7 ms·

I've been able to accomplish the "meander around, finding cool new places to work" thing pretty well with an 11" MB Air (and optional tethered iPhone). It does

I've been able to accomplish the "meander around, finding cool new places to work" thing pretty well with an 11" MB Air (and optional tethered iPhone). It doesn't have the ridiculous battery life of an iPad, but other than that it essentially gives you the same portability without feeling like you're constraining yourself to a subpar development environment (I've tried doing serious web dev on an iPad, but the lack of a web inspector and the ability to remap caps lock as control are both dealbreakers for me).

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Agreed. Also, you can't do serious web development on an OS that doesn't allow 3rd party rendering engines.
ConstantineXVI 14y ago
I ended up getting a Chromebook a few weeks ago as a cheap machine to hack and do interviews while my MBA was in for repairs. For not being much higher on the food chain than a thin client, it's pretty much perfect. Chrome's identical to Win/Mac/Linux Chrome (inspector and all); SSH works fine, "search" key (fka capslock) can even be remapped to ctrl.
- lucaspiller 14y ago
  Interesting... What is the battery life like on it?
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    On the Samsung 550 (the only model my Best Buy had on the floor), didn't do any scientific testing but definitely in the 5-7hr range. It's noticeably thicker than a MBA, but not by much; and IMHO the 12" (matte!) size is the sweet spot on a laptop. Unsure on exact specs, but plenty fast enough. Keyboard and click pad are solid as well (best pad I've ever used outside of Apple). Provided you can work within it's niche, it's a great machine for $450. Was sad to have to take it back (not in a position to throw money around I don't absolutely have to).
    - curtin 14y ago
      So you bought it and then returned? Best Buy allows you to do this?
- wickedchicken 14y ago
  +1 to the chromebook. It's now my main laptop (although I can't run windows/mac based linux software on it yet :/
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    I can't see it becoming a main machine for me as-is. CrOS's laser focus on "the cloud" makes it extremely well suited for remote-centric work; if you can't commit 100% to doing everything from browser windows and remote terminals, you'll be happier with a more standard PC. For me, it's perfect as a backup but I'm too much of a control freak to be wholly reliant on a remote server.
  - fingerprinter 14y ago
    I just got a chromebook and I HATE it. The software is ok, but I hate the hardware. Particularly the touchpad. Just awful. Doesn't do tap-to-click correctly and scrolls poorly. I couldn't recommend it to anyone for anything other than a couch surfing machine, but then again, a tablet is just as good for that.
    - wickedchicken 14y ago
      Which one did you get? The Samsung 550 is the one to get IMO, the touchpad is pretty great.
- paulgb 14y ago
  Is SSH built-in, or an app?
  - holtr94 14y ago
    If you enable dev mode you get access to a full linux environment, including ssh. You can even use ssh without dev mode, but it is crippled.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    There's a built-in SSH as part of crosh[0] and a more usable version paired with a HTML-based terminal emulator as an app[1] [0] basic troubleshooting shell in CrOS [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhomp...
bergie 14y ago
This is essentially what I'm doing these days. I wrote quite a lot of my upcoming CoffeeScript book (and its example applications) this way in Istanbul. Spending the morning in one waterpipe cafe, then afternoon in another. Battery life was the main hindrance, as I would always need to find a place with a convenient power socket at least for the other half of the day. If somebody made an MBA-like, Linux-capable machine with a full-day battery, I'd buy it no matter the cost.
- muellerwolfram 14y ago
  I can recommend the lenovo x220 ultrabook. mine is lasting for 5-7 hours, but with additional battery packs, you can get it up to 24 hours apperently http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/lenovos-x220-thinkpad-with-24-hour-battery/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/lenovos-x220-thinkpad...
- moconnor 14y ago
  Have you looked at ultrabook-class laptops with removable battery packs? Might work out for you. How was Istanbul?
  - bergie 14y ago
    Istanbul is awesome. Scenery is beautiful, and the waterpipe cafes don't mind if you sit there the whole day, as long as you order tea or something every now and then. Quite a lot of them have decent WiFi as well, though many sites are blocked in Turkey. This might give an idea of the places I worked in: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/sets/72157631399738304/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/sets/72157631399738304/ Slightly more expensive city to live in than Berlin, though. It felt a lot cheaper when I moved there for a while from Helsinki back in 2008.
    - phillmv 14y ago
      More expensive than Berlin? I just got back from a trip to both Berlin and Istanbul. As a tourist at least it's way cheaper. Is rent just that much higher?
