Trouble at mill...

Its an old northern English expression dating from the Industrial Revolution. Basically it dates from the good old days of bad cotton mill owners and workers with few rights. The trouble came when the workers figured out that as a group they could do something collectively...

So my MacBook Air arrived. It actually arrived when I was out of town and had to wait four very long days to get home and play. As usual the opening of an Apple product is always good, the delight as you open and peel and the amazement of how thin the Air is. First observations...

• Its amazingly thin
• Keyboard feel good
• Screen looks like it could be bigger... hummm Air v2.0?
• Its amazingly thin
  

The last point is worth repeating, its amazingly thin. So like all my other Macs, I started it up and then went through the migration from my trusty 12" PowerBook G4 and then the reality set in. The Air is just not ready. Its seriously 3-6 months too soon.

Why? So here's the last 24 hours synopsis

• Migration over wireless. My PowerBook has about 65GB of stuff I want to transfer. A bunch of Applications but lots of Data. I first kick off the migration, the estimate is 12 hours. Bad but Ok. Will be ready in time for me to go to work. Twenty minutes later, it says 14 hours, another 20 minutes 16 hours... so I kill the migration.

• Migration over USB/Ethernet. This looked better, first started at 4 hours, but 90 minutes into it its up to 19 hours and then progress stops. Time to start again me thinks.

• Left with a machine with some disk space chewed up. I think "lets start from scratch"

• Remote Disk. This just did not work for me. I wanted to reinstall OS-X so you have to install the "Remote Install Max OS X" utility on another system. I first tried my PowerBook running 10.4.11. The Air book got halfway through the boot and then I got a "sad mac". This was over Ethernet. Tried Wireless, same problem. So I then try a G5 iMac running 10.4.11... exactly the same problem, the Air "sad macs" halfway through the boot. Bugger.

• Ok, so go to the Apple Store, burn $100 on a Apple specific USB/DVD drive (yes, I know it called a SuperDrive). I finally got to install OS-X again. Now I'm making progress, only 24 hours so far.

• Try the migration again, again it dies partially through the migration and it claims I no longer have a startup disk. Bugger, another install is required.

• Install OS-X again

• Again at the Migration assistant... it now fails to connect to the PowerBook, despite multiple re-boot of both systems.

I have been an Apple fan for many, many years and have converted many, many people. I'm growing disillusioned by products that Apple appear to be releasing that I pay hard earned cash for that frankly are not ready. Don't start me on my 8 core MacPro.

I'll keep you updated. Maybe after I throw the Air under a cotton loom. Trouble at Mill indeed, and here's Monty Pythons version of events