, and b) I only expect it to last 2 years so 4GB RAM is enough (insofar as you can ever have enough RAM.)
If you're doing lots with VirtualBox or VMWare, then 4GB isn't quite enough. 6GB is pretty comfortable, though.
It really is about tradeoffs. My MBP is my only computer, and I need the above.
- The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well.
- The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the heads on a drop. Ideal setup is to put an SSD in the optical bay and a HD in the internal.
- Battery life doesn't seem affected by two drives. I suspect cpu/video/display power significantly outweighs power from an SSD.
- The optical bay is 3 Gbps, the HD bay is 6 Gbps. Don't bother with the extra cost of new 6 Gbps SSDs if you put it in the optical position.
- If you do this on a new machine, do your boot camp install before you remove the drive. MacBook Pros have some kind of hard-wired device order that makes it impossible to install Windows from an external USB/FireWire optical drive.
I run a 250 GB SandForce SSD + 500 GB 7200rpm drive. SandForce does on-device garbage collection, which helps since OS X has no general-use TRIM support, and I do photo editing on the road so the faster HD is great.
I love my 15" MBP configured as described. No, it's not especially light or sleek compared to a MacBook Air. But it's the fastest, most responsive machine I've ever used in my life. And the processor is a smidge fresher, so I feel better about obsolescence.
One tip if you're going to go the two drive route:
You can symlink heavy files that apps expect to be on your startup disk to your HDD. So in my case, I've symlinked my iTunes movies, iTunes U, iPhoto library, and a couple of other things and store them on the HDD. I don't touch these often and when I do, time isn't of the essence, so there's no point consuming my precious SSD capacity.
Boy is the 'no boot from USB' thing on the new Macbooks a giant pain in the ass! Installing it is one thing, but last night for some reason Windows wouldn't boot so I needed to to startup repair, had to unscrew the whole thing and put the superdrive back in to do it. Should have been a 5 min operation, wasted a days work (superdrive was at home).
I wonder if I can make a 5gb partition on my main drive to be a windows install disk in case it happens again?
How do you have your OSX directories partitioned across the drives? Can you move, say /, to the SSD while keeping /home/media on the larger platter drive? I only know how to do this with Linux, not very familiar with OSX despite it being BSD-based.
You get more nuance from symlinks, etc, but this was a simple method which worked for me. Other people mentioned symlinking some dirs, but no one had mentioned that you could move your entire user directory this way.
http://remiel.info/post/1601242301/making-the-leap-to-ssd-on...
It's also feasible that they could fit a normal SATA form factor drive and the new slot-style SSDs in a thinner form factor.
They'll have to release some product that makes it easy for non-technical folks to offload low-performance files to the spinning disk versus the SSD, or they'll just market the spinning disk as a built-in Time Machine + Auto Save target.
Info on Auto Save: http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/
I'm seriously considering to swap the HDD in my MBP with a SSD and I was still a bit unsure about the TRIM support under OSX.
I bought the new 13" Air the week after launch and absolutely love it for a dev environment. XCode runs nice and smooth and it now seems to me that an SSD is nearly essential to make Eclipse feel usable.
We're coming up to the 6 month point where with those older laptops I would think "oh God why did I spend $1800 on this," and I still think this is the best computer I've ever owned.
From personal experience I know that I'm more productive on 5 LCD than on 3 LCD or 2 LCD setup. However, I spend a lot more time working on my MBA than I ever did on my desktop and though I work slower, the end result is that I'm overall producing more.
edit: 5 minutes (and -$10) later, I now have a portable third monitor that I can bring with me anywhere in the house. Plus I can easily test my iPhone app in the simulator using real touch gestures, without building to a device (not every gesture is working, but this is still awesome).
This $15 app remembers window positions and sizes for each application and display setup (and even combos with multi monitors). It'll even restore window positions when you connect/disconnect external monitors.
I have had a few issues where it can't figure out TotalFinder and Terminal (because of the tabs) window positions and sometimes it can't figure out which Chrome window is which, but overall it's made switching between external monitors a whole lot less painful.
