Tag: MacBook Air

Apple’s MacBook Air is a beautiful piece of engineering. It is a delight to use. I still love it, although my next computer could be the 2015 MacBook.

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Apple OS X Dock showing Word, Parallels and Windows Word pm

Microsoft says a new Mac version of Word is coming later this year. Hopefully, it will be more like  Windows Word 2013 than OS X Word: 2011.

When I switched to a MacBook last year, the thing I missed most was writing longer features in the Windows version of Microsoft Word. It does a great job of staying out-of-the-way and hiding complexity.

The Mac Word 2011 version has a few annoyances. I still struggle with them. Not least the way the most naked screen option resets the moment you switch focus to a different window.

Microsoft Word, Bootcamp

Recently I ran Word 2013 on my Mac in a Windows 8 partition using Bootcamp.

There are minor keyboard weirdnesses, but otherwise, it works well. The problem is that switching between OS X, which is more productive for other tasks and Windows requires a reboot. That’s not an efficient way of working. I don’t want to do that too often.

This week I’m running the Parallels Desktop 9 trial.

Parallels Desktop sets up Windows 8 in a virtual machine. You can configure Parallels to make Windows invisible and integrate Windows apps, like Word, with OS X. In effect this means I can run Word 2013 as if it were an OS X app.

OS X, Parallels Desktop 9

Parallels works fine, up to a point. I’ve tested a handful of Windows-only apps and the integration is first class. There are a handful of minor keyboard niggles — oddly not the same as those when running Windows Word in Bootcamp.

Perhaps the oddest behaviour is how the screen scrolling sometimes goes one way and sometimes goes another. A downstroke on the touchpad moves down screen while at other times that downstroke scrolls the screen up. It’s possible that’s a confusion between OS X and Windows over which OS is running the show.

I’m also not entirely comfortable that my Command-S keystrokes are saving the document — there’s nothing visible or audible to show anything has happened.

Parallels Desktop 9 good software but pricey

Parallels is expensive. A licence costs US$80, that’s around NZ$100. I’m told each new version requires a new licence, Parallels doesn’t sell updates. That seems expensive by 2014 software standards. I paid NZ$40 for Windows 8 and nothing to upgrade OS X from 10.8 to 10.9.

To be fair, Parallels is a sweet piece of software. It does a difficult job with panache. I’m impressed with how smoothly it works. You could forget it was there if it were not for the nagware message that continually pops up telling me to pay for a full licence.

However, I can’t reasonably justify spending 100 on that having a slightly nicer Word experience, especially when my Office 365 licence means I’ve already paid for a Word upgrade that could be just weeks away. So for now I buy that licence.

Update: I forgot to mention that I’ve round-tripping between Windows Word, iPad Word and Mac Word for a week or so and have yet to see a hiccup.

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Battery Diag MacBook Air

Ironically, because the Apple MacBook Air has a longer battery life than earlier laptops, there’s more need to watch how much juice is still in the tank.

In the old days you just knew you didn’t have much time left. With ten hours or so of computing from a single charge, it’s easier to lose track.

Battery Diag from the Mac App Store is a the best tool I’ve seen for monitoring the battery. It’s free and pretty, with a design that echoes the iOS 7 design found on iPads and iPhones.

The app runs in the menu bar, so you can get at it quickly, it sips resources and stays out-of-the-way until needed.

Click on the menu bar icon to get a report on the amount of power left both as a percentage and as a time estimate. There’s also an indicator showing the state of battery health and number of charge cycles. Further information, including battery temperature and power usage is hidden behind an I icon.

The clever bit is that if you’re running out of juice, you can tinker with your open apps and usage to trim the power drain and extend the time remaining.

Recommended.

Battery Diag 

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Snugg MacBook Air Leather caseThere’s nothing complicated about Snugg’s MacBook Air 13-inch case but that’s a good thing. It’s a closely fitting leather envelope protecting the computer from knocks, scratches and spills.

Although the case is minimal adding little in the way of bulk or weight to the MacBook Air, it is not quite featureless.

Three magnets sit in the flap making it easier to close — and stay closed. A soft material called nubuck covers the inside the case making it easy to slip the computer in and out.

There’s a cardholder that’s big enough to carry large-sized paper business cards, but not big enough for a credit card. A pocket on th the back is large enough to hold a few sheets of A4 paper, maybe a brochure or, when I’m at a press conference, a media kit.

Snug 13-inch MacBook Air case design

When viewed from the front, there’s a cut out on the left-hand size that allows you to charge the computer without removing it from the sleeve. I thought this was unnecessary until I used the feature one night in a hotel room.

The review case is made of business-like black leather. That suits me fine. Apart from anything else it is anonymous. I can leave my MacBook in the case on the back seat of my car and it looks more like it holds boring documents than a stealable computer.

If you find black too corporate, there’s a choice of nine colours in total including two shades of pink.

