After traveling mainly with the iPad for a while -- badly missing true multitasking, a great keyboard, and "grown up" applications -- I was thrilled when watching the Retina MacBook keynote presentation, and bought it as my on-the-go iPad replacement on the spot.
I just came home from my first trip, and am very happy with my new companion so far. However, there are two downsides in comparison to the iPad:
1- No built-in 4G, and tethering kills my iPhone battery
2- OS X eats up my data plan for breakfast
I plan on solving problem #1 with a 4G stick, so that's not a biggie.
But that won't solve problem #2. Once the Mac connects to the internet, a lot of services start syncing, looking for updates, and the like. 100 MB were gone in just a few minutes, thanks to LTE. I'm mildly disappointed that OS X doesn't prohibit such behavior out of the box, as it can tell I'm on a mobile data plan when connecting via Instant Hotspot.
In my desperation, I found out there's handy tool called "TripMode" (http://www.tripmode.ch) which allows you to choose which apps and services will be granted internet access. That helped out quite a bit.
But many websites still often eat up to a few megabytes for rendering a single page, which is quite insane -- could be those huge retina images. I found out Google has a Chrome extension called "Data Saver", which uses the same proxy-based compression technology that the iOS counterpart uses. Not bad, but it's only for Chrome -- so I have to choose between higher mobile data efficiency and longer battery life.
Any hints or tips how to use the Mac more data-plan-friendly when traveling?
I just came home from my first trip, and am very happy with my new companion so far. However, there are two downsides in comparison to the iPad:
1- No built-in 4G, and tethering kills my iPhone battery
2- OS X eats up my data plan for breakfast
I plan on solving problem #1 with a 4G stick, so that's not a biggie.
But that won't solve problem #2. Once the Mac connects to the internet, a lot of services start syncing, looking for updates, and the like. 100 MB were gone in just a few minutes, thanks to LTE. I'm mildly disappointed that OS X doesn't prohibit such behavior out of the box, as it can tell I'm on a mobile data plan when connecting via Instant Hotspot.
In my desperation, I found out there's handy tool called "TripMode" (http://www.tripmode.ch) which allows you to choose which apps and services will be granted internet access. That helped out quite a bit.
But many websites still often eat up to a few megabytes for rendering a single page, which is quite insane -- could be those huge retina images. I found out Google has a Chrome extension called "Data Saver", which uses the same proxy-based compression technology that the iOS counterpart uses. Not bad, but it's only for Chrome -- so I have to choose between higher mobile data efficiency and longer battery life.
Any hints or tips how to use the Mac more data-plan-friendly when traveling?
