Zentrope

New Mac?

Because of my new job, I think I need a new mac. But which one to get?

Here’s the scenario. Right now, I have a really nice 15” Macbook Pro. Maxed memory, disc speed, etc, etc. My original intention with this machine was for it to be my main home machine, while at work, I’d use the Macbook Pro they provided. This worked out relatively well. I removed all personal stuff from the work machine, including iTunes, mobile me, everything except Dropbox.

Then I changed jobs.

My new job has provided me with a desktop and laptop (with Ubuntu), but they can’t provide me a Mac. I tried to get along with Ubuntu. I really did. It’s not bad at all for the kind of thing I do at work. But I use a couple of apps (OmniFocus, OmniGraffle) which have no equivalents anywhere else. These tools really help me keep on top of things. Indispensable. So now I use my home Macbook Pro for both home and work. I’m not sure I like this situation. I don’t like all my personal stuff being at work. I don’t like having to carry the machine back and forth so much. I’m afraid of dropping it, for instance (which I did, once).

So, the question is, if I get a new Mac, which one?

• A new 13” Macbook Air would be super nice. I could probably do development just fine, even running server processes in the background (if I upgrade the RAM to 4GB). It’s not quite as nice as the Pro, but probably good enough. 256GB of disk space is good enough if I’m not storing TV shows, photos, iPhone movie footage, and so on. Developing software is mostly about text.

• A new 21” iMac. Probably good enough to have as my home machine, and use my Macbook Pro for my development machine. The small screen isn’t much fun, but then I don’t do a lot with my home machine anymore, and if I wanted to, I could hook it up to a much larger monitor.

• A new 27” iMac. Nice big screen, but, like the 21”, I can’t really move it around the house too much.

In the end, I think a Macbook Air seems the most reasonable. I can leave it at work, or carry it back and forth. It’s light enough and small enough not to be a hassle (even though I drive). The SSD storage probably resists drops. And I can hook it up to a big screen. I should note that I used to do quite a bit of distributed programming development using an old plastic white Macbook circa late 2006, and it worked just fine. It’s not like I’m testing for performance or load.

What I’d really like to do is take a MacBook Air 13” home for a week and really test it and see how well it goes. Then make the decision.

What do you think?