Mori Mori Photography Club Mac OS
When it arrived by post a couple of weeks ago, I joked on Twitter: Loving my new 11-inch iPad Pro!
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It turns out it was only half a joke. This Mac really invites you to treat it as a pro tablet + keyboard. It’s very compact, it’s very light (1.08 kg), it’s still a thin machine by 2018 standards, it has a long-lasting battery. It’s also absolutely quiet (yes, I checked, the fan works) and it’s instant-on.
Being an eBay purchase, I was wary. But the seller had a very high transactions-to-positive-feedback ratio, the pictures used in the auction were of the actual product (I asked them anyway for confirmation), the seller offered a three-month warranty plus a 30-day no-question-asked return policy. So, after a promising message exchange, I decided to go for it. This was December 13. The Mac arrived on December 18, amazingly quickly for an international shipping just before the Christmas holidays. And another pleasant surprise was that the Mac looked even better than how it was described.
Quick specs: It’s a mid-2013 model, with a Core i5 CPU at 1.3 GHz (turbo boost to 2.6 GHz), 4 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD. The 2013 vintage means it has two USB 3 ports, a Thunderbolt port, a better graphic chip (Intel HD 5000), and that it can run the latest version of Mac OS. I also managed to find a unit that was well taken care of: its battery is at 94% health, has a low charge cycle count, and still lasts more than eight hours on a charge. Not bad for a 5‑year-old Mac.
My stairway to the Air
When the time came to upgrade my main Mac back in July, I decided I was done with Apple laptops. I just dislike the design direction Apple took in 2015, when for arbitrary, thinness-driven reasons they introduced the new flattened keyboard with the butterfly mechanism. Back then I hoped it was something specifically tailored for the 12-inch retina MacBook, to keep it as thin and svelte as possible. But when the 2016 MacBook Pros adopted the same keyboard, I was hugely disappointed.
So in July I decided to get a 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac, instead, and I’m still not regretting the decision. At that point, the plan was to turn my 15-inch 2009 MacBook Pro into my portable workstation, keeping all the essential work and creative materials synced with the iMac, and using it when I needed to work while out and about or while travelling.
But during my last trip to Italy, the MacBook Pro revealed more age-related issues, and proved to be unreliable when I most needed it[1]. After researching how much it would cost me to fix the MacBook Pro, I decided it was not worth it. With that money I could easily find a newer MacBook on the used market. And while at it, I could look for a more travel-friendly 13-inch model.
Like a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Or better, a 13-inch MacBook Air.
See, at first I hadn’t even considered the 11-inch model. I remember trying it out in a few different stores when it came out in 2010, but I wasn’t convinced. I remember thinking Apple had gone a bit too far with the compactness. The display didn’t look so bad, but Mac OS X’s interface felt a bit too cramped for my taste. My assessment was misguided.
Maybe it was because as a primary machine it felt lacking for some reason — which is strange, coming from someone who used a 12-inch PowerBook G4 as his main Mac for 5 years — but I can’t really say why it failed to thrill me eight years ago.
However, now that the need for a compact machine had arisen, I simply thought: What the hell, let’s just go for the smallest Mac Apple has made that’s still equipped with a decent keyboard. If the 11-inch MacBook Air turns out to be too small for me, I’ll just return it and get a 13-inch model.
Well, after a day and a half spent putting this little Mac through its paces, I was utterly and unexpectedly astounded. What a great machine the 11-inch MacBook Air is.
Here are some scattered observations.
Thin and light done right
You know me, I’ve been a fierce critic of what I called Apple’s obsession with thinness (or thinsistence). As recently as late November, in my piece Minimal surface nirvana, I wrote:
I don’t know if it all started in 2008 with the first MacBook Air, or slightly earlier with the wave of netbooks, but the obsession with ‘Thin & Light’ has definitely been contagious and has shaped many computing trends of these past ten years or so. The thrill of being able to do most things on a more compact device has been potent; to the point, I think, that which system powers the device is actually a secondary factor.
I don’t feel I’ve been a hypocrite by getting a ‘new’ thin and light Mac. Actually, the thinness and lightness of this 11-inch MacBook Air, while very welcome, weren’t the main features I was searching in a new laptop. I was looking for compactness first. A Mac that could give me back the fantastic experience I had with the 12-inch PowerBook G4, enough ports so I didn’t feel constrained, and a nice keyboard to type on. All that with a limited budget available.
With such requirements, you immediately reckon that the 12-inch retina MacBook was not an option. Compact? Yes. Great display? Oh yes. Ports? Nope. Keyboard? Nope nope nope. Price? Don’t even get me started.
After two weeks with the 11-inch MacBook Air, one thing is crystal clear to me: this is the best version of ‘Thin & Light’ Apple has ever made. If we put the 11-inch MacBook Air and his purported spiritual successor the 12-inch retina MacBook side by side, we can see how the only thing one can count as a ‘compromise’ in the 11-inch MacBook Air is the display; and how, on the other hand, the display is the only thing that’s not a compromise in the 12-inch MacBook.
