This evening I put a copy of Photoshop on the new MacBook Air. I then downloaded the plug-ins that Vincent Versace includes with Welcome to Oz 2.0.
OK, this isn’t much of an image, but it was a jpeg captured with a compact camera that I had at hand. I can confirm that my typical workflow is fine on the Air. Never more than 10 layers or so. Some NIK filters. Not significantly different in feel from the MacBook Pro. I’ll need to work on a workflow, but I’m encouraged that I’ll be able to do my usual post-processing activities without much trouble on the machine.
With a few days of use in general, I can make some comments. Of course, look elsewhere for the specs. Lets skip what everyone knows: It’s fast, it’s small, it’s light, it’s supercool.
I bought it as my Mac content creation device. As I wrote about in my discussion of the decision to buy it, the iPad just doesn’t work for me as for writing because of a combination of lack of keyboard and tools (Tinderbox, Scrivener, MarsEdit).
1. Get the 13″ screen. Its got the resolution of a 15″ MacBook Pro, so it’s not at all cramped.
2. Compared the old MBP, what have I gained? Portability. Battery life. Cooler running temp. The current glass trackpad with multitouch gestures and inertial scrolling.
3. WIth the small screen and high resolution, the pinch to zoom function on the trackpad becomes important. I’ve become used to it on the iPhone and iPad. The old MBP didn’t support it, but I never really needed it. But with my 53 year old eyes, the ability to zoom and pan a web page or pdf is great if some print or illustration is too small. You also tend to want to keep this very small device closer to you than a bigger laptop. More like an iPad than a conventional laptop. It would be nice if it was universally supported in programs. I can’t zoom in on a Tinderbox map with it for example.
4.A media management strategy is needed because of the small hard drive. 128 is enough for my purposes outside of media storage. The combination of Home Sharing and Airplay makes this pretty easy now. At home, you need a mac with the full media library always on and running iTunes. You can then stream music though an Airport Express (I have 2) or AppleTV (none yet). That’s now the older MBP. I find this conducive to writing because I can put on music through the stereo using the tool I’m writing with. Its less context switching for me. I may end up with no music on the MacBook Air itself since out of the house, I generally have the iPhone for headphone listening.
5. The lack of a fast external port is an inconvenience. No FW800, no Gigabit ethernet. Just USB2. But the drive is small and I don’t expect to be moving large files around.
