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ArKShield

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
3
0
I know this has been asked, this is my first time posting here, but I have always been a follower. I just haven't quite been able to search and find a definitive answer to my predicament.

Basically I can't decided between the 11 inch or 13 inch Air, and thats due to the fact of not having any idea if the 11inch will be capable of handling the tasks that I need.

I have a ton of 1080p/720p mkv movies that I always watch on my current early 2006 macbook, that's a must do for my upgrade to an Air.

the second part of what I will be doing is having a dump site for my pictures. I have a T1i and take a ton of photo's nothing professional or anything, but as a poorly touched hobby. I have been considering using iphoto/Aperture since its only 79.99 in the new app store. I am just slightly concerned if the little 11inch can handle simple aperture photo edits, to fix crappily taken photos.

That's mainly my problem, though the ability to play my movies is the most important issue, the whole picture thing can be sorted out on the Quad core Pc in the office.
 

dmelgar

macrumors 68000
Apr 29, 2005
1,587
160
I know this has been asked, this is my first time posting here, but I have always been a follower. I just haven't quite been able to search and find a definitive answer to my predicament.

Basically I can't decided between the 11 inch or 13 inch Air, and thats due to the fact of not having any idea if the 11inch will be capable of handling the tasks that I need.

I have a ton of 1080p/720p mkv movies that I always watch on my current early 2006 macbook, that's a must do for my upgrade to an Air.

the second part of what I will be doing is having a dump site for my pictures. I have a T1i and take a ton of photo's nothing professional or anything, but as a poorly touched hobby. I have been considering using iphoto/Aperture since its only 79.99 in the new app store. I am just slightly concerned if the little 11inch can handle simple aperture photo edits, to fix crappily taken photos.

That's mainly my problem, though the ability to play my movies is the most important issue, the whole picture thing can be sorted out on the Quad core Pc in the office.
Regarding the 11 (or 13 for that matter) playing 1080p movies.... it depends. mkv is a wrapper. Various codecs could have been installed.

In general, if you try to watch a 1080p video on the 11" MBA that needs to be decoded by the CPU, it will likely stutter. It will probably do better than your 2006 Macbook though. If the GPU can decode it, it will play smoothly.

You can copy some of your videos onto a USB flash drive. Go to an Apple story and try it on one of the 11" MBAs on display. In my tests, I've seen the 11" stutter badly on some videos making it practically unwatchable. Seen the same videos still stutter but not as noticeably on the 13". My 13" MBP with a much faster CPU would play them smoothly, with only very rare stutters that were not usually noticed.

Regarding handling photo edits. How would the 11" MBA not handle it? What do you think its going to do, melt? For things that are not time sensitive like real time playback of video, any machine can "handle" any task. Its just a matter of how long it takes. For minor photo edits, of course it will do great. Why wouldn't it?
 
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