over the years, i’ve learned not to jump on the “new” bandwagon and wait at least a month before upgrading to a new product, software or gadget.
so i’m not in a rush, especially seeing hillarious videos like this one (NSFW 150k+ views).

but, to give apple credit, 2011 MB Air has fixed my 2 annoyances with previous Air: lid up the keyboard & removed pointless “eject” button (thus moving music play keys, where they are suppose to be). so i was excited to test 2011, especially that my in-laws got it & there was no risk of having to go back to Leopard Snow, etc.
apple failed terribly on not putting back the infared for the remotes (yeah, “get apple tv” – $100 – “philosophy” – but you can’t really send power point presentations to apple tv via airPlay, can you?). and to add salt to the wound, they have removed FrontRow app (although there’s a hack for that).

so … i’m writing this on my 2010 Air & will keep it ’till  x-mass,  if not longer … why?

2011 Air, or Mac OS X Lion – i should say – doesn’t feel like a finished product!

- firefox dmg file couldn’t mount. my very first impression wasn’t good: download firefox, mount dmg, move to applications & … “can’t open” (WFT? did i just upgrade to windows?). had to re-download twice, delete files & restart the system to get it to work …. brand new, $1400 laptop!
- after using the Air for few hours, system preference crashed! really apple???
- when downgrading the resolution to lower 1152×720 – can’t see bottom menu in iphoto. yeah, minor bug, but contrary to apple’s belief old folks can’t see ant size fonts at native – 1440×900 resolution. i’ve gotten used to upscaled, not so good looking 1152xx720 resolution. but not to have iPhoto scale down accordingly?
- mail app – can’t increase font sizes. the option is there … but doesn’t do anything … yep, restarted. nada. again, very frustrating for old people, who can’t see ant size fonts on the screen!
- video “anatomy of mac” is still leopard on the support site. support section of apple’s website doesn’t seem to be aware of Lion’s existence … yet (but i guess it’s more efficient for the co. to have old folks come to the store to take lesson … maybe up sell them on some crap they don’t need)
- drop box folder – doesn’t work out of the box … until you enable sharing on it …
- gestures – not implemented on applications like firefox. now this is probably firefox’s fault, but still when making a fundamental OS changes like: stuff scrolls up, instead of down (thank god there’s an easy way to disable that). or making 3 finger left/right swipes, switch os “pages”, instead of website’ visited pages …. should give devs a bit of notice? have a discussion to make sure those “revolutionary” videos, correspond with the actual product experience?
[no apple, safari is not the greatest browser out there ... it actually sux. e.g. have you heard of a standard cmd-K shortcut to search? cmd-1,2 to switch between tabs?]
ohh & if you want to understand why 2-finger left/right swipe is a disaster. try to explain to a 70 year old a difference between: 1 finger swipe, 2 finger swipe & 3 fingers … the difference between going left, right, up (the middle one, might be up by then )
- totally agree with the guy from the video above on, Launchpad doesn’t feel like part of the OS: can’t select multiple apps & move them, can’t manage them via finder. & the name “Launchpad” – again my old folks have no idea that means “application” …
- AirDrop … doesn’t work with older macs. how dumb is that?
- dashboard – while you can probably remap “Launchpad” (f4) key back to dashboard … dashboard itself is kinda lost in the “mission control” (another dumb name) … but, ok – that’s a minor annoyance at most.

good?

huh … 2011 MacBook Air, looks nice … but pretty much the same as 2010 (yes, now with a lid up keyboard). did not notice greater battery life. speed … maybe 5-10% faster (but honestly didn’t spend enough time with it).

ok, so i do like the instant integration of yahoo (don’t think that’s automatic with gmail) – when you sing-in the first time, it asks you to plug in the user/password into mail app, it works for contacts & iChat too. nice.

interestingly features, i’ve looked forward to: autocorrect, versions, mail, airDrop … now seem cosmetic conveniences i can live without on Snow Leopard.

so overall, can’t say i’m compelled to upgrade, actually.

overall – Lion OS X feels sloppy.

