shade

I have the 2011 11" MBA (i5, 4GB, 128GB) and also the base 2011 15" MBP (i7, 4GB, 500GB). I can't justify keeping both, but I am really torn on which one I want to keep.

On the one hand, I love the portability and speed (due to the SSD) of the Air, and it feels almost like a desktop when it's plugged into the 20" monitor on my desk and connected to a USB keyboard and Magic Trackpad.

On the other hand, I really like the MBP's beefier CPU, discrete GPU, and much larger HDD; the Air's 128GB HDD really feels limiting to me (since photography is one of my hobbies). The HDD does make it feel a bit slower than the Air in some ways, though.

I'm looking to get rid of my desktop Windows PC since I don't use it very much anymore, so that leaves me with two options as I see them: either sell the MBP, keep the Air, and get a Mini for the extra space/network storage, or sell the MBA, consolidate everything into the MBP, and maybe upgrade it with a SSD and kit from OWC to replace the SuperDrive with the spare HDD.

I'm really not sure what the best way to go is, since I like both systems a lot for different purposes.

I have a pair of Streetcars Milan (http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/mens_shoes/casual/laceup/PRD...) that I quite like -- they're comfortable, they look good, and just roomy enough that I can put my Superfeet insoles in them without cutting off circulation to my feet. The only complaint I have about them is that the tread on them is wearing down a little faster than I would've expected.

Felt it from my 5th floor apartment in Cleveland. My coworkers in Akron also felt it from our 6th and 7th floor offices there.

Not particularly strong here, just had me wondering "why is my desk wobbling?"

I was a Mac user in the late 90s, been a Mac user again since 2007 or so, although as an "adder," not a straight up switcher.

Speaking for myself, I have had misgivings off and on but ignored/glossed over them earlier this year to buy a new 15" MBP. Unfortunately, the last few months (and especially after installing Lion) those misgivings have been growing stronger, and I'm definitely uncomfortable with what seems to be their increasing indifference to pro users. I don't object to making things easier by hiding features, but I do object to doing so by removing features entirely -- for example, the way Expose and Spaces were gimped in favor of Mission Control in Lion. It's easier for the average user, but it's really messed with the way I manage windows and applications, and I quite honestly Do Not Like It. Anecdotally, from talking to a few friends who are also power user types, they hate it as well.

At any rate, I've been thinking more and more lately about switching back to an all-Windows environment. My day job is web development on the .NET platform, and I generally love C# and ASP.NET MVC -- they are just a fantastic environment to work in. Since I already have all the tools, there'd be no real burden to switching back to all-Windows. Lately, I've really been thinking about using my MSDN sub to bootcamp the MBP, or maybe just selling off the MBP entirely for a T420 or Samsung Series 9. I do really like the MBP's hardware and especially the trackpad, but now that we're finally seeing Clickpad-equipped laptops coming out that's much less of an issue for me.

Mind you, this is all just my opinion. Others may disagree, and I'm sure they will. :)

I've actually discovered that only prompting for zip code and not city/state can be somewhat confusing for users.

We have a system that only requires 3 pieces of info to normalize your address, including city/state: Your street address, your apartment/unit/suite number if applicable, and your zip code. That gets submitted into a third party system that, among other things, normalizes the address to the USPS standard.

(For the record, this is for an application that only deals with US customers, so internationalized addresses aren't an issue here.)

We've typically only prompted on our localization pages for those three pieces of data, and it's surprisingly confusing to customers. It's not too unusual when we review the error logs to discover that people attempted to enter "19000 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH" into the street address field and "44112" into the zip code field. Unfortunately, the third party system we use doesn't like this, and will generally not return useful results in that case.

It's getting to the point I'm considering either adding city/state fields to the form or just a message saying "city/state not required." I'm actually not sure which is the better approach.

You know, my dad was a very skilled woodworker and home handyman, but he passed away before he had a chance to really start teaching me very much of it.

