Oh MacBook Air, why do you frustrate me so?

Trust me, I have wanted the MBA since the first Intel MacBook Pros graced the stage. Its been a long, long wait as my PowrBook G4 12" aged disgracfully.

So two months of MacBook Air use... there are many, many things I like. Things I don't like that MacWorld would never publish

• It always defaults to Wireless even when the USB Ethernet dongle is plugged in. Now my PowerBook always used to default to the Ethernet when it was plugged in. This is painful because in my office you have to have VPN running over wireless. I have sat there on many occasions wondering my Outlook was not returning... just to find out that I had not switched off the wireless. Regression #1.
• Leave the bloody windows where they were! I loved the fact that my PowerBook, when plugged and unplugged from an external monitor remembered where I had placed windows. My MBA does not. I unplug and the laptop screen gets my widows. Thats fine. Now when I plug my external monitor back in... all the windows are still on the laptop screen. I now have to move them all over. Regression #2.
• Battery life 5 hours. You're kidding right? Typical use about 3.5 hours. This is just about the same as my PowerBook. I take the same set of flights between the West and East coasts in the USA. Both machines will run out of juice before I get to JFK. It would be tough to say Regression #3, but what the hell. At best its the same.
• MySQL. Ok can't blame Apple for this one, but what the hell, 10.5 has been out for a age and still no support for 10.5. Its a pain in the blinking neck, especially since there is no Oracle for Intel/Apple either... and Rosetta does not seem up for the job.
  

The 51st first date

Well it feels like it anyway. The MBA seems to be mostly running, I have had a few "sad macs" anymore then that will sum up the total for my 12" PowerBook over a four year period.

What i like

• The track pad is out of this world. The gestures just work. Two fingers to scroll down a window, three finger to go back a web page... I can feel how little I have to move the mouse to get stuff done!
• Its thin and sexy, but seems to have a similar cost of ownership as a super model / super car. It feels like I'm spending as much time under the hood as driving!
  
• Microsoft Office 2004 works just fine under Rosetta. I see all the sites complaining about loss of Macros in Office 2008, so I think I'm happy to keep the macros and run under emulation.
  

What I would like to see improve

• It takes a long, long time for it to pick up a signal on the airport. My PB picked up the SSID within seconds, the MBA take take 30-60 seconds.
• I'm not seeing the 5 hours, more like 3.5. I have to figure if its not going to sleep correctly.
• Can't get WebEx to work. I know others in my organization that have Intel Mac running 10.5.2 and it works and the PB running 10.4.11 is fine...
• Bigger keys, really! I guess I'm not the greatest of touch typists, but the PB 12" keys were close togther with no gaps... my finger feel like they are constantly going between keys. It may be also because the keyboard is so much larger
  

To be or not to be... that's the (Microsoft) word

The setup of the MacBook Air (or as I found others call it the MBA) continues. The latest problem appears to be Microsoft Office. After the Migration I was left with a bunch of what OS-X thought were shell scripts, as you can see below.



So I took the drastic step on reinstalling Microsoft Office. Drastic? Well I know what I pain in the backside it is to install and then apply the many, many patches... but I did and now my Office install looks like a correct Application from OS-Xs point of view.

Too orangey for crows..

So my battle with the MacBook Air continues. So lets recap

• Migration assistant failed leaving the Air in an undetermined state
• Remote Disk re-install of the O/S caused the Air to "sad mac"
• Purchased a SuperDrive which allowed me to re-install the O/S
• Further failures of the migration assistant

I tried one final O/S install and migrate last night. Left it running at midnight, with it saying it needed 7.5 hours... thinking that it may not be finished in time for me to take to work.

Wake up this morning with low expectations... but I was wrong, the migration succeeded! On first inspection, all appears to be Ok except for Microsoft Office 2004. Per the 80's UK advertisement for an Orange Drink called Kia Ora, I think Microsoft Office is just too orangey for the new MacBook Air...

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

The four riders of the MacBook Air

Gallop, gallop... so Mr. Jobs finally give me a choice to replay my trusty 12" PowerBook G4. I had my prediction, was I right?

• Similar form factor, thinner would be nice
• I would say a profound YES
• Proper keyboard, i.e. a MacPro not a MacBook keyboard
• Another YES
• Faster processors, my 1.33GHz is not coping well these days
• 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz... not Flash Lightening, but much faster
• 2GB Memory
• YES
• Better battery life (hell this is a wish-list)
• YES
• 2 x USB 2.0
• NO. This is a real bummer, one USB... dude come on!
• 1 x Firewire
• NO. How exactly am I going to transfer my account info?
• iSight built in
• YES
• DVD burner
• NO
• Line in
• NO
• Headphone
• YES
  

So I think I got the key things right. Love how it looks, not sure I love only one USB and no Ethernet... but as the acid test defines it, I order one as the Apple Store opened... :-)

My Network Storage ate my capacity

I love Networked Storage, whether its Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN). They have their pros and cons which I will not go into here. As I have written about before, I run lots and lots of Data Warehouses and they are a pain in the bottom for many reasons. In some ways a bit like owning a super car like a Ferrari

• Their initial cost of ownership is very high
• The older they get the less valuable they are, but you will never sell them
• They are often in the shop for expensive maintenance which always takes much longer than the technician told you it would
• Often are found is a fetching red color
  

Ok so I'm stretching it here a little. Big warehouses are painful to backup and restore so I love Network Storage, mostly because they have cool Snapshot and Replication technology. All the vendors are different, some better than others. However, they all suffer from the same problem. Whilst they can do smart things at the storage layer (e.g. just replicate blocks that have changed), for me as a DBA, sometimes a backup take a long time and sometimes it don't. I chosoe backup, but it could be just about any operation. It just not obvious until I try it and then cross my fingers that I'm going to meet my SLA. Bang, the SLA gun went off again.

Well fear not, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. I spoke to a rather nerdy group of developers at the W- Hotel after a long day at Oracle Open World in November. They promised the world (well after a free cocktail I was listening, well kind of). They said their "open Beta" was running and they could

• Analyze an Oracle database
• Provide on-line analytics of growth and change rates
• And for me the killer application, show me how much space I could save over time with Thin Provisioning and other storage tricks
  

So, by the time I got back from Oracle Open World I had forgotten the flyers, free cocktails and the (rather nice) free t-shirt they gave me. Not sure what plucked my interest (Oh I know, another dead database that need recovery because the storage admin had not keep up with the storage consumption)... so I tried it out and it actually seems to work. Who are these people?

MyVirtual-Lab.com. So if you are inclined to give a bunch of Mission District (I'm guessing here) hipsters a spin you might start getting some decent answers to life, the universe and everything... well at least find out when your database will run out of space.

Speaking to them at Oracle Open World, they said they are working on a VMware, Viridian and Xen Capacity Planning tool. If its anything like their Database tools, it will be very sweet indeed.