Meanwhile the Air continues to put along with what is one of the worst screens in the ultrabook segment. It's frustrating. The Pro is bigger than I want and honestly higher specced than I need, but the MBA's screen would be a huge step back from the PC ultrabook I'm using now (which isn't even anything that special at 1600x900 + IPS).
Right now, screen resolution and battery life are in direct tension, and Apple is optimizing for the latter at the expense of the former. The MBA has almost 50% more battery life than the ATIV Book 9, the closest Ultrabook in terms of size/weight/cost: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/30/samsung-ativ-book-9-plus-.... Apple can't up the screen resolution without a major regression in battery life, not until Broadwell comes out.
Only if your definition of “relatively terrible” means “better than the majority of desktop and laptop displays sold in the last 5 years”. I never notice this during normal usage and in an office with a range of generally mid-range enterprise PCs the MBA screen is better than all but a handful of displays which some digital imaging specialists use. All of the monitors which look better cost at least 50% of what an MBA costs.
Yes, it's not the best display on the market but calling it terrible is just hyperbole.
Same problem here, but I'll favor portability for screen every time, because when I'm at home I often attach an external screen to it, and when I'm traveling, it's not a big deal to live with a less than perfect display. On the other hand btw the Air is a lot cheaper.
The 13" MBP is 1.57KG and 18mm thick. The macbook air is 1.35KG and 17mm thick. The battery life is really the only differentiator when it comes to portability.
I have a 13" MBP retina and I think size and weight wise it is just right - the air is 1.35Kg and the pro is 1.57Kg. Size wise it is 18mm compared with the airs 17mm (the air is better at looking thinner - but in reality it isn't).
>The Pro is bigger than I want
Unless you have an 11" (I just can't get my head around using a screen that small) then I seriously suggest looking at the pro again.
Maybe I'm a special case, but I had a 13" MBP Retina and I felt scrolling was jumpy and computer overall could get very slow, while the MBAir I have now is actually much more responsive. I'm not sure, but I think the culprit was Flash (at the time I had a lot of Flash content running).
Was it one of the first retina 13" models? I've tried one of those in the store when they were just released, and I have to admit the scrolling performance was terrible. If you put it next to a much lower-specced, much older, much cheaper MacBook Air, it appeared as if the MBP was the weaker one of the two laptops. Very unlike Apple to release the machine the way it was.
They did improve graphics performance a lot through software updates, and the generations after the first 13" retina MBP are supposedly a lot better still... That said, I'm holding off upgrading my 2010 MBA until Broadwell which will have an even better IGP...
Going meta it is a furtherance of Apple's innovation approach; namely that the marketplace hasn't changed since they last released a similar product so don't change anything. If people are willing to buy the same thing then drip feed them advances.
Not a bad thing and indeed business genius in a way. Just that they have the luxury of not having to blow your mind to get your attention. It also means they can save obvious innovations from competing products until such times as the market demands them (see also an iphone without a tiny pathetic screen)
More it shows competition in the laptop space is awful. I certainly don't see anything I want. In short I want a macbook like hardware with a matt screen with macbook pro specs but not as old a graphics card and better heat dissipation. I've had the retina since launch 2 years ago and I'm pretty fed up with having my legs scalded when i run up a VM. Native linux would be nice to.
I agree. Perhaps, it is news because it shows how incremental Apple's strategy is? This is nothing. It is basically just a "hey, we can't get the older stuff from the supplier anymore, so we are bumping it up to the new stuff" kind of update.
I'm guessing because every time I go to a conference, 90 out of 100 computers there are Macbook Pros. I imagine a lot of people on HN use these computers daily. It's nice to know Apple iterated on their hardware.
The difference between the Air and the 15" Pro is pretty big. The difference between the Air and the 13" Pro is that the Air comes with ULV processors and cannot be configured with 16GB of memory.
In my experience, you can do development well enough on an Air (2012 MBA for me), but it's not without complaints. I do a lot of Scala+IntelliJ work, and there the CPU is definitely noticeable a limiting factor. It is not unworkable by any means, but it's noticeable. Also, don't underestimate the added value of a retina display for development.
