For a long time my default recommendation for a Mac laptop has been the MacBook Air 13″ – it’s a good basic machine. With the 1.7GHz dual-core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD it comes to £866 ex VAT. The problem with the machine is that it only has one Thunderbolt port, which means you have to choose between video-out and gigabit networking, or else buy a docking station or Thunderbolt Display. Since gigabit networking is mostly non-negotiable, you’re obliged to spend around another £150 (ex. VAT) on a dock, and then possibly another £20 on a USB or Thunderbolt ethernet dongle in case you go somewhere where you need wired networking. Total price, around £1040 + VAT = £1250.

I wasn’t keen on the Retina MacBook Pro 13″ for a few reasons – chief amongst them being that I wasn’t sure the screen was justified, and that the machine was up to driving it without a discrete GPU. Well, having used retina screens for a while now myself, I think they’re more than justified – they’re so much easier on the eyes that I think anyone who is using computers for extended periods should have one. And having played with a 13″ rMBP, and spoken with folks who have one, it seems my concerns on the GPU front were overstated. And most importantly, the rMBP comes with two Thunderbolt ports, which means you can have both gigabit networking and video without a dock!

In terms of spec, the entry-level CPU is fine for most people – a 2.6GHz dual-core i5. I don’t see the point in upping this to the i7, as all that adds is a slightly higher base clock speed and the mostly useless hyper-threading virtual cores. So a machine with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD comes to £859 ex. VAT, which is actually cheaper than the similar-spec MBAir… Throw in the £20 gigabit dongle and we’re at a total of just under £1060 inc VAT.

Oopsie. :/

It’s been a while since I added anything here… oops.

Well, a few items of note:

• Yet another zero-day Flash exploit.
• Some useful notes from Apple about removing certain types of adware.
• Why avoiding MacKeeper is a good idea.

All of these relate to security matters, and sadly none of them are really new – it’s much of the same-old same-old.

I am firmly of the opinion that nobody in their right mind installs Flash on their computers – there is just too long a track record of security holes in that product to justify its existence. I don’t have it on any of my Macs – I do have an install of Chrome though, which comes bundled with a Flash install – so in Chrome I have a Flash-blocking extension installed! My default browser is Safari, but if I need to look at a Flash site I can fire up Chrome and then explicitly allow the specific Flash object to run. This doesn’t happen often, and it takes a lot to get me to do this. Apologies to those who sent me a Flash based Christmas e-card, but I didn’t actually look at them.

On a related matter to Adobe Flash, I’d not recommend installing Adobe Reader either. On the Mac Preview is mostly ‘good enough’, and on Windows Foxit Reader is free and excellent. The Adobe Reader web browser plugin is another gaping security hole which has been exploited time and again. Better to just not install it.

As for the adware/scareware field, these problems are generally self-inflicted. If you think there is a problem with your Mac, don’t install some random program – ask your computer support officers for assistance. And don’t install random browser plugins which offer to help you find downloads of Game of Thrones episodes (you know who you are!)

Continuing on the security thread, two final notes:

• With the release of Yosemite, Apple is now only supplying security patches for OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and up. Anyone still on 10.6 or 10.7 needs to update, stat.
• I’ve been evaluating the campus copy of Symantec Endpoint Protection for OS X for a while. While anti-virus software remains of dubious use on OS X, the University has a sensible policy of requiring some sort of AV to be installed on computers. Typically I’ve recommended ClamXAV on OS X, since it’s unobtrusive and free. However SEP seems much less terrible than it used to be, and should it continue to not kill my Macs I’ll be less uncomfortable installing it in future. Please note my very purposely constructed statement!

Finally, in a day or so I’ll be updating my ‘recommended’ laptops list. Rumours about the future of the MacBook Air have had me thinking about the entry-level laptops.