I've always kind of wanted to get into woodworking (although it's hard right now since I have an apartment, not a house), but I'm not sure how to best start. Do you know of any good resources you could recommend for an adult who wants to get into that kind of thing?

Thanks! :)

Just wanted to take a minute to thank you for that app. It's been tremendously useful for me for a year or so now.

Currently I have a 14" Sony and a 13" unibody MacBook. Both are approaching 3 years old, so I've been trying to decide what to do about replacing them.

At this point, it's looking like the answer is going to be selling off the MacBook and (eventually) the Sony and consolidating into a single PC laptop. I have a reasonably powerful desktop for my needs (home-built Core i5 running Win7) and a nice Dell i7 laptop for work stuff, courtesy of work, so I'm mostly looking for a small and light enough personal laptop. I'm thinking I may just go small and cheap and leave the heavy lifting to my desktop PC, so I'm looking at some of the new AMD 'Zacate' E-350 systems that Engadget likes to refer to as "notbooks" -- probably the HP DM1, since it has one of the new clickpads on it.

I considered getting a MacBook Air, but decided not to. Even though they're very nice machines I'd really rather not pay the price premium, and I'm honestly not very enthusiastic about some of the things Apple is apparently doing with Lion. For the OS X-specific stuff I do -- mostly Ruby and Python in MacVim -- I can do it just as well in Linux and on the same platform I'd be deploying it on -- plus I can set it up to dual boot Windows and drop back into that if I want or need to.

Sounds like my last job. They had gotten burned a few times by waterfall projects failing, so their reaction was to try to implement waterfall even more rigorously.

You had to design and document the entire project up front and then break it out into individual tasks and estimate them. Two points that I thought were particularly horrible:

Your estimates immediately became hard deadlines. If you guessed 3 months ago that gnarfling the garthok would take you 8 hours and you were wrong, it went against you on your metrics. Even better, if you finished the job in less time than you estimated, they'd complain and tell you that you missed low and needed to do a more precise job of estimation next time.

I suggested to my boss once that if they insisted on having all this documentation written (seriously, we were supposed to write up docs on what the function names were going to be, what the arguments were, and what they'd do -- before we were allowed to write any code) then we should probably build some time into the schedule to make sure we could update them based on what we'd learned during the actual process of writing the code. He told me "I understand what you're saying, but that's not possible. We need all of the documentation done up front so that if we're behind schedule, we can add more people to the project and they can read that documentation to get up to speed quickly."

I looked at him for a few seconds, stunned speechless, then basically said "In my experience, that never works." A few weeks later, I was laid off, I suspect because I wasn't toeing the line and buying into the "new" Lean waterfall process. Best thing that ever happened to me, in the end.

> I'm never comfortable with my code

I've been doing this professionally for around 12 years (and for the record, no CS degree -- my degree was technical communication with a CS emphasis) and to be honest, I'm still not very comfortable with a lot of my code either.

I generally think that if you don't look at code you wrote six months ago and think "Dear god, what is this crap?" it's a sign you're not learning enough as a programmer, so I wouldn't say that being uncomfortable with your code is a bad thing by any means. The key thing in my mind is if you're always looking to improve.

The problem I have with that argument, though, is that I already gave Apple $630 for my iPad, specifically because I can read Kindle books on it. I'd really like to be able to continue reading my Kindle books on it, and I really don't give a damn if Apple thinks they're somehow entitled to a cut of Amazon's sales for that.

Yes, Apple does bear the cost of maintaining the app store, but my sympathy for them on that point is rather limited considering that they're the ones who insist everything must go through the app store.

I can see both sides of the argument, but I still think Apple is being unreasonable. Really, I think this is the same as network neutrality -- just because Apple provides a platform doesn't mean they're entitled to a cut of every sale on it any more than it means Time Warner is entitled to a cut of Apple's sales every time I rent a movie through the iTunes store. Apple already got my money off the hardware (not to mention the other apps I've bought) and Time Warner's already getting my monthly subscription fees.

