New Apple baby in the house: MacBook Air
May 8, 2016
I’ve spent the last few days setting up my new 11″ Apple MacBook Air. After 4+ years with my Apple MacBook Pro it was time for an upgrade.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my old MacBook Pro. It’s been a very trusty companion. But it has a few hiccups. It is heavy, much heavier than my iPad Mini which I carry around me a lot. When I go travelling my Pro can literally be a pain on my back.
My old Pro is also getting a little slow – watching a Netflix movie means having to listen to the fan throughout the movie and even photo editing in Adobe Elements causes the fan to go off like crazy. It also happens when I have several apps open at the same time. And since I didn’t upgrade to Yosemite yet for fear of having the fan running ALL the time I have to live with not being able to use all the apps I want to. Yes, I know El Capitan is supposed to work on Macs as old as the 2007 models. But all in all I really wanted something new…
I decided on a MacBook Air because:
- it is fairly light (1,08kg) and fits in the laptop pocket in my Deuter backpack – the Pro didn’t, it was always in the main compartment in between my other stuff
- 256GB and 4GB RAM are sufficient for my requirements: getting my course homework done, photo editing, Netflix, browsing the net. I rarely play games. And I’ve never had more than 150GB in use on my 500GB MacBook Pro.
- I barely use the DVD-drive on my Pro thus I don’t mind a device without one
- I already have an iPad mini, an iPhone 5 and an Apple tv and I love how all these devices work together. I can start reading a book on my iPad mini and continue reading it on my iPhone. Besides, my Photoshop Elements is for Mac, I didn’t want to buy it again for a different system (it’s expensive enough!)
- I made a good deal ;-)
My MacBook Air is basically second-hand. Someone ordered it online, tried it for a short while and then returned it to the shop within the right of withdrawal. The shop set it up again and sold it to me for a slightly cheaper price. It has no outser signs of wear and I was allowed to give it a full test in the shop. As some of you gather from this, I bought it from a reseller and not via Apple directly.
The only thing I had to do afterwards was to upload my receipt to Apple to reset the 1-year Apple warranty back to zero. Apparently the return of a laptop within the time of withdrawal (2 weeks in Germany) is the only reason Apple agrees to reset the Apple warranty back to 12 months. I just did the upload of the receipt and I’m now awaiting the confirmation from Apple. I hope it works ;-)
A word of advice on the reset the shop did: they must have forgotten something as I only had 199GB free after setting it up. The system normally takes up around 20GB thus I didn’t know why there were over 50GB in use. There seemed to be remnants of another image on the hard drive and some Apple apps like Pages were installed in a “hidden” folder. Maybe the shop didn’t wipe it well enough. I decided to do another complete wipe last night and set it up again, first installing Yosemite and then upgrading to El Capitan. Et voilà, I now do have 237GB free and apps like Pages install itself in the right place! So if you buy an Apple product second hand or you consider selling one, make sure to wipe the harddrive – twice if necessary to make sure ALL previous data is gone.
I’m now happily setting the new baby up with Apps and programs. After that I will clear up my old Pro. Yes, I do know I could use time machine and the migration tool BUT I prefer having a clean start on a new laptop ;-)
x, D
I love the Harry Potter (HP) books, movies and the audio books read by Stephen Fry. The books were my first foray into reading English, recommended by my English teacher Mary at the Oxford College back when I was an AuPair in England. I’ve never really read any of the books in German – it’s a habit, I may be German but the English expressions of the HP world just sound much better than their German counterparts! And J.K. Rowling has a fascinating style of writing, I was never able to put the books down. I still remember when the last book came out in July 2007: I was studying so hard for my last exam at Uni and waited buying the book until after the exam – then read it through all afternoon, evening and finished it sometime early next morning. Yes, I do enjoy HP!
So for this year’s trip to London my friends and I planned to include a trip to the HP Studio tour. It was my first time and I was excited and giddy like a little kid :-) They had only opened up the Hogwarts Express section two weeks before.
