So with Hell freezing over and all, I'm getting a Mac laptop

[UnknownStuntm...]

Having been pushed into a corner with the flouncy-wouncy BBC not paying enough to Dorna, I've relented. I'm buying a MotoGP.com season video pass and something nice to watch it on, or plug into my telly. (well not really, but I like the look of the hardware and fancied a proper computer for once, rather than a cobbled together pile of crap...)

A Macbook Air, no less. If I could, I'd completely remove OS X and install Ubuntu and use that, but there's a whole load of hardware that doesn't play nice with that, so I'll be probably using a VM with it on for the tasks I can't live without.

So tell me, Mac benders, what do I NEED on the thing?

[wots]

Buy this, today, now.

https://buy.parallels.com/329/purl-feb14thpb?x-source=email_pd9&x-locale=uk&utm_source=email&utm_medium=pd9&utm_campaign=feb14

Parallels is great for VM's and this price is stupid cheap. It's worth it for Clean My Mac as a bonus.
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Currently: Yamaha DT 125 LC2,Repsol Fireblade, and Bumblebee MSX 125

[lihp]

[wots]

[UnknownStuntm...]

[Seb]

Stick with osx and buy an 3rd gen apple tv for airplay mirroring.

A NAS is always a good companion to an MBA if you haven't got one as well.
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[CaNsA]

Am I the only one who read the thread title as....
"I have become a barista"

[J.M.]

[bamt]

Be aware that nowadays the RAM is soldered in place and non-upgradeable; if you think you'll need more in the future you have to pay the Apple premium now.

As for being overpriced, I bought my first mac, a MBP 15", when they did their July 2009 refresh. It gets a serious hammering, but almost five years later everything still works on it and I have no reason to think about replacing it. It still looks good, despite being lugged around the world, thrown in rucksacks and panniers. I even still get several hours of battery life on the original battery (about 4-5 of normal usage, connected to the net but not doing video stuff), which is more than I can say for any PC laptop I've had, from any brand.

In that time, my wife and kids are all on replacement "better value" PC laptops (reasonable kit, business grade HP, Compaq, Sony, higher end Dell rather than bottom end consumer £299 specials), and none of them have felt as solid and nice as the MBP, or performed as robustly. You can buy PCs that are as solidly built, but then you are into Mac pricing for "premium" products anyway. With my usage I'd have been on my second or third PC laptop, spent more money overall and not been as happy with any of them.

It's easy to point at the spec sheet and say that you could pay 1/4 the price for an equivalent set of chips in a box, and maybe Apple do run to higher margins than most of the industry, but sometimes it's worth paying them their margins for something that is screwed together properly, looks good and just works.

I did, however, baulk at paying their memory and HD prices, buying mine with the lowest spec of those and replacing them later - I'm on my third hard drive upgrade. As above, you can no longer do this with the memory.

[CaNsA]

I've had my Acer Aspire 5135 since the dawn of time.
Paid £25 for it, ive chucked in some ram (about £15) and a ssd (under £100) and it's still going strong.

Been dropped, stepped on, kicked, travelled in all weather in a leaky backpack on the bike.

The only problem is has presented is a recent one, the little slide unlocking bit for the lid has fallen off....

[lihp]

I'm not saying they're not good pieces of kit.

I had a 27" iMac, mrs had a 13" MacBook, and now has 13 MBP (not solid state one)

The new MBP is also not upgradable once they leave the store.

Now they run the same hardware as PCs and every other laptop maker, the only thing unique to them is their OS, and since you want to swap the OS and use a VM for Windows, it seems like you just want it for the image/price.

For the cost of a MBA, you can get a much more powerful laptop running Windows that will do everything you want with pretty much the same build quality but far higher spec.

If you wanted you could just install ubuntu on to that, you then say that you want an OS that you can rely on being compatible with anything you use, that OS is Windows.

Even now, there are still compatibility issues with OSX, the newest version of Office for Mac, isn't totally compatible with Office for Windows, so my Mrs has to run her uni work through my Windows machine before submitting it to her supervisors to check for any formatting issues.

The design of them isn't great, there are stupid things that drive you insane on a £800+ laptop, the fact that you can't use 2 USB devices at a time because the ports are too close together for one, tiny drive on the MBA means you will end up carrying around external drives, no DVD drive, so if you use them, then your nice lightweight MBA will need to be carried with an external DVD drive and external HDD, which can't be used at the same time, due to USB spacing. Unless of course you pay a premium for one with a Firewire.

Even Apple software doesn't stay compatible with Apple OS. Mrs upgraded from iPhone 4 to 5s, and also installed the new iOS on her iPad.

She couldn't use the the iPhone 5s on her old Macbook (also, as soon as iTunes let her update the iPad, when it completed that was also locked out of iTunes as it requires the new version) as the 5s required the new iTunes, but the new iTunes wouldn't run on her OSX, but the OSX she needed wasn't available as a CD, and could only be bought through the Apple Store for Mac, which wasn't on her version of OSX.

So to get the new APPLE iTunes, to be able to use her APPLE iPhone and APPLE iPod, on her APPLE OS, she had to buy an outdated OS on CD from Apple (the earliest with Apple Store for Mac), and then buy the the newest OSX.

So to use her expensive apple products, on her apple laptop, with an apple OS, she had to buy 2 further operating systems from Apple.

We plugged phone into my Windows PC, and it updated iTunes, within 20 minutes, it was done, no compatibility issues with iTunes, or with hardware, or with Windows.

So even Windows is more compatible with Apple products than Apple is.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that it will "just work" as you will be disappointed, unless you absolutely want OSX, (which I don't think you do, as you need Windows access, and you also want to change the OS) it is a very expensive machine, that you will still have issues with.

Pay less for the same spec and put on whatever you want, or pay the same price as the MBA, and get a very high spec laptop with the same build quality.
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covent.gardens: lihp is my most favourite member ever

[CaNsA]

Build a decent rig/buy a decent spec laptop and triple boot *Nix/OSX/Win.

/thread.

[J.M.]

[lihp]

[CaNsA]

[lihp]

[lihp]

Another thing to note, is OP wants a MBA, can't justify the price. Uses bollocks reason of wanting to watch MotoGP as a reason to purchase.

If that is a genuine reason, then 1k+ to watch MotoGP
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covent.gardens: lihp is my most favourite member ever

[J.M.]

[lihp]

[CaNsA]

This has turned into the most boring thread this week.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Typing this on a Macbook now, and for some uses it is great. Tend to use it for browsing while watching TV, etc. But refused a Mac at work.

Touchpad is great if you are using it on you lap (my last work Windows laptop had similar functionality on the track pad but it was very clunky and poor in comparison), but still poor compared to a mouse. Magnetic power connector is brilliant, just make sure you have some tweezers to clean the connector out when some small steel fragment gets stuck in there. Keyboard is better than most modern laptops, but that isn't really saying much. Lack of a delete button on the keyboard is really crap (need fn + back space for delete which is horribly clunky if editing several lines of code). Battery life isn't bad but is now suffering badly with age.

OS wise, well, nothing special. A bit different to Windows but not great. Maximise function is crap. Tabbing between applications is crap.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[J.M.]

[Kickstart]

Hi

As an aside, at work a few people have Macs and they had 3 monitors on them, 2 normal and one off a USB monitor connector. Latest OS upgrade has stopped the USB monitor connections from working.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[CaNsA]

[J.M.]