1. Guy is shopping for a computer for dev use.
2. Guy talks to sales consultant, explaining what he needs to do, and is told "get a MacBook Air".
3. Guy discovers MacBook Air isn't capable of handling the workload he's putting on it, it overheats and shuts down CPU cores.
4. Guy files dispute.
5. Apple says "yeah, the the MacBook Air can't handle this type of load".
6. Dispute judge says sales consultant shouldn't have recommended the MacBook Air, then.
7. Dispute judge says guy can return MacBook Air for a full refund since he was misled into believing it could handle the work he needed to do.
Moral of the story: an ultra-thin laptop which explicitly trades off performance for size probably isn't the ideal machine for compiling lots of stuff while also powering a monitor the size of a breakfast table, and salespeople who tell you it is shouldn't be trusted.
If it's not adequate for the tasks it shouldn't be promoted as such. The web page for the Macbook Air says it comes with Xcode, and runs a large external display. Perhaps I should have known better, but I tried to do my research. ;-)
I don't know what Xcode is doing, but I am certain even a very dedicated and proactive IDE spends most of the time waiting for keystrokes. There is _no_ reason why Xcode could cause this behaviour.
BTW, I am very happy with my Atom-based netbook for developing stuff with Django. There was a time when developers needed a lot of power, but those days are long gone and today it's the guys who do video editing/encoding, manipulate huge datasets and play games that need the big computers.
http://www.justice.govt.nz/disputes/about/default.asp for more information.
By "doesn't work" I mean that after turning on JavaScript for scribd.com, it tries to pop up a menu over the top of the Flash embed. But popping up anything on top of embedded Flash doesn't work in my browser (FF3 with Gnash on Linux), so I use AdBlock to block the embedded Flash. Then the download menu offers me a "PDF" option. Clicking on that ought to give me a file download; instead, it pops up a box prompting me to sign up for an account with Scribd.
In short, Scribd is a privacy-invading pain in the ass. So, is there a copy of the document that isn't on Scribd?
Anywho, 9 months was enough for me to realize I needed more juice and I've since graduated and hack from home full-time so I don't really need mobility. My new MBP+ Intel SSD is working just fine.
As for the MacBook Air.. I fell asleep with it one night and woke up to a cracked screen. After I got that fixed I took it to Apple for another issue and they returned it to me with a german keyboard. Huge mess up on their part, got it on the consumerist and such. They gave me a new one which I sold. /rant
Obviously they can't afford to just come clean and admit the issues.
I have both, and the first generation becomes completely unuseable rather quickly, external display or not, when you push it even mildly. (Youtube (non-HD) alone will do it.)
The second generation is much more resistant, but if the room gets hot, with my 24" external monitor connected, I do see the kernel_task slowdown at times. (E.g., when a Time Machine backup kicks in, with 10-12 apps going, mostly in the background, and I'm doing something mildly computation-intensive in the foreground.)