Now, if you want to argue that 30% is reasonable if Apple is doing the content hosting and other stuff, sure. 30% just to process a convenient payment? No fucking way.

It seems to me that the simple way is pretty much what the grandparent described. Classify API/mobile access as a value-add and charge extra for it.

For a web-based SaaS, I could see them doing something like "Web-only access including mobile web, $10/mo" and "Web + native mobile/API access: $15/mo" -- then only offer the latter option in-app.

I suppose you could try to classify Android and iOS API access differently, but I suspect that might be a little over the line in terms of trying to slip it through the app store review process.

I do still wonder how third party apps to hit a subscription API are going to work, though. I suppose a lot of those will be for-pay so Apple gets their vig from that anyway, but it's always possible someone will decide to release a free one...

Wow, I'm glad you posted this question -- there's more of us deaf guys here than I'd realized.

I am also profoundly deaf, as a result of bacterial meningitis shortly before my fifth birthday.

That said, I have less of an entrepreneurial bent than you do, in that I work in a consulting/professional services role for a small company rather than starting my own. I'd like to start my own someday but I have some of the same concerns that you do, and I'm not sure how to address them either. :)

Groups are very difficult for me. This is partly because they tend to break down into a bunch of conversations that are really hard for me to follow, so I tend to be afraid to jump in and really say anything since I worry it will be off-topic -- so I generally don't speak much in groups unless someone asks me a specific question. Doesn't help that I tend to be really introverted in general, too.

As far as phones go, when I interviewed with my current company they were cool about doing the initial "phone" screen via IM, so that hasn't been a problem. We use IM heavily for internal communications anyway so it's not a big deal for me, and most of our external clients use it as well. We've used Campfire in the past in lieu of teleconferences, or at worst my project manager/account exec will be on the conference and relay any critical information I need to be aware of.

Anyway, if any of the deaf folks here would like someone to shoot the breeze with or whatever, feel free to drop me a line (email's in my profile, please mention HN in the subject line) -- I'd like to have more people in my circle of acquaintances who are in a similar situation as me and understand some of the unique issues (like teleconferences) that we have to deal with.

Man, I was at CodeMash, but missed that keynote since I had to run an errand over lunch (kinda needed new hearing aid batteries). I'm kinda bummed that I missed it given the volume of discussion that it generated.

Did you happen to hit Joe Nuxoll's user experience session on Friday? That was probably the high point of the conference for me -- tons of useful info.

I've been thinking of dropping my AT&T iPhone 4 for a Droid Bionic on Verizon later this year. Given that, I'm really hoping they'll be charging extra for the wifi hotspot feature like they do with Android, or if they're not, making it free for Android users as well.

(edit: To be clear, the liveblogs I've glanced at haven't specifically said if it will be free or not, and Verizon apparently won't talk about plan pricing...)

This is exactly what I'm dealing with, too.

I keep wanting to learn Ruby/Rails (and I have been working my way through the Rails Tutorial book online, albeit with a break the last week or so for travel and stuff). At the same time, I keep thinking "You know, I have so much domain experience with C# and ASP.NET, so would it be a better use of my time to focus on learning ASP.NET MVC and improving my architectural skills?"

I'm still working through that, but in the mean time, I'm pushing myself to at least go through the Rails tutorial (and probably an all-day Rails session at the CodeMash precompiler day) on the grounds that it's probably a good thing for me to break out of my narrow MS tech focus and gain exposure to other ways of doing things.

I think the only real constant in this field is that if you're not continually learning something, you're falling behind.

In the screenshot, the checkbox is actually checked off. Was that the default setting? If so, I could see that being off-putting to users -- whenever I see that, I assume they're trying to trick me into opting in for something.

I am also an eHarmony success story. Met my girlfriend there, we'll have been together for 8 months next week, already planning on moving in together next summer (we probably would have already if we hadn't both renewed leases right around the time we met).