what’s going on apple? not making enough money? jobs left & attention to detail – we’ve got to love so much about your products – went out of the window with him?
no, i’m not an apple hating a**hole, but i do expect near perfection for a laptop that’s $1400!

but i still love apple

why? no choice, frankly. & i’m brutally reminded of windows in the 90s … by having to wait (3 hours & counting) to migrate my in-law’s PC to mac:
1) upgrade my in-laws’ win XP to SP3
2) so i can install apple’s migration assistant (bit lazy of apple to require SP3 …)
3) so i can migrate … mear 3gb worth of data
will keep you posted, how that goes

[update: sp3 upgrade failed 3 times, then kinda went through, then apple's migration assistant refused to install even after win said SP3. 4 hours later, i've decided to take a USB stick, copy all content of "my documents" & successfully dropped it on the mac ... all of which took, 15 min]

i must say i have been excited about finally getting a worthy laptop upgrade. i’ve been using macbooks for about 4 years now. started with white macbook (intel leopard) for wife – liked it. then had my job order an 08 15′ macbook pro customed: 4gb of mem & 7200 rpm hard drive. which was the best laptop i’ve ever “owned” to date. then had to downgrade to 13′ aluminum macbook “pro” (MBP) 2gb SD slot 4ish hour battery life … then made the biggest mistake of my short apple life … and “upgraded” to shit (aka snow) leopard. 2gb used to be enough on the old white macbook, but after snow … nothing but rainbow wheel of death.

the new Macbook Air 4gb / 128 flash SDD real user review

i’ve had this MBA – new baby for a day now … in one word – it’s a screamer

the good: as Dvorak & others have been trying to tell us for years “it’s the hard drive dummy” (not the CPU that’s responsible for the speed of the computre). it doesn’t really matter if you have 1.8 Ghz or 2.3 Ghz (1.4 probably would be fine as well), but the flash hard drive and 4gb of memory amounts to an amazing speed increase:
- it starts up in 12 sec / 2 sec from sleep. overall flash SSD makes this baby scream, everything is “now”
- RWOD (rainbow wheel of death) is mostly gone. it takes about 30 seconds to open 4 firefox windows with 4-6 tabs on each on the new Air vs 60 seconds on the old one (it only appeared while upgrading mac os)
- battery – i’ve gotten about 5 hours on the 2nd charge … should be close to 6h on few charge-drain cycles
- no CD/DVD – haven’t used it much lately and losing 2lb in the process is certainly worth it
- 2nd USB port … definitely welcome (in comparison to older Air)
- no more fan noise (well known annoyance of the older Air). this baby runs very quietly. while transferring from macbook pro to Air I got a panic attack – fans were humming intensely about 2 hours into the transfer.

[vid]

silly me … about 1 min after i moved the Air to the side to listen to the concerning noise closer … i’ve realized the true reason for this heat … was the fact that the new Air was placed directly over the fans of old Macbook – therefore causing high temperature. as soon as i’ve placed Air away from the other Macbook’s heat … fans & noise stopped immediately (it does go on sometimes when watching lots of youtube videos or crunching photoshop rendering).

on the fence:
- LCD – similar to aluminum macbook one. old Air was too “matte” – as in you really had to look at the screen at a direct 90 deg angle, otherwise you stopped seeing portions of the screen. new one seems very crisp, but haven’t used it in the sun yet … big problem for the glass-covered macbook pro. [cont. under "screen resolution"]

the bad:
- no illuminated keyboard … apple giveth, apple taketh away – but why? why taking away good features? it fit just fine on the old air …
- no infrared – no remote … again, old Air had it. appleTV solves this problem at home, but what if i want to give a presentation … now i need to buy another dongle remote?
- screen resolution – WTF you say? but … i really don’t see an advantage of 1440×900 resolution on a 13′ screen. it makes everything smaller. 1280×800 was a perfect balance for the 13′ screen. now i have to squint or get ridiculously close to the screen to see anything (yes you can zoom in the text/pix on z browser, but bookmarks are tiny now). solution? crappy one, emulate 1280×800, but then you’ll feel like you’ve moved back in time to CRT. (at least it’s bright enough, so you can “illuminate” your keyboard … by tilting the screen onto the keys). [update: possible solution to this problem]
- design – WTF you say again? … i admit it’s sexiest laptop out there. full size keyboard, 13′ screen. not even an inch at its thickest … or is it? due to the optical illusion apple wants you to believe it’s … thin, but honestly just because bottom is curved doesn’t mean it’s not there.
functionality over sexy. i’d be much happier with square all-around design, which would give a little extra space …  wishfully that would fit infrared & illuminated keyboard.