If there is an omission, it’s that Snugg’s case doesn’t leave enough room to carry a power supply. My MacBook Air runs for better than eight hours on a single charge. This means the case works best for short trips. It’s perfect for running around town or a day return flight from, say, Auckland to Wellington or Christchurch.

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Apple MacBook Air 2013

Apple had my money at thin, light, beautifully designed and with batteries that run all day. After two months I’m still happy with the 2013 13-inch MacBook Air. That buyer’s remorse moment never happened, here’s why:

  • Thin and light are essential for my work. I’m a journalist so I often have to run around town finding somewhere, usually in a café, to quickly write stories between appointments.The MacBook Air is no more trouble to carry than a tablet, but the built-in keyboard and extra computing grunt make filing news items and working the WordPress back-end much easier.
  • All day battery means I never have to hunt for a power socket while on the move. It sips electricity and instant on and off stretches things further. Apple says the batteries last for 12 hours. I find I get around 10.5 hours, but then I have Wi-Fi permanently on which might take the edge off things a little.
  • Great keyboard and trackpad when I first wrote about the MacBook Air I worried there might be a difficult transition to its keyboard and trackpad. A few days after I wrote those comments I was fully on top of the user interface. My only concern is that my touch typing misses occasionally and I hit either Caps Lock or the Off button. Both happen less now.
  • OS X switching back to an Apple operating system after more than a decade of using Windows was less difficult than I expected. There are odd quirks which catch me out and one or two minor annoyances – especially when moving files between folders – but it has worked well.
  • Software The 2011 Mac version of Microsoft Office is a disappointment after the 2013 Windows version. I find myself using it less and less preferring other tools. Unless Microsoft fixes this, I won’t renew my Office 365 subscription when it lapses early next year.
  • OS X standard apps like Mail, Calendar and Contacts work more smoothly and feel better integrated than Windows software. I particularly like being able to click on times in an email and automatically saving them to the Calendar. And Facetime is as brilliant on OS X as it is on my iPad.
  • Great alternative apps I’ve found some great alternative apps through the Mac app store. One difference with OS X is that you often pay for small utility programs that would often be freeware in the Windows world. I’m OK with that, generally paid-for software has been through quality control or testing.
  • Safari is a perfectly fine browser, it’s now my standard. It’s weakness – not being able to run Flash – is also a strength. I find I’m increasingly irritated by sites that insist on using Flash. Having to move back to Chrome when avoiding Flash isn’t an option is tiresome.
  • Goodbye Windows 8. One of the first things I did after opening the MacBook Air box was set it to dual-boot into Windows 8. The next thing I did was check that was working. I haven’t switched back to Windows once since then, despite having some great Windows-only apps that I thought I couldn’t live without. Apart from my Scrooge-like angst over the money spent on unused apps, I have no regrets. None whatsoever.
  • Minor gripes: It sometimes takes a moment or two for the MacBook to recover fully from sleep, which means my first attempt at entering the password usually fails. A small thing, but annoying. I’ve had real trouble connecting to a Seagate NAS unit, which could be an Apple thing or could be a Seagate thing. That’s all the bad stuff.
  • Price. It’s not cheap at the thick end of $2000 for the unit with 256GB of storage. Mind you I got 10 percent off at the now-closed Britomart YooBee store. At a shade over $1700 I’d say it’s worth the money.

My goal was to get a portable computer with enough power for my work, lots of battery life and the minimum of trouble. As you can see, overall I’m happy with the MacBook Air. I can definitely recommend it. Sure there are nice Ultrabooks out there, but this suits me fine.

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Apple MacBook Air

It’s almost 30 years since I first owned a Mac.

I bought one of the first 128K Macs in London in the winter of 1984. It cost more than a new car. I know because we bought a Citron 2CV at the same time.

Macs were my first choice until we decided to spend less money on computers and pay school fees for our children instead. Since then I mainly worked with Windows PCs.

On Friday I picked up a 13 inch MacBook Air from the YooBee store in Britomart.

Apple’s MacBook Air is a beautiful piece of engineering. And it is a delight to use.

Physically it is spot on, although I still find the keyboard and trackpad unfamiliar. There are moments when I’m not certain about the Mac way of doing things: simple things like moving the cursor to the end of a line of text. No doubt command-right arrow will become natural with time. And I guess I learn to stop hitting the Caps Lock key.

One reason I chose the new MacBook Air: battery life.

Apple says you get 12 hours from a single charge. While I suspect you couldn’t watch video non-stop for 12 hours, the claim is not ridiculous. I charged the MacBook on Friday after I got home, did a ton of work over the weekend and didn’t need to plug it in again until Monday lunch time.

At a guess I’d say that was close 16 hours of work in total. Or slightly better than I get from my iPad.

The key is the new Haswell processor. Apple slowed the processor down to help it maximise battery life. The chip is smart at closing down when the computer is not in use.

In practice this liberates you from power worries. If I take this computer out to work, I won’t need to carry a power cable. There’s no need to schedule things around places with power outlets.