With online dating in general, I think what you get out of it really comes down to what your attitude going in is. I saw sites like eHarmony and OKCupid as primarily ways to be introduced to more people. If I struck up a conversation with anyone, I'd ask to meet them fairly quickly, and would approach those dates with a pretty laid-back, no-obligation, "let's meet this person and see how we get along" attitude. Going in relaxed like that really takes a lot of the pressure off and makes it easier to just get to know someone.

I use this on all of my machines (Win/Mac) and it's fantastic. Great little app.

I wish the iPad supported something similar.

As long as it's not the only way to get software on your Mac -- and I don't really see Apple doing that with their "truck" line of devices since there's probably always going to be obscure stuff that the publishers aren't going to want in the app store.

For that matter, I can't really see Adobe (for example) wanting to give 30% of the cost of Photoshop to Apple.

On the other hand, I think this is potentially fantastic for smaller developers -- it will make it easier for people to find their apps, and as with the iPad/iPhone, that 30% cut to let Apple manage all the billing issues for you might be well worth it.

Agreed -- I'm the same way.

I can't speak for all the deaf people out there, but personally, I find it uncomfortable to leave my hearing aid in all day, which means I'll often remove it if I'm just working at my desk, and won't hear someone come up behind me.

My last job had an environment where everyone had their backs to the entrance of their cube and I would constantly be startled by people walking up behind me without me hearing or seeing that they were there. It's very unpleasant and actually started making me a little neurotic. It didn't help that the floor in that office was kind of shaky, so you'd also feel it whenever someone walked by.

My current job still has cubes, but the desks aren't attached to the cube walls (we mostly use IKEA Galants) and pretty much everyone has their cube set up so they face out. It's a much more pleasant environment to work in, and since we work in a converted factory it means I look up to a fantastic view of downtown Akron through a bank of windows. I'm much less neurotic now (at least about this... ;)) and all the natural light has actually done a lot to help my sleeping patterns, too.

Yes.

I'd also add that in many cases, riding on the sidewalk is illegal. It doesn't bother me when I see little kids doing it, but if you're a grownup you should be riding on the street, with traffic, in accordance with traffic law.

When I still lived in a small rural "micropolitan" area before moving to Akron a few years back, I was a road rider and belonged to a local bike club. There is no way they would have tolerated members riding on the sidewalk, and they stressed heavily that bikes are legally regarded as vehicles and have to obey the same rules.

I've since given it up, since I live in a high traffic suburb of Akron and being deaf, can't hear oncoming traffic. This wasn't a big deal on rural back roads, but now that there's a lot more traffic around me, it makes me nervous.

I feel your pain.

I've tried more than once to escape the iPhone for the less-locked-down Android, and every time I've gone crawling back. I tried the original Droid and had a lot of stability problems (in retrospect, probably a bad hardware sample), and I just spent a week and a half with the Droid Incredible (with the Froyo update), including the long Labor Day weekend... at the conclusion of which I went down to AT&T last night and had my iPhone 3GS reactivated, then returned the Incredible to Verizon this morning.

I could write a long treatise on the pros and cons of both platforms, but what it comes down to is that Android still has too many rough edges not to annoy me, and I'd rather eat the restocking fee and activation charges than spend most of the next two years carrying a phone that annoys me every time I use it. Living in Apple's walled city can be expensive, annoying, and sometimes feels like living in Duloc -- but the trains run on time and the mail generally gets delivered properly. It's not always perfect in reality and Apple sometimes does stupid things with UI (hello, vertical buttons in iTunes 10), but it's usually a very smooth experience and I can't deny Apple does a better job of sweating the small stuff than their competitors. I think that's part of why they have so many rabidly loyal customers. Yes, they're very good at marketing, but in my experience their products do a good job of backing up the marketing ("magical" adjectives on the iPad excepted, perhaps).

I do miss the Droid Incredible's high-res screen, which is why I'll probably buy an iPhone 4 soon. I don't even care that it's on AT&T -- a week and a half of running around Akron and Cleveland running into Verizon dead zones where my iPhone always worked has led me to the conclusion that AT&T isn't all that bad.