I have co-workers who are the exact opposite; 3 or 4 screens, it's never enough, but I just feel like it's not necessary for me any more. You can only look at one thing at a time. Whether switching your view between monitors, or switching between programs, it's basically the same thing - the difference is, I can do the latter anywhere, and be just as productive in a coffee shop or on a plane.
Exceptions would be monitoring a large number of logs, or programs that require large GUIs (Photoshop, music sequencers). There, screen real estate is important. But for programming? Not for me.
Not using a monitor, I also don't use an external keyboard or mouse. I have an unused monitor on my desk at work I do no plug into.
I do have a bit of Air envy from time to time, but then I count my blessings that I live in a time where I have a portable workstation that I can use as my primary machine and carry from home to work every day. That is amazing in and of itself.
SSDs are interesting in that they get faster as they grow in size. top-tier 64GB SSD drives are quite a bit slower (at least in write speeds) than their 128GB counterparts, which are slower than their 256GB counterparts. Write speeds scale almost linearly with size.
I'd salivate for something a little quicker.
For this one time usage the tiny USB/Ethernet adapter seems like a fine compromise.
> Even the SD card reader is quite handy.
The MacBook Air has an SD card reader.
How's the speed on that?
> The MacBook Air has an SD card reader.
Ah, I was looking at the 11" oops
In practice, it probably depends on your GigE hardware - NIC, cable type, etc...
* Latest gen 13in MBA
* 17in MBP (~1yr) work paid for it
* 13in Black Macbook (loved this one too!)
* Mac Pro (totally pimped out) work paid for it
* 3rd gen mac mini
Edit:
Best accessory I've purchased http://www.luxurylapdesk.com/index.php
I pretty much love my current laptop, but I still do miss the backlit keys of my old powerbook.
Does it?
I have always considered the poor execution of the backlight an embarrassment to the otherwise very polished exterior.
The light-bleed is uneven. It gets the job done, but I'm sure apple could do better if they wanted.
[1] http://allnewmac.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/7e79c_macbook_p... [2] http://mygadgetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Alienware... [3] http://www.thinkdigit.com/FCKeditor/uploads/alienware%20hand... [4] http://farm1.static.flickr.com/92/211947046_c3c234a2da.jpg
That's why the F and J keys have small bumps you can feel so you can position your hands for touch typing. The 5 key in the numeric keyboard also has one of these.
The backlight can be useful for the function keys or whatever, but touch typing does not need any light.
>}[\|:{%^&?`~]*();"'!@_+-=#$,./<
not for me. these keys are the bottlenecks that break my flow and force me to think for a few moments about where things are.
your tactile union with your keyboard may be 100%, but mine is more like 80%. congrats if you've mastered chopsticks, but fork is a no-brainer. i admire the simplicity of those little f and j bumps, but they're just no match for a glance.
why not a choice: a backlight to turn on if you want, off if you don't? i don't want a backlight on all the time either. if i'm banging out email, no need. but if i'm coding, or something else that requires lots of special characters and finger-fu, then a backlight is handy.
Best purchase I've made in a long time, that MBA.
While I love the SSD, and I love the form factor, when working at a desk I really really pine for more RAM and a faster chip. I push the machine super hard on a normal day, not even when doing development.
Now as a portable, nothing can beat the thing, and when working on its 13" screen, it forces you to edit your multitasking so you really don't push it as bad. But when hooked at a 27" screen, you are tempted to multitask more and it gets bogged down.
Next week when the new iMacs come out I'm going to probably get one of those to use as a desktop machine and use the MBA as a portable. With Dropbox and MobileMe and Google sync, this is an easy proposition.
The only downsides are if I have a bunch of large files open in Photoshop and Illustrator, I might have to save and close some to keep things running smooth. When I'm plugged into a 27" display, some things are not quite as smooth.
So yeah, I'd rather be working on a faster desktop system (though the benefits would be minimal), but I can close this, bring it home, and continue working with the same workspace.
And the monitor is better than my Dell 22" I have at home.
Six months ago I had a iMac 24" and a MacBook Pro 13" for studying and portability. I noticed after I bought my MBP that I didn't use my iMac as I thought to be using. Not because it was slow or bad or something. No it was just horrible to synchronize both devices with my work and study related stuff (Yeah I know now better that it is a charm with Dropbox).
