

Ask HN: New MacBook Air or Windows laptop? - askar

Don&#x27;t wanted to sound silly but I&#x27;m confused a little bit and thought of clarifying it with the great HN community.<p>I have a 2008 MacBook Unibody and have upgraded to SSD and bumped up the memory and is doing decently well but after 5 years of usage and the lure of the lightness of MacBook Air and the lightning fast SSD speed I heard on the new beast from Apple I&#x27;m on the edge of shelling out some $$$$ but wasn&#x27;t sure if it&#x27;s worth it now.<p>My contention points were,
- current MacBook Unibody is running decently fine even though I crave for more speed
- had a Windows laptop at home that just got toast with a coffee spill<p>Don&#x27;t know if I should be shelling out $$$ on a Windows laptop for now and wait for another MacBook Air update later or just give the current MacBook to the family and move on with the new MacBook Air. I know the later would add one more $ sign to the bottomline.<p>For those of you who ask what I do with it, I do develop web and mobile apps (2 of them on the AppStore, free apps BTW) with it. So it&#x27;s putting to good use but not sure if I have to take the Windows route or the MacBook Air route, even though I personally prefer the MacBook Air route but would be nice to have a Windows machine at home too, rite?
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vxNsr
If you do dev for iOS, then you need a Mac, no two ways about it. doing iOS
dev on windows is really cumbersome and near impossible, if you're willing to
shell out the money get the best mac you can.

I usually recommend Windows because of price-convenience ratio, (meaning that
most people don't need the premium offerings of a mac and will be perfectly
satisfied with a $400 windows machine). But if your use case forces mac AND
you're used to it AND you have the money to spend -- then by all means go for
mac.

In terms of specs Mac is only slightly more expensive, so if you need/want
those specs once again it makes sense to stick with mac.

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kposehn
Air.

I've found that when it comes down to build quality, responsiveness,
portability and sheer joy to use, the Air has always trumped any Windows
offering to me.

I went from the 2008 unibody to an Air as well (though I'm on a Retina MbP
now) and the difference was stunning. You'll see a huge boost in speed, much
better usability and the battery life is fantastic.

Just go try it out in the store, I think you'll be sold pretty quickly :)

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tagabek
Go with the Air.

\- You develop for iOS

\- If you ever miss Windows, just run a Bootcamp partition

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askar
I think this make sense since I can always bootcamp it when I need to do
something on the Windows side. And that brings a good point, the reason I
don't bootcamp now on my 2008 MacBook Unibody is that it's not that responsive
when I tried a while ago. That kind of tells me that the new Air is the best
option if I can justify shelling out a few hundred more dollars but I think
since I'm developing for iOS as well it might be just worth it.

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r00fus
It used to be the case that you would only get a Mac if your customer required
you have knowledge of the OS.

Nowadays, given most everything is cross platform, and Windows7 runs great on
a VM, if you can afford the kit, it's best to get a Mac, and then bootcamp/VM
if you need to run Windows apps.

If you don't have customers who need you to run Windows apps (mostly
enterprise .NET stuff or boroque VPN clients), I suggest you get the Mac - you
seem to prefer it.

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glitch273
If you're going for a Windows laptop, take a look at the newly released
Samsung Book 9 Plus: [http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/20/samsung-ativ-
book-9-plus-...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/20/samsung-ativ-book-9-plus-
announced/)

Arguably the best looking Windows option today, with a resolution of 3,200 x
1,800. Rumor has it that pricing on the Plus model will start at over $1600+

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meerita
I would go for a Mac. I can have both OS installed and 0 problems. Any other
windows laptop may have troubles to install OSX and the hardware quality may
be a bit lower than macs in general. It's up to your budget but I think a
Macbook Air is really affordable nowadays.

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SamReidHughes
It's generally possible to get Windows laptops of better quality than Apple's,
but it's also possible to get worse. It's not a good idea to answer the
question of "Windows vs. Mac" without looking at specific alternatives.

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infinii
Why would you "wait for another MacBook Air update"? They just updated it 2
weeks ago with the Haswell chips.

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X4
Is it possible to replace the FN and CTRL key on a Macbook?

It would drive me nuts having it in the wrong order.

~~~
cunninghamd
Honestly, just use the CAPSLOCK key as a CTRL key.

1) it's more comfortable.

2) Now, the place of the FN key doesn't matter anymore! :)

