To Air is human

Last month Apple announced the MacBook Air, a sleek, thin beauty of a laptop. Here’s what David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, posted about his experience so far:

I’ve now been using the Air for some time as my only laptop. The Pro still hasn’t left the desktop and I doubt it ever will while I own it. My girlfriend replaced her regular MacBook with an Air as well. The verdict after extended use? L-o-v-i-n-g it. Both of us.

Gruber has a great post today on the appeal of the Air, which serves well to sum up the experience. The machine is plenty fast for everything I do with a computer. It’s plenty fast for emailing, browsing, photos, programming, and more. Probably the only people who wouldn’t find the performance of the Air good enough are the same people lusting after an 8-core Mac Pro.

Gruber’s post is good. When I look at the specs for the Air compared to the normal MacBook (he links to some MacWorld test results), I have to admit that I think to myself, “Why on earth would I buy that? It’s not as fast as the others.” And then I have to remind myself what Gruber goes on to say:

That the Air isn’t as fast as a regular MacBook does not matter because the Air — for most people and most tasks — is clearly fast enough.

After some thought, I’ve distilled my main uses of the computer down to three things: Internet (web), writing, and design. With the first two, which don’t need that much computing power, I could totally get by with an Air. And with enough RAM, maybe even the design part, too. (Then again, if/when I get serious about design, I’ll want to get one of those 8-core Mac Pros with a 30″ Cinema HD display. :P)

Returning to Hansson’s post:

If you do computational intensive work, then you’ll want all the firepower you can get. Most people are not like that, though. I think we’ve reached the point where the computational firepower for laptops is simply Good Enough in the Innovator’s Dilemma sense of the term. Meaning that the puck is going to go somewhere else. That we’ll start caring about other things now.

This is a pivotal point in the history of computing. Or at least in the history of laptops. Now that “computational firepower” is a given, innovation can really start to soar — as we’re seeing with the Air.

It’s exciting. :)

I’m sooo in love with the Air. (Multi-touch on the trackpad needs to be standard across their laptop line) I went down to the Apple Store earlier this week to touch it, and the sales person and I came up with an agreement to go in halves for the thing and share it. Oh, it’s amazing.

Gruber (and anytime I can reference Daring Fireball, I will) said that he reconsidered it as a secondary machine. So did I. This is going to be the first computer I’ll own personally. After giving up computer gaming for the most part, there’s nothing I do on the computer I couldn’t do on the Air.

Of course, if it’s your only computer, don’t forget to add in the price of the external CD drive.

I still haven’t seen the Air in person yet — I went up to the computer area of BYU Bookstore to see it (and see if they had any Time Capsules in), but it wasn’t there. I’ll have to go in again later. Agreed on the external CD drive. (For me, I’ve got a Mac Mini already, so I’m set with Remote Drive. :))