While I was deciding if I should sell my iMac I decided to sell both iMac AND my MBP. Why, you ask? My MBP was just fine but sometimes I had to carry a heavy books plus MBP with me and this was why my back was hurting. So I decided to switch to something lighter and faster (and yes my MBA is way faster than my MBP ever was).
After selling both devices I bought a MBA with 128GB SSD and 4GB Ram and happier than ever before. This was one of the best decisions I made in my environment. And if anything happens to my MBA I will order a new one with thinking a moment about it.
Pro's:
* It is very fast,
* it is light as nothing else,
* I have instant-on (something which is really important to me),
* I have 5-6 hours of battery life,
* Eclipse runs really really smooth,
* XCode runs even smother,
* and every other development related works just fine (and sometimes I think even better as on my MBP)
Con's:
* No glass display (I loved it cause it was way easier to clean than a "plastic" display)
* No keyboard backlight (while this was bothering me at the very beginning, I have to admit that I don't care anymore)
At the bottom-line I want to say that unless you are working on really high computation stuff (like 3D rendering or something) a MBA will do it smoothly. I never encountered anything which I had performance problems with. (If you ask me I would wait a second longer in exchange to carry much less weight with me)
Disclaimer: I don't play any games and try to escape Flash everywhere possible (cause it lets the fan freak out).
1. With an SSD, any current MBP would feel just as snappy. 2. Can't get around that - though I seldom feel my 4lb MBP is too heavy. 3. I've always had this, I call it Sleep. 4. My 13" i5 gets me >7Hrs. 5. Eclipse/XCode - will run just as fast with an SSD. Compile times - no contest, i5 beats the crap out of a 1.3-1.86Ghz C2D.
The i5 in the current 13" MBP is nearly twice as fast as the C2D in the model it replaced - e.g. even faster when compared with the lower clocked MBA processor. Most things in day to day operation are HDD limited. Anything CPU limited will fly on a MBP compared to an MBA - I'm thinking compiling mostly for developers... I suppose web dev doesn't require compiling much - except when using GWT (which i what I use most often...)
In particular, if you're upgrading from a machine without SSD, the speed advantages you'll see for things like emacs or compiles of large projects -- things which access lots of small files -- are huge.
This machine replaced a MacBook Pro which was technically its equal in processor speed, but it feels faster in every way (and is a heck of a lot more usable on the train).
I have a 24" monitor at my office, and a 27" iMac (my wife's) that I use as a second display for my MBP.
Best of both worlds. Speed, mobility, and big screens when I need 'em.
If you've got more cash to spend, you may want to look at the new 310, or 510. There are other great SSD makers, but I chose Intel based on the price and general high reviews.
I'm waiting to see what comes out in the next few months, as apparently OCZ and Intel are building drives with the new SandForce chipset. Don't know if the improvements will be significant, though...
I transfer every day large files between my mac and my pc or NAS and the transfer rate would kill me.
For now I use a Lenovo x200, but it's about the same as the MBA 13". So while sure I could "lug" the 17" around, I'd much rather loose some screen space and save my back. But I will say, I am quite jealous when traveling of the screen space the 17" provides.
Work had issued me a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p with a large extended battery pack to make it last closer to 4 hours. It weighed about 7.5 pounds. After just 15 minutes, my shoulder would become sore from lugging my bag around.
I handed them their laptop back and bought a 15" MacBook Pro with my own money. Just that 2 pound difference means that instead of my shoulder being sore after 15 minutes, it takes about an hour for it to become sore.
If I didn't need the memory and the CPU (I do data warehousing work, and need to run VMs almost all the time) I would certainly have gotten a 13" MacBook Air to shave off another 2.5 pounds. Heck, I'd probably get an even smaller bag just to shave off another 1/2 a pound. It's absolutely worth doing.
Needless to say I replaced it with a 27" iMac.
I hope Apple has a 15" Air in the works because that would feel like an upgrade in multiple dimensions - cpu, ram, display, weight, thickness, portability.
It's an interesting change, the only problem I really have is I live in a hot country so the laptop runs hot and kernal_task screws around trying to get the temperature under control.
Are you pretty much always at high CPU utilization, or is Ubuntu's power management of Mac hardware that poor?
