My Next Move: To An 11.6″ Air?

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I love the iPad. I really do. It’s a fantastic device. It’s fast, capable and sexy. The apps are great.

I love reading on it. Between Kindle, iBooks and Instapaper, I’m never without something to read. If I end up at the end of my queues, there is always Safari. Which is also great.

However, I do a ton of writing. I write here, at Macgasm, for school, for work and for pleasure. While PlainText has totally changed my life and the way I store my words, the iPad isn’t a great writing machine.

Yes, I’m fast on the virtual keyboard. Yes, I have a Bluetooth keyboard for it when I am going to be working in long stretches.

When I write, I usually have countless tabs open in Safari, music playing, IMs going and more. It’s messy and distracting, but I’m sure it comes from my nights of working at the college paper, where a quiet room for working wasn’t a possibility. It also may stem from the fact that my brain is probably forever altered by a lack of sleep thanks to college, and now having two small kids.

MobileSafari’s nasty habit of needing to reload pages due to a lack of RAM is nothing short of frustrating. Bouncing around apps is slower, too.

Publishing on the iPad is a nightmare. While most of WordPress’ web-based backend works in MobileSafari, it’s far from great. The WordPress app is worse, as it has many severe limitations. Don’t even get me started.

Right now, if I write a blog post on the iPad, I let PlainText and Dropbox do their thing, delivering my content to a computer, where I publish using the fabulous MarsEdit.[1. The obvious question is what would I do if MarsEdit came to the iPad. While that would be amazing, I can’t plan a workflow around a product that might not ever happen. Plus, it would only answer one of my issues with the iPad.]

So I’m thinking about selling my iPad and buying a MacBook Air. I’m looking at the 11.6" model, but bumping it to 4 GB of RAM to help future-proof it. The size, weight and battery life are all extremely attractive to me. The high-resolution screen and full-sized keyboard should put usability far past what any netbook can reach, which is great, since the netbooks I’ve had in the past sucked.

There are several advantages that the Air has over the iPad in my eyes.

The obvious one is that it runs OS X. That means that the tools that make up my work environment would all be at my fingertips. My workflow would also be simpler without iOS apps — no matter how great they are — in the mix.

Running OS X also means that the weird Wi-Fi issues I see with the iPad wouldn’t bug me anymore. Some places (like St. Jude, here in Memphis) still don’t allow iOS devices on their networks. An Air obviously wouldn’t suffer that fate.

Secondly, having a “real” keyboard all the time would make my writing faster, but less prone to being full of weird typos. I can type incredibly fast on not just my Apple Extended II keyboards, but on my 15" MacBook Pro at work. As good as the iPad’s keyboard is (and it really is very good), it’s not match for real plastic.

I’m going to be jump-starting my Project 365 thing in January, for a third year. While I had been thinking about using the iPad as the critical machine in the project, an Air would fit the bill better.

Lastly, I’m intrigued with seeing if I can last on a computer with only 64 GB of storage. While my iPad has just 16 GB, the challenge to keep an eye on storage capacity would be harder on a notebook. Re-installing OS X without language packs, printer drivers or iLife would save me some space, and Dropbox’s just-announced selective sync feature would help even more. I really think I could make it with just the built-in apps, MarsEdit, Word and Excel.

Minimal computing is all the rage for a reason.

It’s not all good news for the Air. Reading on an Air would be less enjoyable than on the iPad, without a doubt. I can’t quite reconcile that bit yet. The battery life also isn’t as awesome as the iPad’s is.

While I haven’t made up my mind, I plan on spending the rest of the week thinking on it. I need to land a few freelance gigs before I can think about spending the money, but I might just pull the trigger here sometime soon.

Woz, Net Neutrality and the FCC

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First off, here’s Steve Wozniak in an open letter to the FCC:

The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.

[…]

We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it’s probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.

Today, the FCC passes a new set of limited net neutrality rules. Here is Engadget’s lawyer-in-residence, Nilay Patel:

The rules haven’t been made public yet, but the general understanding is that wired broadband will be more heavily regulated than wireless — a crucial point as carriers begin investigating pay-per-service charges. That means even net neutrality advocates are unhappy with today’s decision — Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps straight-up said, “Today’s action could — and should — have gone further.”

