Writing on the 11 inch MacBook Air

I’ve been able to write very little recently, both in my blogs and on my books.  While this is directly related to having taken up a job which is much more demanding on my time, it is also related to having access to the right tools for the job.

What are the right tools for writing?  I’m a huge fan of the iPad, as anyone who’s ever read any of my posts on iPadWatcher will have already deduced. For many months I’ve carried around an iPad and using it for just about all my computer related activities.   The iPad gets flying colors in just about all of them, except as a writing platform.  The right tool for writing long form articles and books is still one with a physical keyboard.  Being blunt, the best tool for writing is a notebook.

Having spent all that time using just an iPad I was understandably reluctant to go back to using a notebook.  I was not only used to the doing just about everything with a touch interfaces, but I was addicted to the always-on nature of the iPad.   It’s so quick to get access to your information if it is stored on an iPad, that you don’t really want to have it any other way.

After considering all of this for a couple of weeks I’ve moved my writing to an 11 inch MacBook Air. This little computer is a joy to use as it uses basically the same storage technology of the iPad and iPhone and so able to work within the same always-on conditions as supported by those devices.

As with any other Mac notebook, you don’t really ever need to shut it down, except when updating the system.  The fact that it uses an SSD which is similar to the one on the iPad gives any iPad or iPhone user the necessary reassurance to carry it around all day. The 11 inch version of the Air is extremely light, weighting just a bit over a kilo.  This makes it very easy to carry around the office or over to a coffee shop for some quiet writing.

There are some interesting writing software packages available for the Mac, several of them already on the Mac App Store.  When you combine one or more of these with the lightness, size, battery life and performance of this tiny computer you get a great tool for both the professional and the casual writer.