I'm looking to buy a new one somewhere in the next few months, and I'll definitely go for a Pro then. Even if Apple starts making retina Macbook Airs.
I used the Air for two years as my primary machine both for development and regular office use. I had absolutely no problems with it, and it kept up very well with all of my tools (VMWare, IntelliJ, cli watchers, Xcode, mobile dev etc). And this was the previous generation.
I tried using MBP couple times, but always kept on going back to the Air for the form factor. Finally, two months ago I lost my Air and replaced it with a retina MBP machine. During my regular activities, I cannot tell any difference in performance. Sometimes archives get processed quicker and batch jobs get done faster, but this is less than 5% of my work so I don't care about it at all.
What did make the difference is the retina screen - I love it enough to keep on using the bulkier MBP (regardless of how close they are on paper, you will feel the difference in your hands). But I will switch to a retina Air with 16GB as soon at it comes out.
Pretty much feel exactly the same as you. I have a 15 inch retina MBP supplied by work, and a 11 inch maxed out MBA as my personal machine. I really love the little guy but using the that screen after staring at a beautiful retina display all day feels like stepping back in time.
For everyday tasks? Most people wouldn't notice much of a difference. If you're doing something CPU/GPU heavy like gaming, simulations or video editing then you will notice a large difference between the two. Take a look at http://www.barefeats.com/mba13b.html. And don't forget about the higher res screen.
The difference is still very stark in my experience, but the baseline performance is already quite good with both. I am assuming that you are looking to compare the air with the 13" MBP, as the 15" is just way more powerful.
What are you going to use it for?
The 13" air has higher native resolution than the "native" 13" retina, but its CPU is significantly slower than the MBP [1]. In terms of battery life the Air is the winner, but the MBP is not far behind, nor is it much heavier.
For travel and relatively standard development tasks the air is perfect. For extended desktop usage, or if i were traveling less I'd seriously consider the MBP.
The only difference I noticed is in compilation, asset importing and similar tasks; if you're a web developer (like a lot of folks on Hacker news) and don't have operations that take more then a minute of 100% processor load in your workflow, get MBA.
As best as I can tell (and maybe I'm just missing the fine print somewhere), the base models probably ship with something like a i5-4278U? They might actually be shipping with some variety of a generation 3 i5? I dunno.
The Air's seem to ship with a i5-4260U.
Assuming I'm at least in the ballpark, if you are pushing the limits of the computer, you'll probably get a noticeably better performance out of the Pro. If you are just doing day-to-day things, it'll probably be negligible.
I have a 13" MBP late 2013, with specs maxed out (i7,16gb,1tb), the only thing i hate about it is the low graphic performance, i can't play any game with this shitty intel graphics, if this laptop had a solid graphics card like the one with the 15" model it'll be the only machine i recommend to anyone who wants a solid machine with an OS that combines the productivity software (music, photo and video editing) and programming capability of unix (i spend most of the time writing commands in the terminal)
2500 for the decent spec MBP? What in the name... really apple? I just bought an MSI laptop with a 1920x1080p, r290Xm, 16gb ram, 1tb storage (true , it's not ssd) and a a 2.5 ghz APU from AMD for 1300$ . So... what 1200$ apple tax?
odd, I notice on this page [1] there's a version for $1099 with a DVD drive built in.
What's the deal with that? Is it also a new offering, or is it old inventory? I'd be interested in buying it later this year (think it would be around that long?)
Its the old version that existed before they launched the retina display ones, it's probably going to get dropped when they launch the broadwell models early/mid 2015.
Apperently it still sells since its still there. ´
I left my old employer almost 1 year back (so had to return back the Mac Pro) and since then thinking about to buy a Mac but couldn't get extra money to afford this luxury.
Right now I've Samsung series 9 ultrabook with windows 8 at home and a corporate big thick & heavy Lenovo box at office.
I can work for any company (part time & remotely) who can buy me a Mac Pro. I'm pretty good in Java, JavaScript, C# and F# and can easily put up the design and architecture of any large scale, testable and maintainable app (server side & client side). I can also help developing any complex module for an existing app. Or can help design & develop a scalable backend on top of Postgres, SqlServer, MongoDB, CouchBase or Riak.
If anyone interested please contact me through email.