The pay-per-service charges are terrifying. In short, wireless providers are toying with the idea to charge users based on the popularity of the service and the type of content downloaded.

That doesn’t sound like an open Internet at all.

‘I Want to Believe’

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Jürgen, on the Cultured Code blog:

The final release of cloud sync as part of Things is still off by a few months. But we plan to publish more details about what we are doing (and have been doing) every few weeks.

OTA sync has been a major drawback for Things since day one, but the problem got a lot worse since OmniFocus’ OTA sync has gained serious traction. Hopefully, Cultured Code can make this happen quickly.

On VoiceOver

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Matt Legend Gemmell:

iOS devices are an excellent choice for visually impaired users. They’re portable, they’re fully self-contained and are designed to be used without external peripherals, and the iOS user experience is very functionally concise and goal-oriented. iOS will not present a proliferation of windows, toolbars and minuscule user interface elements. For the most part, they’re comprehensible, focused, and as intuitive as possible. These are all ideal qualities for accessible software, and indeed for software in general.

The question then becomes how we, as developers, can ensure that our applications are as accessible as possible, and that VoiceOver can provide the best assistance. The good news is that it’s incredibly easy to add accessibility support to your application (there’s no bad news, incidentally).

I’ve never spent much time thinking about visually impaired users when it comes to iOS devices, but Apple’s VoiceOver solution really is incredible.

NPR Names Ping on ‘Worst Ideas of 2010’ List

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NPR:

The most popular services — the Facebooks, Twitters and MySpaces of the world — allow users to share links, thoughts, ideas, photos and music to connect with each other. Ping, run through iTunes, was supposed to be an evolution in musical connection. But iTunes, being a self-contained fortress requiring endless software upgrades and with more than a few frustrating quirks, isn’t conducive to the type of sharing Web-based networks enjoy across a variety of devices. I can access all three of the aforementioned sites from my Android phone, and I have a variety of apps that allow me to seamlessly integrate these applications into my life. To use Ping, I would have to be tethered to my iMac

Totally agreed. I have no idea how Ping became a real product.

Sparrow Mail Beta 7

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This morning, the team behind Sparrow, a minimal Gmail client for the Mac, dropped the 7th beta of the software.

The low-profile labeling system is my favorite addition, by far. Selecting “Archive and Label” will move the message into that mailbox, so it shows up where you expect it to in Mail. Here’s a screenshot of what I meant by a “low-profile” design.

Wonder why I have [Gmail] in all my label names? Check out this guide I wrote concerning Gmail, IMAP and Mail.app.

TSA Missed Loaded Gun at IHA

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ABC 13:

TSA checkpoints at airports are at the front lines of preventing terrorism. When you go through security, you expect to be scanned and searched. And you expect TSA to prevent contraband from getting on planes, but as we’ve learned, that doesn’t always happen.

Houston businessman Farid Seif says it was a startling discovery. He didn’t intend to bring a loaded gun on a flight out of Houston and can’t understand how TSA screeners didn’t catch it.

Nearing the height of last year’s Christmas travel season, TSA screeners at Bush Intercontinental Airport somehow missed a loaded pistol, one that was tucked away inside a carry-on computer bag.

“I mean, this is not a small gun,” Seif said. “It’s a .40 caliber gun.”

Holy shit.

[via my friend @deevahs]

Susan Kare Selling Prints of Classic Icons

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Susan Kare is offering signed prints of original Mac OS icons, including the Bomb, the Smiling Mac and even the Alert icon.

Prices are pretty reasonable, at least for the smaller sizes:

  • 8.5” x 11” edition of 200: $89
  • 17” x 22” edition of 200: $129
  • 24” x 30” edition of 100: $349
  • 30” x 40” edition of 100: $499

These prints will make great gifts for any hardcore Apple nerds in your life. Needless to say, I’m probably ordering the dogcow one for myself.[1. Naturally.]

[via The Mac Observer]