Three Weeks With The MacBook Air 13"

It's been 3 weeks since I've had my MacBook Air and I have to keep raving about it. This is the future of notebook and portable computing. There is a massive difference in portability between a 6 lb. traditional notebook and a 2 or 3 lb. one that is only 1/3 of an inch thick and based on an instant on SSD flash drive. As a portable device, I find myself carrying my sub 3 lb. Air to more places than I would my 5 lb. MacBook. My skeptic friends will note that they can get 3X to processing power for a third of the price, but at twice the weight and thickness. I would respond that the most powerful computer in the world is useless if you don't have it with you. It's guaranteed that you will have the 11", 2 lb. MacBook Air with you far more often than a 5 or 6 lb. notebook. The 15 second boot time and instant on from sleep also make it far more useful in a mobile environment. The Air isn't underpowered for common tasks like Atom based net books running Windows. For the tasks that the Air can not well, you would be better served by the desktop iMac with 2X-3X processing power for 2/3 of the price. I would argue that the tasks you can not do on the Air, the MacBook Pro won't be great either.

I know the temptation. People will compare the specs and say you can buy brand X and get two or three times the spec sheet as a MacBook Air. I did this myself. But what isn't on the spec sheet is the engineering, design, and customer service that goes into Apple products. None of Apple's products are the cheap plastic that is so pervasive in consumer electronics today. Most products today look cheap, feel cheap, and are cheaply made. But all of Apple's major products are made of aluminum and glass with the bottom of the line plastic MacBook being the only exception. The finish is impeccable. It feels good in your hand, the stiffness and durability of metal over plastic gives you confidence, and it's great to look at aesthetically. The MacBook Air is no exception, constructed of solid, stiff, aluminum unibody frame, yet weighs less than 3 pounds. It makes an immediate impression to just about everyone I hand this to.

If I was not going on this multi month trip to Australia/New Zealand, I would have gotten the 11" as a companion to my 24" iMac. It is even smaller, lighter, cheaper, than the 13", but still has a full size keyboard. It can do just about everything you would want to do while on the move.

I would get the $999 11" over an iPad. The iPad has several serious limitations, especially with Flash that is so pervasive on the web. Also, once you add in an external keyboard, the iPad's size and weight advantage disappear. The iPad experience is different with the large touch screen, but for sheer utility an 11" MacBook Air is far more useful at virtually the same size and weight if the keyboard is taken into consideration.

f8 and Be There...

In photography, there is a saying "f/8 and be there". It's a saying that almost every experienced photographer has heard. For those unfamiliar with photography, f/8 is usually the sharpest aperture of most lenses. The saying means most of the work of getting a great photo is simply being at the right place, at the right time. How good your camera or photographic skills are important, but none of it matters if you are not there.

This fact applies in all aspects of life, not just photography. I've been traveling a lot over the past 10 years, and especially internationally over the past 2 years. One thing I've realized is that much of our lives are determined for us for us just by the fact of where we live. The environment and location we live in affects how we think, live, the jobs we do, our perspectives on life, the opportunities we have, and the relationships we have.

Being able to travel and relocate to somewhere else in the world is one of the most liberating, enlightening, and empowering things you can do for yourself. This has been true since the beginning of time and why humans populate the entire world. Traveling through Europe, Australia, the Caribbean, Taiwan, and Mexico over the past few years, I could see how differently people lived just because of where they were. The way people respond to you and the opportunities you have are vastly different from country to country, place to place, even from within the United States. Traveling in Europe, I could see the large differences in the standard of living between people living in say, Switzerland and Scandinavia versus East and Southeastern Europe. The differences are much greater in the lower and middle classes than in the upper classes. Even in a poor country like Ukraine, it was more common to see nicer cars than you would find in Germany, even though that's where all these nice cars were made! The joke was that all of those people driving the nice cars in Eastern Europe, were Russian mafia.

It is quite unfortunate that the people that would benefit most by moving also tend to be the ones least able to. Hard work and talent are important, but the single most effective thing someone can do for themselves either economically or socially is to move to a place where conditions are more favorable for them. Traveling from rich countries to poor ones and back could not make this any more clear.

It's a simple idea, but not simple to do. Moving to a new place means first of all, being aware of where to go. That takes time to research, not to be ignorant, and realizing that sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side.

It means having the financial resources to relocate yourself and the skills and knowledge to support yourself when you get there. But I find that the most important thing one must have is courage and faith. Courage is the willingness to take and the ability to absorb risk intelligently. Faith is the belief in yourself. The majority of people don't have courage and faith to even move to a different state. There are a myriad of reasons and excuses. But look at the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico, marching 3 days across the Arizona desert without enough food and water and willing to risk death just for the CHANCE of a better life. I certainly don't advocate risking life and limb to move, but use this to illustrate that where you are is quite possibility the single most important factor within your control as to the kind of life you will lead and the opportunities available to you.