I’m a pretty minimal user of the mobile phone, and don’t use my iPod that much either … so it really would be an expensive self-indulgence to buy an iPhone and contract. OK, ok, let’s be honest, it’s still very tempting! But I’ve manfully managed to resist, and I’ve put some of the consequent savings together with some computing money from the Faculty to buy a MacBook Air instead. (Is there a financial fallacy buried in there somewhere? Well, let’s not examine that too closely, …) It will be genuinely useful to have a much more portable laptop.
It would be really boring to bang on here about what a great machine this seems to be, even after just a few hours close acquaintance. I’m perhaps not entirely convinced by the keyboard (which could be even quieter for library use???). But the screen quality is stunning. And it remains a surprise to the hand every time you lift it that something that — when opened up in use — looks so sizeable and well-built is so light. It’s pretty speedy too — indeed, it seems to compile the LaTeX file for my Gödel book about as fast as a MacBook Pro whose clock-speed is 50% more.
I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. So I’ll try not to throw it away.