the joke: eject button … what exactly is it for? no spinning mechanism on this baby what’s-so-ever. and thus resulting in a movement of volume buttons …  one to the left. i tried to eject memory stick to no avail. WTF?  i gotten used to this keyboard layout for the past 4 years …

summary:

this could have been a perfect laptop … best macbook every made. it’s sexy, functional and the  fastest macbook i have ever had in my hands. but … small-god-complex Steve Jobs believes in “apple giveth, apple must taketh away”
… but why take away good features Steve?
- $1,500 certainly ain’t cheap in today’s world of $400 decent 13-15′ laptops
- is apple really going to lose so much money that they have to take away features?
- has the increase in the battery size prohibited in fitting those old features?

from a faithful mac user (so far) – you actually need more memory and faster solid drive in order to run crappy snow leopard / flash combo at a decent speed, without looking at a rainbow wheel of death all the time (new apple gay propaganda? .

so Steve; please bring illuminated keyboard and infrared back to Air, fix the 1280×800 resolution display on 13′ & drop the price by couple hundred. you’ll have the best, sexiest laptop ever made … and made by apple of course.  your profits won’t suffer that much, but the end users will reward you with happy praises

wow … just spent another 2 days trying to figure out how to:
jailbreak my 3gs from OS 3.0.1 to 3.1.2 and while keeping baseband 4 on my mac.
[now ... i've gone through some troubles to make sure, my 3GS is made before week 40 (aka old baseband 4, 4 & 5th number on your serial) and have not updated to 3.1, not to lose my tethering via carrier 6 file ]

“what had happened was”:

1 – followed this guide on macbook pro (aluminum, snow leopard), itunes 9.1 (most likely this was a root of my problems), pwnage

2 – got error 1600 / stuck in DFU – nothing works, tried:
DFU: 30 sec power + home,  YT vids – can’t get out
1600 (1604, etc): restore mode, different USB ports, windows iREF (works on 3g only, have not tried “fix recovery mode loop”), then sn0wbreeze & it told me “detected … can’t be jailbreaked …”

3 – tried old white macbook w/
- itunes 8 and 9.0.1
- delete directory trick (~user/library/itunes/device support – delete content before you run pwnage tool ) … still didn’t work, but later i’ve figured out i was using the firmware cooked on macbook pro, snow …

…. next day. created a clean mac os login
4 – what finally worked: white old macbook w/ leopard (not snow), itunes 9.0.1, pwnd 3.1.5, restore 3.1.2

- to get out of DFU – blackra1n (THX! making donation now) – got my phone back! (but because was 3.0.1 it didn’t jailbreak it)

- re created 3.1.2 restore file w/ activation (carrier – yes, if you have att) on pwnage tool 3.1.5. made sure “…/device support” dir is empty before i started cooking & it went trough! (phone still not plugged in at this point)
- restored on iTunes 9.0.1, white, old macbook w/ just leopard on it & a clean account
- once restore & backup (2h later) … cydia said “you phone’s SHSH … 3.1.3 has been backup up” so i got my SHSH … i think (umbrella didn’t work for me, even with ECI nubmer).
…. so it WORKED

MY ADVICE:

if you can do without jailbreak on 3GS OS 3.0 … consider … not having your phone avail for next few days

if you already have 3GS OS 3.1 + just blackra1n it … it will take 10 sec! – there’s a way to get your SHSH after via umbrella (windows, ih8sn0w) … but it didn’t work for me.

BEFORE you start:
- get your serial, carrier, OS, baseband firmware & ECID numbers
- search google for how to with exactly those numbers (eg. “jailbreak 3g os 3.1 3.1.3 mac”)
- don’t user snow leopard, use iTunes 9.0.1