Outside the HP Studio Tour – we had an early slot thus it was still empty
When you enter the hall through the doors on the photo above you first spot those massive portraits of pretty much every main character from the movies hanging up on the walls. I instantly fell in love with them, the clarity, the size, the colors. I’m a hobby photographer at heart and I love portraits ;-)
portraits in the entrance hall – I love that Bellatrix’s plain black & white, it suits her dark character
We arrived just in time for our slot. The first part of the tour is a short film starring main actors Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe introducing the tour. From there it goes through the massive doors into the Great Hall of Hogwarts.
There were costumes of characters of all 4 houses lined up on the sides and in the front were costumes of the teachers, for example Professor Dumbledore, Minerva McGonnagall und Hagrid. It was still fairly dark in the hall thus most of my photos didn’t turn out well…
Gamekeeper Hagrid’s costume.
Me in the Great Hall of Hogwarts
View down the length of the Hall
This part of the exhibition concluded the first 20min of the tour. While we had enough time to browse the hall, take our photos and sit down at one of the tables it still felt a little rushed. However, after this part we could take all the time we wanted for rest of the tour.
The next part was an exhibition of major sets and costumes from all movies: for example, the dress Hermione wore at the Jule ball, Snape’s outfit when he’s the boggard, the fireplace of the Leaky Cauldron, the Hogwarts gate, the Gryffindor common room and the boys dormitory with its four-poster beds, the Weasley’s kitchen and Dumbledore’s office. I could go on and on…
Dumbledore’s office
Boggart Snape’s outfit
We took ages looking taking it all in, the sets, costumes and little details, recognizing bits and pieces from every movie and taking photos. The green screen room is fun, you can ride in a blue Ford Anglia across the country side or on a broom in a Hogwarts robe. The staff will point out a small screen to you on which you can see yourself flying – either in the car or on the broom – through the country side or across the Themse.
Next up was the Hogwarts Express. It’s amazing, you walk through this little connecting hallway and turn into the next hall and there is platform 9 3/4 and the Hogwart’s Express waiting. It was even blowing steam and whistling every now and then :-)
The Hogwarts Express!
The carriages of the Hogwarts Express were decorated after the individual movies, so every compartment had certain items in them. For example, one of the windows had Lavender’s R & L with a heart drawn around on it. There were Luna Lovegood’s handbag and a few issues of the Quibbler in the next and Ron’s knitted jumper with the R, a Daily Prophet and sweets in another.
The opposite wall of the platform had more train compartments with green screen windows. Here you could sit down while a short film of the landscape the train runs through was played. It included a chocolate frog escaping through the window and a Ford Anglia passing by in the distance as well as – dementors! What we didn’t know was that the seat closest to the window could vibrate. Onscreen it looked as if the dementors were flying away and next second one suddenly comes up right next to the window and scares the sh** out of you as the seat vibrates at the same time – I actually screamed the first time!
An obligatory photo on platfrom 9 3/4
After a quick butterbeer (yummy!) in the backlot cafe we went on to tour some of the outside buildings: No. 4 Privet Drive, the Knight bus, Hogwart’s bridge and the home of Harrys’ parents from Godrick’s Hollow.
Me on the Hogwart’s bridge
The tour went on through the props department, accompanied by short films of Warwick Davies explaining how for example certain masks were made and applied. Here we also saw Hippogriff Buckbeak, Aragog the spider as well as a Thestral and her foal.
Buckbeak
The last bit before the model of Hogwart’s castle was a trip down Diagon Alley – past Flourish & Blotts, Ollivander’s wand shop, The Wizarding Weasly’s shop with it’s puking pastils and a Quidditch supply shop.
Model of Hogwart’s castle – it’s massive!
The room I really loved was right before the exit to the shop. It was made to look like Ollivander’s wand shop and had – according to a sign – over 4000 cardboard wand boxes, each with the name of a person involved the movies: actors, directors, prop masters…whether in front of or behind the camera, they all had one of those boxes with their name on it. We spent quite some time trying to find the main cast.
The wand boxes
It was a great day for all of us. My friends Jaqueline, Claire, Robin, Kathrin and me liked it. Yes, it is expensive and not as easy to get to but if you enjoy the movies and books it’s definitely worth a trip. I know a few people who have been more than once and I admit I’m planning a second trip when I’m heading back to London sometime next month.
xx, D
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