How Macbook Air Became My Office

Spring is in the Air. Or rather there is a spring in the step of one of my very best friends since he got his new Macbook Air last December. But I’ll let him tell you all about it. If you are a creative, and especially if you are on the go more than you are behind a desk, this might be the push you needed to go get your own Air.

I am all about multitasking. I love throwing tasks in the air and picking them before they fall back to the ground. When I got my first computer for work, back in 2002, I got myself two 22-inch Compaq CRT monitors. Damn it, those things were heavy. Still, they served me well, and they have officially ended their work life just a few months ago, after a full 10 years of loyal service.

Apart from being a monitor snob, I always did my best to buy state of the art PCs. There is a very simple logic behind that: It is the device that puts food on my table, and a device that I spend the most time with, and however much it costs, it will eventually pay for itself.

Then, a few years later, I decided to set up an office and work from there. By that time, TFT displays were dirt-cheap. Even though I was completely used to high performance and was able to deliver using my two Compaqs, it made no sense going back. So I decided to go with three 22-inch TFT Asus flat panel monitors.

Right about the same time, I got myself my first laptop that I actually carried around with me. I had a few before, but they were 15 inches and I never bothered carrying them around since they were simply too bulky, too slow, and the battery life was abyssmal. My new laptop was a used 12-inch iBook G4. And it had all I ever wanted in a laptop. It was small, light, had an optical drive, looked really slick, and had a 4+ hour battery life. There was just one thing wrong with it: The OS was still underdeveloped, there weren’t that many applications available. It had Power PC inside, but it was simply too early. So I used it as a netbook before they came around, then exchanged it for an actual netbook a bit later, and all the while, kept working primarily on the desktop machine in the office.

I can’t say I was unhappy with the arrangement, but that still meant that if I wanted to work on anything even remotely serious I had to get in the car, drive across town to the office, and once I got there, I usually ended up spending more time on it than I initially wanted to.

A few years passed, Apple made a deal with Intel, then after few years created the first unibody Macbook Pro. I tried one of them and I knew – this was going to be my next laptop. It’s an amazing feeling you get from a compact full metal body, great display, backlit keyboard, and extreme performance. It was simply something I couldn’t say no to. And when I discovered that it would actually come back instantly from stand by when I opened it, I couldn’t believe it. I used it and loved it, and then when the time came I upgraded its RAM memory to the max and replaced the hard disk with a solid-state drive. When I first started it after the upgrade it rendered me speechless (which is pretty darned hard to do) booting in just 10-15 seconds. For the first time I had a laptop I loved to use. A laptop I felt happy holding in my hands. And slowly, I worked less and less on my desktop. I got used to the amazing colors on my Mac, and started loving the OS.

Before, when I was using a desktop, most of my money went to buying the best mouse and keyboard possible, since those were the two perepherals I spent the most time working with. But with the Macbook Pro’s big multitouch trackpad, I stopped using anything external in a matter of days. I had everything I needed in one pretty amazing aluminum package.

And I followed what Apple introduced to the market during that time. I have used the iPhone since the first version, and I simply loved their products. Then, a new Macbook Air came out, and it looked like a slice of heaven. It was expensive, to be sure, but it looked like a million dollars. It wasn’t really time for an upgrade, and I wasn’t convinced that 4GB of RAM and a laptop without a backlit keyboard would be a good enough replacement. Then, almost as if Apple had read my mind, they updated the whole line and introduced dual core i7 processors, 8GB of RAM and backlit keyboard. And I was ready…

I believed the new Air would have enough power in that slivery body to get me through everything I do and still keep a smile on my face, and it turned out I was right. Last December I decided to go with the top of the line model with a 256GB SSD, and I can’t seem to take my hands off it ever since. Light as a feather, beautiful yet diabolical. The best shopping experience so far.

I write this final sentence standing, holding it with two fingers of one hand and typing with the other while waiting for something to be ready. It is almost never further than a few inches from me.

P.S. I do plan to get a 27-inch Apple cinema display to extend it in my office. When there is something really hard-core, all extra space on the display is extremely good. But I don’t really spend all that much time in the office anymore. I wander around, sit where I like, open the Air, put my headphones on and rule my micro-cosmos from a cafe, a park, a terrace with an amazing view, or river bank with slow spring breeze….

Ivan

Quick Facts: Amazing since 1985. Online since 1995. Fanatically devoted to work and friends. Communicates in Serbian or English, but if needed can switch to Russian as well. Understands a thing or two in German, Italian, French and Spanish if in life-or-death situation. Has more true friends than fingers. Believes work hours are for pussies. Knows a ton of computer related abbreviations and isn’t afraid to use them. Won’t talk about problems. Will solve them. Makes a difference. Anywhere. All the time.
Manifesto: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~ Samuel Beckett

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