I think a large part of the difference on my machine is that you are forced to use the 9600GT for video as opposed to the more efficient 9600M that is available in OS X.
[1]: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...
Here is the high level Puppet code to configure everything to my liking: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/379663/
XKBMODEL="apple"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="mac"
XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_switch,compose:rwin,altwin:swap_lalt_lwin"
I also hate the display adapters Apple forces us to buy and carry around. I give a lot of presentations, and this is another piece of equipment to accidentally leave home. Why not just go VGA or HDMI?
That wouldn't really go together :)
Luckily I realized this before my first conference presentation with the new computer ;-)
Not it's not. HDMI is almost the same size as full DisplayPort (and nowhere near as good a format for computers).
An HDMI Type A connector is 13.9mm x 4.45mm, a mini-DP connector is 7.4mm x 4.5mm. The mini-DP connector is half as wide.
> Apple just loves their own connectors, unfortunately.
You are aware mini-DP is now under VESA and has been integrated by a number of laptop manufacturers right? (and again, that DP in general is a much better A/V interface than HDMI for computers)
It is a lot easier to find screens and beamers with HDMI input than mini-DP. Before that changes it is practically "Apple's own connector"
* It's backwards compatible with DVI-I (and HDMI for that matter): you can carry DVI-I or HDMI signals on a DP cable and only need a passive adapter (although that is limited to single-link on both DVI and HDMI, there aren't enough pins in the DP connector to handle dual-link DVI and HDMI via passive adapters)
* It's packet-based and includes arbitrary pure data transfers (ignoring Thunderbolt) so you don't need a separate data cable to have your screen act as a HUB (USB or 5-in-one for instance), HDMI is TDMS and has no data stream (it comes from TV analog cables)
* It includes a Direct Drive Monitor spec (allows for controller-less monitors which are directly driven off of the displayport signals, although this puts limits on the panel's resolution and color depth)
* DP 1.2 includes independent video streams (to daisy-chain multiple monitors without the need for multiple connectors or a hub), though AFAIK no monitor handles daisy-chaining so far.
* DP includes a mini-connector (mini-displayport) with roughly half the footprint of the full-size one, a boon for ultra-portables (it was developed for Apple, and Apple gifted it to VESA) available under the same royalty-free license-free terms as DP itself (mini-DP was folded into the DisplayPort 1.2 spec)
HDMI is a good A/V standard for TVs, but DP is far superior for computers (and it's driven by computer manufacturers). There is probably a future for both (that's VESA's own party line), but I'd much rather find all my computer video output available as DP first and foremost (with HDMI as an option if they want to).
Edit: They have "mini-HDMI" out, which is an entirely different beast than the mini-HDMI adapters included on many Android smartphones. A mini-HDMI port would require similar adapters to connect to anything useful.
A normal "type-A" HDMI port is a sizeable connector, larger than a USB port.
A normal "type-A" HDMI port is a sizeable connector, larger than a USB port.
Or they knew where they were headed with Thunderbolt...
This could turn into an advantage if the next MBA revision adopts Thunderbolt as its display connector — then you'll have incredibly high-speed access to external storage, which would make the MBA much more practical as a single machine.
But the problem with MBA, netbooks, and laptops in general is that they're less productive for some classes of work. Generally due to the display size/resolution. I find that even a 24" dislay is not adequate to really work at full steam. I need at least 2x24" when doing serious dev work. I can work on my laptop in a pinch, but its like writing a long email with T9. Sure, you can do it, but its not the way you like to operate.
As an aside, it's a pretty decent gaming machine as well... We recently started playing Borderlands GOTY edition LAN games at the office and my MBA ran the game much smoother than another a ~1.5 year old 17" Macbook Pro in the office. He had to downgrade the video to get it working nicely, while my MBA hummed along without much of a sweat.
That was the only thing that really surprised me.
Of course, with a sub-2.13Ghz C2D it will definitely struggle on higher bit-rate content, so I wouldn't be surprised at all.
How does it handle 720p contents?
But the most annoying thing currently is that its fans speed up so quickly during work. Because of this i regret buying it and not going for a MBA11 + iMac.