Michael Tsai has put this more succinctly than I possibly can: Nothing that Apple makes today has close to that combination of price, power, ports, and size.
Debunking some misconceptions
While doing my homework on the 11-inch MacBook Air before deciding to buy one, save for a few good exceptions, I encountered many reviews and YouTube videos that really sold this Mac short, spreading a fair dose of FUD about it, and almost succeeding in making me reconsider. Let’s go over the most egregious misconceptions:
The display is bad: not retina, not tall enough, not enough screen real estate
Sure, by now we are all accustomed to a ‘retina everywhere’ experience, but the display on this 11-inch Air is bright (I discovered that it was set at roughly 70% brightness after a few days of use, and it was already looking bright enough for me!). It’s not retina, but if you combine its native 1366×768 resolution with the small physical size of the display, you’ll get a denser image than the one you’ll get from, say, 1440×900 resolution on a 15-inch non-retina display. As a consequence, UI elements, icons, fonts, all appear a bit sharper. My eyesight isn’t great, and I love the 21.5‑inch retina display of my iMac, but I have absolutely no problems reading text at 9 pt on this MacBook Air. The comparatively shorter distance between your eyes and the display definitely helps here.
Finally, many criticise the 16:9 aspect ratio, saying that while you have enough pixels horizontally, there isn’t enough breathing room vertically; you have to scroll a lot, Web browsing is a pain, etc. Granted, the 13-inch MacBook Air’s display is better proportioned and more spacious, but I still use this Mac with the Dock on the bottom, always visible, and when I need the vertical pixels — when browsing, writing, doing email, editing photos — I just use the apps in full-screen mode. It’s really not that bad, and certainly not a deal-breaker as many make it out to be.
It’s an underpowered machine
Mori Freemason Mori
You look at benchmarks, you make comparisons on paper, and you probably think that getting a unit with just 4 GB of RAM (that is not upgradable) was a mistake. You think you’ll probably have to keep just a couple of apps open at the same time, otherwise the machine will lag, and so on and so forth. Well, while opting for an 8 GB model certainly doesn’t hurt, and while this 11-inch MacBook Air certainly cannot compete with the quad-core or more-cores CPUs of current Macs, it has handled very capably a lot of different tasks I’ve been throwing at it these past days. Undoubtedly, a great help comes from having an internal SSD instead of a spinning hard drive.
In normal use, it’s quite responsive, it doesn’t lag even with 6–7 apps open and several tabs open in Safari, and so far I haven’t been able to hear its fan except once briefly during the update from Mac OS Sierra to High Sierra. It handles way better than my 2009 MacBook Pro, and in all regular tasks it doesn’t feel less responsive than my much newer iMac with a quad-core 3 GHz CPU.
It’s not that great of a value today
The cool YouTube tech kids will say that if you’re looking for something ultraportable, you should look elsewhere. Get a 12-inch retina MacBook! Or even, Get an iPad Pro with a keyboard! While not wrong pieces of advice, per se, I think they’re debatable, as it really depends on what kind of work you plan to do with an ultraportable device. Now, if you’re looking for such a device, it’s clear that you’re not really after pro workstation performance. As I mentioned above, a 12-inch retina MacBook will have more updated technologies under the bonnet, and a better display. But if you don’t like its keyboard, and you want more than just a single USB‑C port, the 11-inch MacBook Air is already starting to look good. If your budget is limited, even a used 2015 retina MacBook can easily cost you 1.5 to 2 times more than a 2014–2015 11-inch MacBook Air.
Again, choosing an iPad Pro over this machine is a matter of preferences. If iOS is enough for what you have to do when you’re mobile, go for it. But if you, like me, favour Mac OS for productivity, I think you should re-evaluate the 11-inch MacBook Air. It may have a small, unexceptional 16:9 display, but you also get:
- a lightweight and compact machine you can really carry everywhere[2];
- a good keyboard to type on, that’s also backlit and has the better ‘inverted T’ arrow keys layout;
- a machine that can still last hours on a charge (provided you find one with a good battery — but then again, you could purchase and install a new one without breaking the bank);
- a Mac that still offers a reasonable amount of connectivity given its small footprint (two USB ports, Thunderbolt port, headphone port, MagSafe connector);
- a Mac that’s still quite capable of handling all everyday tasks, and that can sustain the occasional medium load if needed;
- a Mac that — if you do a bit of research — can be found on the used market for very reasonable prices. My unit cost me as much as a regular iPad, including shipping.
I’ll reiterate: we’re in totally subjective territory when it comes to assessing what constitutes ‘good value’ today, but when you take a look at the list of features outlined above, that pretty much defines ‘good value’ for me. The thing is, too many tech nerds are generally quick at dismissing machines and devices that haven’t been produced in the last year or so. Too many consider a computer like the 11-inch MacBook Air a bad proposition because it doesn’t have a retina display, because ‘the design is old and unbalanced’[3], because it doesn’t deliver the same performance of current pro machines, because it can’t play the latest games… The problem is that they’re approaching the 11-inch Air from the wrong angle, because never in its entire lifetime was the MacBook Air positioned as the go-to machine for such tasks.