At home, I have a Core i5 desktop with 4GB of RAM and dual 22" monitors running Windows 7, and also a 13" unibody MacBook which I bought back in October 2008 -- on the day they were released, actually.

In the past I used the desktop for quite a bit of gaming as well as remoting in to my work PC with Remote Desktop. These days I find I don't really game very much anymore, and I can connect to my work VPN/RDP through the Mac anyway if I need to work from home. Consequently, I'm on the MacBook almost 100% of the time. I'm actually considering getting a Mac Mini, moving the big HDDs out of the desktop into external enclosures attached to that, then getting rid of the Windows box and the older 22" display. I suppose I could also just get a NAS, but I like knowing I have a spare machine around in case my MacBook dies.

Work is a Q6600 with 3GB of RAM running Vista Business, since I'm currently working with mostly with .NET.

My most interesting goal right now is to try to make the time to start moving off of Microsoft development technology. I like C#, but ASP.NET annoys me and the whole platform feels like a massive dead end unless I want to work on boring corporate stuff.

My primary roadblock there is trying to decide what tech I want to pick up. Ruby and Rails are appealing, Python looks interesting, and I wonder if I shouldn't be looking at some new stuff like Clojure or node.js as well. I also wonder if I shouldn't get into some of the evented frameworks like Tornado or EventMachine. This has always been my problem -- I'm interested in too many aspects of technology and there's just no time to pursue them all.

My secondary roadblock, once I decide on a tech, is getting some good documentation and perhaps some mentoring on it. Some of those frameworks seem to be pretty lacking in good documentation and examples.

There shouldn't be. I believe most cell companies give you a 30 day window to change your mind and cancel service.

Verizon does, and I ended up taking advantage of that when I returned the Droid and switched back to the iPhone after 2 weeks. Unfortunately, because Verizon's billing department is terrible, they charged me the ETF even though they shouldn't have and I had to go talk to a CSR to get it removed.

Interestingly enough, I tried melatonin a few months ago when I was having problems with insomnia. After 2 or 3 nights with it, my sleep cycle corrected itself and I haven't taken it since. I don't know that I'd want to keep taking it every night, but as a temporary measure to your sleep cycle back on track it's great.

I find having a significant other helps a lot as well; I'm more likely to go to bed on time because I don't want to disturb them by turning in late.

I'm concerned about that as well.

On the one hand, I can understand that you don't want to grind kids down and completely humiliate them. On the other hand, I don't see how they can learn to handle adversity if we constantly shelter them from anything that might hurt their feelings. Sure, it sucks to lose (the soccer and basketball teams I played on were terrible) but sometimes life works out that way, unfortunately.

Granted, I'm talking out of my rear end here since I don't have kids, but several of my friends do and most of them agree that kids aren't that fragile.

The iPad specifically, or slate devices in general?

The former I'm not sure about, the latter, quite possibly. My thinking is that if I were running the IT department in a manufacturing firm looking for ways to bring these devices into my factories, I'd be giving preference to touch-oriented web apps rather than iDevice applications specifically. You retain a bunch of advantages of web apps -- easier and simpler deployments, generally faster development, more choice of languages -- and once the Android tablets start to hit, you avoid locking yourself into a single supplier.

I had my iPad on the coffee table in front of my favorite couch, and still found that I pulled out my laptop most of the time.

I ended up taking it back tonight after having it for less than a week -- it's a nice device, but it's just not for me. I enjoy surfing the web a lot more on my laptop and don't really play many games, so all I really used it for was reading... I can't justify the cost of the iPad just for reading when I can do that just as easily on my phone (all my books are from Project Gutenberg, the Baen Free Library, or Kindle).

Like I said, it's a nice device and I'm sure a lot of people will have a good niche for it, but I'll stick to my phone, my MacBook, and my Vaio running Win7. For me, personally, there's just no room for an in-between device.