The Plan

If I had to point to where the problem started, or at least where it seemed to manifest most often, I’d probably go with Address Book.

My OCD flares up especially violently when it comes to the keeping of contacts—whether it is in Mac OS X’s Address Book, which syncs with my iPhone and my iPad, or in Gmail, which I use for work email and as a secondary personal address. I like everything to be in sync and I don’t mind taking the time to do this by hand. I know there are software and syncs and fancy ways to keep everything in order, but I don't fully trust them, so every couple of months, I line everything up straight and go person by person and just make sure its all—right.

The only problem with my system?

I’m married.

Correction--I’m married to someone who does not put the same—emphasis—on virtual address book stability.

Long ago, I stopped entering people into my phones and devices as nicknames and relatives as “Grandma” and “Uncle.”

My wife?

Not so much.

Compounding the problem is the fact that she uses Gmail—which up until not too long ago, saved every person she emailed in the same amorphous spot. Sure, it differentiated “My” contacts from “All” contacts, but she never took the time to prune, and so naturally, she wound up with a wildly overgrown heap of upper and lowercase names, nicknames, cursewords, and handles, with no rhyme or reason to any of it.

(And please know—this is a professional woman we’re talking about. She’s got 300+ contacts, most of which are in the medical field. It baffles me, but at the end of the day, it works for her.)

But as a couple, we share contacts. She texts her cousin. I text her cousin. She emails her mom, I email her mom. Making duplicates of everyone would be stupid, but at the same time, I’m unwilling to have “Salami” in my phone all because that’s what Danielle used to call this person in grade school, someone that I am now friends with too.

Address Book on the iMac we share was split into two groups: Dole’s Contacts and Lou’s Contacts. For me, everything synced wirelessly, via MobileMe, but Danielle’s didn’t. It updated whenever she synced her phone with iTunes. Me being so contact-conscious, I would make sure that when adding someone to my address book on my phone, I was adding them to “Lou’s Contacts” and not hers. If it were a mutual friend or family member, I would add them to “All.”

Again--her, not so much.

For her, contacts would appear and disappear, mostly because she was adding people in the wrong place, or have entries wiped out when I re-synced, not knowing she'd made changes.

I could now begin to tell you about how a similar problem affected our bookmarks, but besides boring you, I’d probably make a solid case RE: my needing psychiatric help.

Long story short, it became clear that we needed our own computers.

But wait--separate?

For all those members of happy couples out there reading this and nodding, yes, you can say it out loud:

I need my own computer.

It’s okay to say it. Sure, you made a big deal of integrating your DVD collections and your book collections and your laundry and your lives, but it’s okay—you can need things to be separate some times.

Since getting the iPad last April, I’ve told anyone who would listen how it could easily replace a laptop. And I still think it can, at least, for a certain user base. But what it can’t do is be a—home—the same way a desktop or even a laptop can be. This fact is obvious when you unwrap your iPad and the first thing you do is—sync it to a computer.

So after a bunch of debating and processing and planning, Danielle and I decided that I would get my own computer. On it, Address Book would only contain my contacts. Safari would only contain my bookmarks. Mail would only show my mail. Instead of doing this odd shuffle involving flash drives and iDisk when I wanted to work on a document (which happens quite a bit when you’re a writer), no matter where I was, I’d open my computer and just—work on it.

So, okay, yup—it definitely needed to be a laptop.

(If you know me or spend any time reading Artificial Night, you already know I was only thinking about an Apple product, so I’m just going to proceed with that as a known)

Now, the MacBook Air had caught my eye when it was unveiled on 20 October 2010, as it probably did for many of you. It was/is sleek, slim, sexy, and once people got their hands on it, quite capable of some serious computing power, even if on paper the specs didn’t look mind-blowing.

I was still convinced that saving up and waiting for the iPad G2 was the smart bet.

Of course, that was before the I-need-my-own-computer revelation.

Seeing the MBA in person was what sold me. Tiny. Tiny. Because it’s cut on an angle, the front lip is seriously no thicker than your thumb and pointer pinched together. At its fattest in the rear, it is .03 mm taller than the iPhone 4. The 13” model is 1.4 lbs heavier than the iPad, but because the weight is spread out over more mass, when the lid is open, it seriously feels lighter than the iPad.

