Easter Sunday - New MacBook

New Macbook day

After much deliberation I finally ordered a new M3 MacBook Air from Amazon last week after I spotted a 16Gb/512Gb version going for £100 off list price. I am not sure why this model was available as Amazon typically only have the 8Gb versions available. There was only one colour available, Starlight, but for the reduction in price I decided I could live with something other than Space Grey for a change.

I was given Tuesday 26th as the delivery date but after waiting all day for a delivery up to 10pm the status of my order was changed to “We will email you when we have a delivery date”. This was more than a little disappointing. I waited a couple of days before contacting Amazon for an update and after a brief call I was told it would be with me this week but no precise date was given. I was surprised then to get an update on Friday morning to say it had been despatched and would be with me by 7pm, it arrived safely around 5pm.

I have been a happy owner of a 16" M1 MacBook Pro (which I upgraded to from an original M1 MacBook Air with 8Gb) for the last couple of years and really didn’t need an upgrade but I longed for something a little more portable than the 16" which is a wonderful powerful laptop but not exactly featherweight. Practically I am hopeful that the M3 Air will deliver similar performance to my Pro in a much more lightweight package, especially as my workload doesn’t involve a lot of processor heavy applications. I am also hoping that the second hand re-sale value of the MacBook Pro will pretty much cover the cost of the brand new Air.

I have had a couple of days with the new Air now and have mostly got things setup how I like them again and as expected it really feels no different to the Pro apart from when I pick it up from the desk to take it to another room. I don’t travel too much these days so carrying any distance is not a big issue but sitting with it on my lap feels so much more comfortable than the the 16" Pro.

Essential apps

For info the list of essential apps I have re-installed include :-

Obsidian Sync

One of the other things I have been changing in the last month is my Obsidian setup. Obsidian is an application that I have been trying to use for a long time but one of the main things that prevented my adoption was the fact that I wanted to be able to sync across Windows, macOS and iOS. Of course the simple answer to this would have been to subscribe to the Obsidian Sync service but I was loathe to start another subscription especially as I had yet to fully develop an essential workflow that relied on Obsidian.

Its fair to say that I am one of those types who prefer the configuration and setup of systems to actually using them and have tried and failed to make every type of note taking system and tool work for me. Having said that I have watched endless videos on note taking tools and Obsidian is the one that I have always thought should be able to serve my needs well.

Prior to this month I had been using the Obsidian Git plugin with a reasonable amount of success, but have had numerous instances of sync issues caused by opening my vault on my MacBook and iPhone or iPad when there were uncommitted changes which then required command line tinkering to rollback changes. This sort of irritation is a big negative factor in adopting a smooth workflow as you will appreciate, so last month I finally submitted to another subscription and signed up to the entry level $4 a month plan.

The impact was immediate. Sync now just works including plugin installations and configuration settings which didn’t sync at all with my Git based solution which meant I was constantly making changes to multiple devices to keep plugin settings synchronised.

I am very happy with this setup at the moment and will continue with it for a few months on the monthly plan and if it looks like becoming a permenant part of my toolbox I will sign up for the annual plan to save a few quid. If you havent tried it yet and have been testing across multiple devices with Git or iCloud sync then I would definitely recommend setting up a monthly Obsidian Sync subscription for a month or two to test it out.