With school resuming very shortly, it made sense to purchase a MacBook Air in favor of the MacBook Pro I currently owned. It was lighter, thinner, faster, and not to mention more fun to use. More on that later, though.

Two weeks passed between the day I sold my MacBook Pro and the day that my MacBook Air arrived at my door. In the interim, I was left using my iPad as my main machine, since my MacBook Pro was the only full computer I owned.

Yes, my productivity greatly decreased, yet the experience as a whole wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be.

Many regard the iPad as being a device for content consumption ((I hate to use the word consumption in that context.)) and not for content creation. After using the iPad for four weeks, I beg to differ. I wrote articles, browsed the web, and edited photos and videos on my iPad. For an entire half month. Without any problems.

Using a touchscreen and touch keyboard does, however, make the former tasks take longer. It took me almost double the time to write an article on my iPad as it would on say, a MacBook Air. I did have the option to connect a wireless keyboard via Bluetooth, but I didn’t want to carry around an extra peripheral.

The point is that while the iPad may not be the preffered device for day-to-day tasks and activites, it can work as one. It has been done.

I don’t believe that less is more, rather I think less is less and more is more. And I want less. This website details common things we think we need, but in reality they’re only things we want.

My favorite would be the ‘dumb phone’ picture. As much as I love my iPhone, sometimes I wonder what life is like on the other side. In reality, all I need to do is text and call people in my close circles. However, I want the ability to check email and/or Twitter wherever I am, whenever I want to.

We live in a world of instant gratification where when we want something, we can get it — almost immediately. In some cases, this can be a very good thing. But in many cases, this spoils us. Do we really need the new iPhone 5 when it’s released? Nope. The iPhone 4 works just fine, but most of us will upgrade because we want it. Now.

This is the first time I’ve considered sharing my homescreen, because this is the first time I’ve ever changed the layout. For the longest time, I didn’t want to touch the default layout of the apps. It wasn’t that I particularly liked the default layout, it was that, since my first iOS device, that’s the way the apps have always been organized.

I didn’t plan on changing that anytime soon, either. Currently, my iPhone 4 is running on the beta version of iOS 5. And for whatever reason, when the third iteration of the beta was released for download, I couldn’t upgrade. I figured that it wasn’t a huge deal, and that I’d just wait until the final version of iOS 5 came out to upgrade.

A few days ago, iOS 5 beta 2 expired. I had no prior notice to this, and right when the clock hit midnight, my iPhone restarted, and upon restart greeted me with the ‘Welcome to iPhone’ screen. I wasn’t sure what caused this, and I proceeded with the setup.

When it came time to restore from backup, I chose to sync with iTunes. But the backup appeared to be corrupted. I had no working iCloud backup, either. I knew what this meant: a clean install. Ironically, I had just posted about clean installs earlier that day.

While what happened was very unfortunate, it gave me a chance to start ‘fresh’ and download only the apps I needed. It’s at that point when I decided to re-organize my homescreen, according to the apps I used the most.

What made me realize that I should re-arrange my homescreen was that, when my iPhone first booted after the clean install, none of the apps I regularly used were on the homescreen. Even without the clean install, they wouldn’t be on the homescreen. Previously, I would have to swipe at least one page to find the apps I wanted.

It was time to change that. After spending countless hours downloading and re-arranging apps, I present to you my homescreen, current as of August 8, 2011.

The Apps

As mentioned above, I placed my most-used apps on my homescreen. I then arranged them according to their purpose.

The First Row: The Basics

The first row was the only row I didn’t touch. Messages, Calendar, Photos, and Camera are among my most-used apps and it didn’t make sense to change something I’m already used to and pleased with.

The Second Row: Social Networking

My second most-used apps are the ones with a social component, otherwise known as ‘social networking’ apps. These days, I really only use four social networks – Instagram, Twitter, Path ((could be considered an anti-social networking app, depending on how you look at it)), and Google+.

The Third Row: Writing

Wordpress, Instapaper, Reeder, and Evernote. While out on the go, I regularly check my RSS feeds, and when I have time, catch up on my Instapaper. Wordpress and Evernote are there when I either have ideas for new articles or actually have time to write one while I’m out.

The Fourth Row: Utilities

Pretty self-explanatory. I check the weather daily, and Shine does the best job informing me of such. I use the Clock app for an alarm, and the Contacts app to look up email addresses and phone numbers. I keep my 3G off when I don’t need it, thus regularly needing to use the Settings app.

The Background

This seems to be an ongoing problem. I’ve never found the ‘perfect’ background. This time though, I think I’ve gotten darn close to it. There’s something I really love about a plain black background. At the same time, I also like a little bit of texture and color. Take a look at my background: best of both worlds.

And so…

That’s my current iPhone homescreen and the story of how it came to be.

The first generation MacBook Air was a joke. Although it was thin and light, it only had one USB port and little computing power. At most, it was just a netbook with a premium price tag.

When the new Airs were announced last October, the price tag met up with the features. In addition, two screen size options were announced, and both were thinner and lighter than the former models. For the first time, the MacBook Air could be used as a primary computer.

We’re now at generation three of the MacBook Air line. The design of the Air itself didn’t change a bit. ((Unless you count the addition of a Thunderbolt port.)) What did change are the internals of the machine.

And now, more than ever, it makes sense to buy yourself a new MacBook Air if you’re in the market for a new computer.

As Jason Snell puts it:

At just a hair below three pounds, the 13-inch MacBook Air will probably hit the sweet spot for users accustomed to larger computer screens. But for my money, the 11-inch Air is the real winner here. At $999, it’s now holding down the low-price end of the Apple laptop market. It will almost certainly be the laptop of choice for students, and they’ll love its light weight and small size.

Then upgrade it to an i7 processor with 4GB of RAM and a 256GB hard drive, attach it to an external display and peripherals via its Thunderbolt port, and you’ve got a tiny system with an amazing amount of power. The 11-inch MacBook Air might not be the perfect computer, but it’s as close to perfect as Apple’s ever come.

I’ll be entering high school next week, and the MacBook Air would make a perfect companion – specifically the 11-inch. All my textbooks are online, and I’ll have a gap of time after school that will give me a chance to work on homework online.

Even if you’re not a student, most people could get by with a MacBook Air. It’s thin, light, fast, and not to mention beautiful.

And for those still complaining about the lack of a CD/DVD drive, get over it. The world has moved on to using better and more efficient things like electronic distribution.

As Kyle Baxter explains:

It’s still a big hang up for non-geeks, who are afraid of being without an optical drive. Their fear may be irrational, because they likely don’t use their optical drive for much now, but it is a real fear and is holding the MacBook Air back from greater sales among new Mac users.

The future of notebooks is now.