As you may be able to tell by now, I got it.

The MBA. 13”. 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Upgraded to 4 GB of memory.

And let me tell you, this thing sings.

A big concern I’ve seen voiced is the hard drive size—my model came with 128 GB of flash storage. And I agree, by 2011’s standards, that’s pretty small. But since flash storage is 2x as fast as a traditional spinning-disc hard drive, things happen very—quickly, to say the least. And in terms of enough-space-to-keep-your-shit, here’s the thing (and I understand in advance that this only applies to people with a separate “home” computer)—as part of our agreement, Danielle and I said that the iMac would still hold all of our music (mostly mine), movies (again, mostly mine), and photos (a 50-50 split). Because all of my other information would live on my MBA and sync via MobileMe, this was perfect. As of right now, even with all the applications I use installed, I’m occupying a grand total of 18.98 GB. I’ve got 102 GB free.

And should the day come when I run out of space, well, considering one can purchase a 1 TB external hard drive that weighs .44 lbs. for $99, well, let’s just say I’m not too worried.

Also part of the deal Danielle and I made was that I would hand the iMac over to her in pristine condition, which meant doing something I’d wanted to do for quite some time—restore it back to factory settings.

At first, the “restore back to factory” as it came to be known was an area of concern for me. But then I realized a few things. First, Apple’s supplied software would be reinstalled with no problem. Of the software I’d installed, the biggies were also not a problem, since I had all of the installation CDs. Software that I’d purchased online wouldn’t be too difficult either, as I still had all of my registration codes in my email. My personal data (contacts, email, bookmarks) were all saved on multiple devices and in the cloud, thanks to MobileMe. It basically came down to two areas of concern—iTunes and iPhoto.

I’ve got a large music collection. I’m notoriously thorough when it comes to playlists and album artwork (I’m sure you’re shocked by this). I’ve got a large photo collection. This too, is cataloged nicely. While I knew I had the music and the pictures themselves backed up in two different spots, I was concerned that my playlists and the artwork I’d added and the photo albums and the galleries, stuff that I’d put a lot of hours into, would not be preserved.

(I admit, I’m giving myself away here as a novice. I don’t care.)

Except another part of me felt like dropping the Music folder and the Pictures folder right where they normally go would put everything back the way it was.

And of course, it did.

(And yes, it worked out like that because it’s a Mac.)

I couldn’t have completed this process without the help of friends (thanks Adam and Pete!), who talked this whole thing out like, five times, with me and helped me to come up with this fun little to-do list:

The Plan

-Get MBA
-Sync it to MobileMe
-Backup the iMac to the Time Capsule
-Boot the iMac from the Snow Leopard DVD
-Backup the iMac HD to the external HD using Disk Utility
-File>Create Image>HD Name>Read Only
-Test Candybar? (Eject SL DVD, Mount .dmg of backup on external ((don't validate)), get rid of Candybar, reinstall it)
-Eject external HD (from Disk Utility)
-Restore iMac to Factory
-Turn off screensaver
-Software Update
-Reinstall software/apps
-Update all of those
-Mount external HD
-Restore iTunes
-Restore iPhoto

The only other issue was the time it would take to do all of this. That was solved by leaving a day during my Winter Break vacation solely devoted to “The Plan” and occupying the time spent in-between each step to the first season of Mad Men. At the end of the day, the whole process couldn’t have been easier. I plan on making a yearly tradition of it.

Of course, as one would expect, the iMac is running super fast now. Considering I bought the machine in 2007, it feels good to type that.

As for the MBA, well, what can I say?

I love it.

I love the portability. I love the speed. I love the instant-on feature. I love not having Flash installed.

(As of this piece going live, I’ll have had the MBA for three weeks, and I can honestly say the only times I even realized I didn’t have Flash installed was for ESPN highlights and that was solved by the Google Chrome “trick” outlined here. I even uninstalled Flash from the iMac.)

But most of all, I love knowing that my 147 Address Book entries match the 147 contacts in my Gmail, which match the 147 contacts on my iPhone.

Sure, I (read as: we) paid a nice chunk of change for that peace of mind.

But as all married couples learn, especially those of the “newly-” variety, sometimes you can’t put a price on happiness.