moconnor 14y ago
My friend Matthias (wiemann.name) does that with his MB Air and he's totally happy with it. If you need web inspector, an iPad really isn't an option. I'd still recommend trying out a remote server, it's fun.
- lazerwalker 14y ago
  Yeah, I'd definitely love to try it at some point. Besides the cool stuff it enables you to do (like the data-crunching you mentioned in the article), there's definitely something really appealing about the minimalism of relying almost exclusively on command-line tools in a more meaningful way than just having a terminal window open as one of a dozen apps in a window manager.
peteretep 14y ago
Seconded. 11" MB Air feels just as portable as my iPad. That said, the author seems to be getting positive effects from using exclusively remote tools... Like you, I see draw backs. I don't want to use vim as my primary editor, and I hate that I can't have tabs loading in the background in the web browser, or can't be on Skype while doing something else...
- moconnor 14y ago
  I skype through my iPhone while coding on my iPad all the time. The browser is the weakest part of the iPad experience though, it's true.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - nvmc 14y ago
    So the solution to sub-par multitasking is to buy a small iPad to use at the same time?
    - freehunter 14y ago
      Everyone has a phone, for most definitions of everyone. Skype works on every major smartphone platform (and several minor platforms). What would I use my phone for if not for holding a conversation?
      - nvmc 14y ago
        Because Skype also works perfectly fine on an iPad. An additional device is not a replacement for multitasking.
        freehunter 14y ago
        And phone calls to landlines work perfectly fine on my desktop. I still have a desk phone sitting next to me though.
maguay 14y ago
I work everywhere with my MacBook Air 13" (from the bus, on benches in parks and malls, in my inlaws-to-be's living room, at restaurants), and with a 3G aircard, it's great. Though I did the same with my iPad 1, and it was mostly great too, depending on what I needed to do.
devgutt 14y ago
Additionally you can have 7 hours battery in the 13" MB Air against 5 hours from 11".
- eropple 14y ago
  I get 7 hours on my retina MBP, too. At 4.6 pounds, it's about as portable as anything I've ever used--I actually sold my 11" Air a little while ago because I was annoyed with the small screen.
taude 14y ago
When you can get an 11" MB AIR for $1000, using an iPad in this way feels "forced". I like his thoughts on Win 8 Surface tablet, though: side-by-side apps, better integrated keyboard, likely better multitasking (or at least a simpler way of switching between apps....
- sp332 14y ago
  When you can get an iPad for half that price, it doesn't seem "forced".
  - untog 14y ago
    How much is $500 worth to you in terms of productivity, though? Depends on how much you earn per hour, but for a lot of people, $500 isn't much in the big scheme of things.
    - sp332 14y ago
      For $500 I could put up with some level of annoyance... $500 buys a lot of Linode 512 time.
      - arbitrarywords 14y ago
        $500 / (10 hrs/week * 50 weeks) = $1/hr. I'd only worry about it if your hourly rate approaches this.
        freehunter 14y ago
        Alternatively, since we're drawing arbitrary amounts of time from the air, $500 / (10 hrs/week * 1 wk) = $50/hr. Meanwhile I'm paying two months of rent with the money I saved not buying a Macbook. How much time/money do you save when you don't have to wait for your code to compile before you can leave, or when you don't have to worry about making sure you save before your battery dies? I can spend $1000 on a laptop and work on it with the same constraints as any workstation, or I can put that $500 to several years of Linode and have money left over to type "go build massive_project" then meet my girl for a coffee while it chugs away in the background without a worry.
rahoulb 14y ago
I use an iPad in the same way, after switching from an MBA. the big advantages of the iPad are inbuilt 3G (I get 5gb/month for peanuts on a special offer from a couple of years ago), battery life (I never got more than 3 hours from the MBA), I move more (lean over to do some browsing and shift my position or walk around). And most importantly I am far less likely to switch to HN or some other distraction. The big disadvantage is the lack of a web inspector, but I'm mainly working on back-end stuff at the moment.
Aykroyd 14y ago
Agreed. It seems like you'd also want the ability to occasionally hook up to a bigger monitor. Do you find the 11" screen bothers you at all, or have you gotten used to it?
navs 14y ago
Battery life on the new iPad is indeed ridiculous. I suppose the culprit may be the retina display. I barely get 2hrs out of it for anything serious.
cageface 14y ago
I don't get it either. A modern laptop is just as portable and far, far more capable. Actually after getting a nexus 7 recently I have no interest in a bigger tablet.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

Agreed. Also, you can't do serious web development on an OS that doesn't allow 3rd party rendering engines.