I've decided to go with the ThinkPad X220 instead. Although it's not quite as svelte as the Air, it is designed to be user serviceable. Hell, Lenovo publishes a manual with instructions on how to replace the system board (including details such as the torque each screw should be tightened to). And, although the X220 has a removable battery, its battery life is just as good as (if not better than) that of the Air.
(Oh, and the OS difference does not affect me because I will run Arch Linux either way.)
The fact that my MBP has been the absolute worst laptop I have ever owned didn't do Apple any favors.
When it does go though, I intend to make a choice between a Macbook Air and a Macbook Pro. I already have an iPad 2, but the lightness and mobility of the MBA might make it the better machine for me.
I use a BookArc Air from TwelveSouth[1], LED Cinema[2] display. I find it beats having 2 Macs. I love disconnecting my MBA, taking it to work and opening it up at the exact place I was when I last used it. The BookArc makes it aesthetically pleasing and organized and the MBA handles the Cinema display without effort. I also like syncing my iTunes library with my iPhone on one Mac.
However, I ended up with a tricked-out MBP 15" w/ SSD & Hi-Res screen - the reason is I need the peripherals &etc. for heavy apps like Logic. But let me tell you, if you're going MBP 15" - cough up for an SSD, but also ... get the Hi-Res screen. It's only $100 extra and you will feel as if you have an absurd amount of screen real estate.
I'm also not sure what the problem is with switching to a different workflow on a laptop vs a desktop. I'm fine alt-tabbing between chrome and coda or xcode and ios sim but I'd prefer to not have to. All of my content stays in sync with a combination of git and dropbox so no issues there either.
Dual-core machines are out this year and are already fast enough for non-intensive tasks. Quad-core are expected next year. As a guide, in three years (2014) Tegra (Stark) is expected, which 100 times faster than Tegra 2. Apple's internal cpu could well be faster. Three years is a long time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tegra#Tegra_2_series
A good alternative if you'd like to avoid the Apple flavored kool-aid.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/23/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-shows-...
1. http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Adamo-A13-6349PWH-13-4-Inch-Lapto...
I use an 11.6" MBA for everything I do. At my desk, I hook up a 24" monitor. At a client or a meeting, the 1366x768 resolution is just fine.
(This setup was a lot less than $1799, and I have 6G of RAM, an SSD, and 3TB of slower storage. But I am big on ergonomics, so a laptop doesn't work for me anyway.)
If the MBA could also get a 1080p screen like the sony vaio Z does, it would get rid of the biggest reason I want to get a vaio Z.
Of course, I would recommend trying it out for yourself at an Apple Store before deciding anything. Even if it wasn't glossy you still might not like the screen.
But for full-time programming work, I think it is absolutely fucking batshit insane to use anything less than a modern 12-core Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM and an SSD RAID boot volume (at which point multiple 2560 x something monitors are de rigueur).
That's certainly true for [Obj-]C[++] development, where large compiles still take minutes, even on such hardware--and can take an entire lunch break on the Air.
Obj-C coding is my primary background, so buying the fastest possible machine every year has always made sense in that way; perhaps I have a leftover cognitive bias toward buying the fastest possible machine. But, for the past year or so, I've been working mainly with Ruby and Objective-J, which don't have these burdensome compiles. Yet buying the fastest mainstream hardware still makes tons of sense to me.
Running a few hundred unit tests, one second is way better than eight seconds. Running a bunch of convoluted RSpec integration specs, 34 seconds is way, way better than seven minutes. And although I mainly use simple editors like MacVim and BBEdit, I also really like the psychotron-dynamic-heuristic CodeSense-style introspection-based context-aware autocompletion features of RubyMine--a heavyweight Java-based IDE that eats 800MB of RAM and can barely even launch on a MacBook Air, and certainly isn't usable on it. And of course the modern Pro can run Win7, WinXP, and Linux in VMWare in the background without breaking a sweat (that's why 16GB RAM doesn't really suffice).
Don't get me wrong; I think the recent MacBook Air is awesome. I have one, that I use for... well basically for word processing on airplanes (haha). And whatever else on airplanes.
But for working programmers, I think computers are still not nearly 'powerful enough'--there are still huge gains to be had by getting the fastest machine that it is reasonably possible to buy.
