We're out here covering the expo for AUPN and an the Apple staff at the booth don't really give you enough time to really play around with any of the demo machines.
We do have an article posted which is our take on the machine from a photographer's perspective.
But WILL it run on the Air, or will there be some non-gfx-card compat problem?
I don't mind if it is slow. I just want the ability to a) show a library (could export to iphoto if it cant) and b) print photos from within Aperture (my printer sits far away from the desktop mac Pro and wires/wireless. I think in some ways it IS the target market. It's not designed as a primary computer but to sit alongside a grunty desktop mac. I aim to replace my powerbook G4 which does this now, and the Air is higher specced and most of all lighter.
It's the exact same graphics processor as the MacBook, the GMA X3100. Aperture runs on the MacBook, so it should run on the MacBook Air. I bet it'd work great with the solid-state drive, a mere extra $1000.
Thanks, I see, the X3100 is not a discrete card but integrated with shared memory. That, coupled with the 2GB RAM limit, really makes me think Aperture won't be speedy and reduces the attractiveness of the Air to me. I'll wait for first hand reports before coming to a conclusion, and might have to wait until Aperture 2.0 to be sure.
I would say the MBA would be fine for travelling. It's not going to replace your 'real' laptop or your Mac Pro but it's not meant to be a desktop replacement. The specs while looking low are next gen so a quick look at the 1.6GHz isn't the only thing to look at. I've got a MacBook 2.2 (well, the wife has) and although yes the screen is small for Aperture, it's perfectly usable when we travel to do what I need to do until I get home. My guess is that a lot of photographers will love this and I've already got my order in. It's hard enough to travel with a decent SLR camera and lens without lugging my MBP 17" so this is ideal for me. Just use it for the job in hand, then export the project back to your work horse.
Has anyone reading this actually used a MacBook Air with Aperture installed? I'm wondering because I bought one yesterday, and everything was great at first - but when I installed Aperture and ran it, as soon as I launch the application it crashes (every time). The other two apps I've installed run fine - iWork, and OmniFocus.
I tried many things - including downloading the Aperture update from Apple, reading up online, etc. Then today, spent almost the entire day in the Apple store at the Genius Bar trying to figure it out. We removed and re-installed Aperture; and even did a 3 hour re-install of OS/X. Nothing helped. Then at the end of the day, when I started considering swapping to a new machine, they noticed that Apple's literature for Aperture does not directly list the MacBook Air. Hopefully because it's new.
HOWEVER, MacBook Air does use shared memory for the video subsystem; so it's possible there's a major bug in the early release; SURELY Apple plans to support Aperture. I wasn't able to swap the whole machine out because the other stores are already sold out. Anyway, given that likely at least 10,000 MacBook Air's have been sold in the first ~2weeks, I thought someone else reading this may have tried it?
I saw the MacBook Air at MacWorld, and reported on it on my blog (www.bellc.com/blog). I didn't see any of them running Aperture at the show, but they may have been; the crowds were too thick (as the photos on my blog show!) to get at all of the machines looking for it.
I sure hope this is some kind of a weird, one-off technical problem or malfunction with my machine; however the more I thought about it after today, the less that makes sense. Since I can't get my hands on a second MacBook Air yet, it was a consensus that my best debug approach would be to put the question up in a forum, and see if anyone else has been successful with Aperture on a MBA.
Ha! I've found the answer by looking over the other threads. It was a simple matter of directly downloading and installing the v1.56 update; for some reason Leopard's auto-updater version crashes. Here's the link, from the other thread:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/aperture156update.html
I now have Aperture running on my MacBook Air! It looks glorious, i will report back after using it a bit, comparing it's speed to Aperture on a MacBook Pro, etc.
This was a very Windows-like experience... I spent almost 24 hours figuring this one out:( But I do really like this MBA... we'll see how it goes from here. Looks like there are some great forums for support here.
I have had the latest Aperture 1 working on my Mac Air as I bought it pre-installed and it works very nicely indeed (provided I have not got to many other appications running at once it is even quite quick)
I am looking forward to the day I can run Aperture 2.0 (I bought the upgrade as the rebate procedure for the free update from Aperture 1 to 2 was so painful - thanks Apple NOT)
I will probably be looking forward to running Aperture 2.0 for some time as I do not have the disk space on my SSD drive to copy the install package and then have enough to actually complete the install and get this I have no CD drive on my air.
Now why would this be a problem you ask? You I am sure know that the Mac Air has remote disk and thus I could simply put the Aperture install disk into the DVD drive of my desktop mac which is nearby...
Well it turns out that Aperture 2.0 cannot be installed from a network drive and yes that includes the much touted remote disk. (Thanks again Apple- NOT)
So either I shell out for the external drive or I spend some hours freeing up disk space and copy the multi gig install pack onto my hard drive or a memory stick etc etc etc.
Would it be too much to ask that a string of Apple Products be compatible with each other?
www.3x.cc has some of my Mac air Aperture 1 jpegs on it and as you can see I am working with some pretty big files so my speed comments are probably valid for most users.
The small screen, integrated graphics and 2 GB RAM maximum will always make MB Airs a very limiting platform for Aperture usage. However, if one accepts the limitations the Air is one more usable platform: way portable, and although the display is small it is
much larger than any DSLR's display. 🙂
In addition to the above, my biggest complaint for images work with v1 of the Air is no Firewire or EC card slot. USB 2 is a very poor connection to try to move images across.
I have Aperture 2.0.1 running on my MacBook Air. While not ideal, it works well for an "on the road" machine. In fact since there is an issue with the EOS-1 Ds Mk III RAW files on my MacPro 8-core, I need to use the MacBook Air for quite a bit of work. It is far from ideal in terms of speed, butt he screen is pretty good in terms of colour and contrast, it doesn't freeze on me and actually allows me time to have a coffee between edits 🙂 The challenge is the amount of disk space that a shoot generates (especially with the 1Ds). I regularly have to run files out onto the external drive to be sure. However as an "out and about" machine it does very well.