Conclusion
When, during my research, I encountered AnandTech’s predictably well-written, informative, and balanced review of the 2013 11-inch MacBook Air, I found the third image to be particularly striking, as it shows just how similar the 11-inch MacBook Air and the first-generation iPad’s footprints are. This review helped me a lot in deciding whether to get this MacBook Air model or not, so consider my photo above a little homage to the folks at AnandTech.
Mori Mori Photography Club Mac Os X
After about two weeks of use I can definitely say I found exactly what I was looking for, and more. It’s pretty incredible how easily the 11-inch MacBook Air won me over. Those who know me know that I prefer working with lots of screen real estate: I usually favour big displays and retina displays. The 11-inch Air has neither, but I’m surprisingly okay with that. Could I use it as my sole machine for day-long work sessions? Not all the time. But I’ve already used it twice for very long sessions, and I didn’t feel as constrained as expected. The good keyboard and the good trackpad helped a lot. I didn’t have to stop and self-consciously review my workflows as I do when I switch to an iPad. What I do on the Macs at home, I do on the MacBook Air when out and about. Same keyboard shortcuts, same spatial navigation, etc.
At the same time, while using the 11-inch MacBook Air I quickly realised that the whole experience has felt a bit like enjoying the best of both worlds for me. This machine has both the hardware & software versatility of the Mac, and the portability and practicality of an iPad. It can go wherever an iPad can, and it also feels like using a mobile device as far as daily habits go — I don’t even bring the charger with me, I can charge the MacBook Air later when I get home, and it’s ready for another day.
I love my new 11-inch iPad Pro.
- 1. The main SSD repeatedly didn’t show up at boot, and I had to reset the SMC several times before everything went back to normal. Also, the stated 2 hours and 15 minutes of battery life after a full charge turned out not to be an accurate estimate, as the Mac shut down unexpectedly after only 30 minutes. ↩︎
- 2. Seriously. The other day I accompanied my wife to the dentist. While waiting for her in the waiting room, instead of my iPhone, I just took out the MacBook Air. I connected to the Internet by enabling the iPhone as personal hotspot in the Wi-Fi menu, and I was amazed at how comfortably I could work. I simply used my messenger bag on my lap as a desk, and my hands were resting perfectly on the keyboard/palmrest as I typed. ↩︎
- 3. WTF, really. There’s nothing unbalanced about the 11-inch MacBook Air’s design. The keyboard is standard size. Yes, the Function keys are smaller, and the bottom row has slightly shorter keys to allow for a slightly bigger trackpad. But it’s a non-issue — it doesn’t affect typing at all, and the trackpad is just the right size to be usable without interfering when your hands are on the keyboard. ↩︎
… my general impression about where Mac OS is going is that Apple wants to turn it into a sort of low-maintenance system. The pretext is security: lock down this and that because it could be exploited; remove this and that because it’s code we can’t be bothered to update or optimise, it could potentially represent a vector for an attack, blah blah. Meanwhile, let’s also use these security measures to make the life of the already stressed-out Mac developers even harder.
In 30 years as a Mac power user, what I have been appreciating about Mac software was the ability to think and act outside the box, so to speak. In recent times, Apple seems hell-bent on keeping Mac software inside the box. The walled-garden model and paranoid security made and make definitely more sense on mobile systems. I appreciate being able to look for and install apps on my iPhone that won’t mess with my device or present a security risk for the operating system or for me as a user (although Apple hasn’t done a great job at keeping scams away from the App Store); but on the Mac I want to have more freedom of movement. I’m an expert user, I know the risks involved. Let me tinker. Give the option to have a locked-down Mac for novice users who expect to use it like an appliance, or in the same way they use their phones and tablets. Leave the ‘root’ door open for those who know what they’re doing.
Ditto!!!
To be clear. I like my Apple devices. I spend thousands of dollars on Apple products for my family and me. I have the right to complain where I think things are not meeting my expectations. Apple is not infallible.
Since Apple can’t be bothered to update the open-source components of their OS, I am happy they will be removing deprecated software. It is better to see the kids placed into foster care, then watch them be abused and neglected by their parents.
It’s getting a lot harder to defend Apple’s action. Many long-time Mac users that I know — I was the president of the Princeton Macintosh Users Group for about five year – and macOS developers, are not happy. I don’t think the concerns of this user base should be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It tends to get people angry when they feel like they are being told their concerns are irrelevant.
I switched to the Mac platform (from Windows) before it was cool. I switched because OS X was UNIX and because it had a usable GUI and I could run well built commercial software and use (or write) open-source software. OS X was open and I could tinker to my heart’s content.
It feels to me that with each release, the *NIX part and the openness is being deprecated.