For roughly the price of one decently tricked-out Mac Pro, you can buy ten MacBook Airs. And for roughly the price of ten decently tricked-out Mac Pros, you can hire one additional developer.
That notwithstanding, I still think it makes business sense.
Sometimes, in my dreams, an AI built by an alien race visits my house, from the future in another galaxy, and explains to me the precise opportunity cost of a dozen human developers waiting three or four extra seconds, a hundred times a day for a year... and it's more than the ten grand that an appropriately provisioned Mac Pro costs
P.S. A bootstrapped startup where money is really tight is the obvious exception--the exception that proves the rule!
I mean, absolutely my work could use that kind of power. My compiles routinely take minutes, and I run tests pretty regularly that are measured in hours, not seconds. I spawn off most of those tests to a Linux machine in the basement so it doesn't slow down my main development machine -- but no doubt it would be very nice if those tests ran 3x faster, and compiles were magically fast.
But I don't think it would be nice enough to justify forgoing our retirement savings every year we needed a new computer...
And unit testing... I usually only run tests relevant to what I'm working on, and the full suite only before I push code, so it never takes much time.
But then again, I work on scripting languages.
We don't have the infrastructure to do that, but I did recently spend a week working out of town where I had only my 17" MacBook Pro. I became frustrated on the first day, and switched to coding on my Mac Pro back in Tokyo via remote desktop.
Japan is small and fiber-wired, so there is no lag typing. There's only some flicker when dragging large windows.
It worked well, but I don't think that us grunts working in the trenches of modern consumer software have the special luxuries that you do--yet.
With the advent of cheap on-demand cloud infrastructure, though, I think those types of benefits will start percolating down soon. Huge suites of automated tests are the new bottleneck (compiling is so 2005, etc), but they are so easily parallelized that it can't be long before cool tools start to emerge... write code on your Air, but execute your tests in parallel on AWS, or whatever.
So yeah, I think the need for having fast local hardware will diminish over time... but faster for some than others.
I've been using an 11 inch Air in Japan for the last few weeks and thanks to the full size keyboard, there is nothing you can't do on it when combined with wifi or a tethered iPhone. Have your large desktop machine in the office or at home always on and just remote into it. Remote desktopping into an 8-core i7 over a 3G connection gives you 7 hours of battery life and a very powerful machine to work on.
The Air is almost the perfect "thin client" - even the 2GB/64GB model is more than enough if you have decent connectivity. Use local mail client, browser and Office for light local work and click an icon in the dock to instantly have access to a powerful development machine.
I did have luxuries - most of the time I was the only one using the machines. But as a grad student, I don't think I had access to more resources than someone at a small software firm. However, I did only need to deal with text input and output. I can see having to compile, execute and test locally when dealing with consumer software.
I think it's interesting how apple has claimed the ultra high end user market in addition to it's other markets.
HP Z-series (I like the Z600[1]), or the Lenovo Thinkstations (C20[2] is currently my favorite workstation, as it's tiny but still can have dual Xeons).
[1] - http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/WW-USS...
[2] - http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...
You can configure HP's Z800 workstations with two 6-core Xeons, including some higher-spec CPU models than the ones Apple has available, and up to 192GB of RAM, 6 HD bays, way more graphics options, etc., for a system costing up to several tens of thousands of dollars.
I did one HP Z800 configuration similar to the Mac Pro 12-core, with the same CPU and RAM and slightly better graphics, and it came out over $1000 more expensive than the Mac Pro.
If you do, the prices are a lot more equivalent (ie, MBP+SSD is not cheap).
No matter to say its monopoly of market, even an adapter to projector need its own. I have seen so many times someone using a Mac but forgot bringing that stupid adapter for projector, she/he had to change to PC to do the presentation.
Still don't understand why people like such pricey not comparably useful machine.
For many people the price difference (if it's there) doesn't matter.
Linux is not as user friendly and integrated with the hardware as Macs. There are certain apps that are only available for Mac. Those are some of the reasons.
"The 13-inch MacBook Air delivers longer battery life, better graphics, and a higher-res display for $350 less, and you can get a 256GB SSD inside for $50 less than the Series 9."
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/samsung-series-9.asp...