ConstantineXVI 14y ago

I ended up getting a Chromebook a few weeks ago as a cheap machine to hack and do interviews while my MBA was in for repairs. For not being much higher on the food chain than a thin client, it's pretty much perfect. Chrome's identical to Win/Mac/Linux Chrome (inspector and all); SSH works fine, "search" key (fka capslock) can even be remapped to ctrl.

lucaspiller 14y ago
Interesting... What is the battery life like on it?
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  On the Samsung 550 (the only model my Best Buy had on the floor), didn't do any scientific testing but definitely in the 5-7hr range. It's noticeably thicker than a MBA, but not by much; and IMHO the 12" (matte!) size is the sweet spot on a laptop. Unsure on exact specs, but plenty fast enough. Keyboard and click pad are solid as well (best pad I've ever used outside of Apple). Provided you can work within it's niche, it's a great machine for $450. Was sad to have to take it back (not in a position to throw money around I don't absolutely have to).
  - curtin 14y ago
    So you bought it and then returned? Best Buy allows you to do this?
wickedchicken 14y ago
+1 to the chromebook. It's now my main laptop (although I can't run windows/mac based linux software on it yet :/
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  I can't see it becoming a main machine for me as-is. CrOS's laser focus on "the cloud" makes it extremely well suited for remote-centric work; if you can't commit 100% to doing everything from browser windows and remote terminals, you'll be happier with a more standard PC. For me, it's perfect as a backup but I'm too much of a control freak to be wholly reliant on a remote server.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  I just got a chromebook and I HATE it. The software is ok, but I hate the hardware. Particularly the touchpad. Just awful. Doesn't do tap-to-click correctly and scrolls poorly. I couldn't recommend it to anyone for anything other than a couch surfing machine, but then again, a tablet is just as good for that.
  - wickedchicken 14y ago
    Which one did you get? The Samsung 550 is the one to get IMO, the touchpad is pretty great.
paulgb 14y ago
Is SSH built-in, or an app?
- holtr94 14y ago
  If you enable dev mode you get access to a full linux environment, including ssh. You can even use ssh without dev mode, but it is crippled.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  There's a built-in SSH as part of crosh[0] and a more usable version paired with a HTML-based terminal emulator as an app[1] [0] basic troubleshooting shell in CrOS [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhomp...

bergie 14y ago

This is essentially what I'm doing these days. I wrote quite a lot of my upcoming CoffeeScript book (and its example applications) this way in Istanbul. Spending the morning in one waterpipe cafe, then afternoon in another. Battery life was the main hindrance, as I would always need to find a place with a convenient power socket at least for the other half of the day. If somebody made an MBA-like, Linux-capable machine with a full-day battery, I'd buy it no matter the cost.

muellerwolfram 14y ago
I can recommend the lenovo x220 ultrabook. mine is lasting for 5-7 hours, but with additional battery packs, you can get it up to 24 hours apperently http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/lenovos-x220-thinkpad-with-24-hour-battery/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/lenovos-x220-thinkpad...
moconnor 14y ago
Have you looked at ultrabook-class laptops with removable battery packs? Might work out for you. How was Istanbul?
- bergie 14y ago
  Istanbul is awesome. Scenery is beautiful, and the waterpipe cafes don't mind if you sit there the whole day, as long as you order tea or something every now and then. Quite a lot of them have decent WiFi as well, though many sites are blocked in Turkey. This might give an idea of the places I worked in: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/sets/72157631399738304/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/sets/72157631399738304/ Slightly more expensive city to live in than Berlin, though. It felt a lot cheaper when I moved there for a while from Helsinki back in 2008.
  - phillmv 14y ago
    More expensive than Berlin? I just got back from a trip to both Berlin and Istanbul. As a tourist at least it's way cheaper. Is rent just that much higher?

moconnor 14y ago

My friend Matthias (wiemann.name) does that with his MB Air and he's totally happy with it. If you need web inspector, an iPad really isn't an option. I'd still recommend trying out a remote server, it's fun.

lazerwalker 14y ago
Yeah, I'd definitely love to try it at some point. Besides the cool stuff it enables you to do (like the data-crunching you mentioned in the article), there's definitely something really appealing about the minimalism of relying almost exclusively on command-line tools in a more meaningful way than just having a terminal window open as one of a dozen apps in a window manager.

peteretep 14y ago

Seconded. 11" MB Air feels just as portable as my iPad. That said, the author seems to be getting positive effects from using exclusively remote tools... Like you, I see draw backs. I don't want to use vim as my primary editor, and I hate that I can't have tabs loading in the background in the web browser, or can't be on Skype while doing something else...

moconnor 14y ago
I skype through my iPhone while coding on my iPad all the time. The browser is the weakest part of the iPad experience though, it's true.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- nvmc 14y ago
  So the solution to sub-par multitasking is to buy a small iPad to use at the same time?
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Everyone has a phone, for most definitions of everyone. Skype works on every major smartphone platform (and several minor platforms). What would I use my phone for if not for holding a conversation?
    - nvmc 14y ago
      Because Skype also works perfectly fine on an iPad. An additional device is not a replacement for multitasking.
      - freehunter 14y ago
        And phone calls to landlines work perfectly fine on my desktop. I still have a desk phone sitting next to me though.

maguay 14y ago

I work everywhere with my MacBook Air 13" (from the bus, on benches in parks and malls, in my inlaws-to-be's living room, at restaurants), and with a 3G aircard, it's great. Though I did the same with my iPad 1, and it was mostly great too, depending on what I needed to do.

devgutt 14y ago

Additionally you can have 7 hours battery in the 13" MB Air against 5 hours from 11".

eropple 14y ago
I get 7 hours on my retina MBP, too. At 4.6 pounds, it's about as portable as anything I've ever used--I actually sold my 11" Air a little while ago because I was annoyed with the small screen.

taude 14y ago

When you can get an 11" MB AIR for $1000, using an iPad in this way feels "forced". I like his thoughts on Win 8 Surface tablet, though: side-by-side apps, better integrated keyboard, likely better multitasking (or at least a simpler way of switching between apps....

sp332 14y ago
When you can get an iPad for half that price, it doesn't seem "forced".
- untog 14y ago
  How much is $500 worth to you in terms of productivity, though? Depends on how much you earn per hour, but for a lot of people, $500 isn't much in the big scheme of things.
  - sp332 14y ago
    For $500 I could put up with some level of annoyance... $500 buys a lot of Linode 512 time.
    - arbitrarywords 14y ago
      $500 / (10 hrs/week * 50 weeks) = $1/hr. I'd only worry about it if your hourly rate approaches this.
      - freehunter 14y ago
        Alternatively, since we're drawing arbitrary amounts of time from the air, $500 / (10 hrs/week * 1 wk) = $50/hr. Meanwhile I'm paying two months of rent with the money I saved not buying a Macbook. How much time/money do you save when you don't have to wait for your code to compile before you can leave, or when you don't have to worry about making sure you save before your battery dies? I can spend $1000 on a laptop and work on it with the same constraints as any workstation, or I can put that $500 to several years of Linode and have money left over to type "go build massive_project" then meet my girl for a coffee while it chugs away in the background without a worry.

rahoulb 14y ago

I use an iPad in the same way, after switching from an MBA. the big advantages of the iPad are inbuilt 3G (I get 5gb/month for peanuts on a special offer from a couple of years ago), battery life (I never got more than 3 hours from the MBA), I move more (lean over to do some browsing and shift my position or walk around). And most importantly I am far less likely to switch to HN or some other distraction. The big disadvantage is the lack of a web inspector, but I'm mainly working on back-end stuff at the moment.

Aykroyd 14y ago

Agreed. It seems like you'd also want the ability to occasionally hook up to a bigger monitor. Do you find the 11" screen bothers you at all, or have you gotten used to it?

navs 14y ago

Battery life on the new iPad is indeed ridiculous. I suppose the culprit may be the retina display. I barely get 2hrs out of it for anything serious.

cageface 14y ago

I don't get it either. A modern laptop is just as portable and far, far more capable. Actually after getting a nexus 7 recently I have no interest in a bigger tablet.