Just curious how many are in my boat. I currently have a 2010 13" MBA and looking to upgrade once Haswell makes its way into Apple's lineup. I've been pretty happy with my 2010, it's my first Mac and the longest I've ever owned a laptop. But after playing around with a few windows based 13" 1080p IPS ultra books, coming back to the MBA screen feels really sub-par compared to whats currently available. I'd like to stick with the thin/light form factor of the MBA, but may have to abandon that plan if the display doesn't get an upgrade. Doesn't necessarily have to be "Retina" though it would be nice, but higher resolution and most certainly IPS is a must have for my next machine.
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How many will consider 13" rMBP if next MBA doesn't have upgraded display?
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If the rMbp was more upgradable than MBair i would consider it. But as it is not, i prefer the form factor of the air while the screen is very good for my use.
Guess it depends on your line of business. As i just use it for word processing and internet when not using external screen, the screen is sufficient enough for me. I find the resolution of the Air sufficient enough for a 13" screen.
Guess it depends on your line of business. As i just use it for word processing and internet when not using external screen, the screen is sufficient enough for me. I find the resolution of the Air sufficient enough for a 13" screen.
I have the 2011 Air and looking to upgrade this year for a better screen due to my eyes are not what they used to be and if the new Air doesn't have a better offering in the screen reso I well switch to the 13 RMBP besides the 2014 is supposed to be slightly thinner.
This is the situation I'm in right now.
But I will probably go with the 2013 MBA anyways, and just refresh it when rMBA comes around (which I hopefully will be new year).
But I will probably go with the 2013 MBA anyways, and just refresh it when rMBA comes around (which I hopefully will be new year).
I'm in the same boat as the OP - loving my 2010 Air, still going strong, but that Retina display is something else. For all that's incredible about an SSD boosting performance, my Core 2 Duo is starting to show its age in Photoshop and Final Cut these days.
If the Air doesn't get a Retina display - which isn't looking likely - I will strongly consider a rMBP if the weight is right. Intrigued at the rumour of a slimmed-down rMBP. If that means significant enough weight loss, I could stomach moving up from the perfect form factor of the Air.
If the Air doesn't get a Retina display - which isn't looking likely - I will strongly consider a rMBP if the weight is right. Intrigued at the rumour of a slimmed-down rMBP. If that means significant enough weight loss, I could stomach moving up from the perfect form factor of the Air.
I don't really see the point of a 13" rMBA. It's over half a pound heavier than the 13" MBA, but offers only slightly faster CPU and a high-res screen. In many graphics tests, that high-res screen made it score worse than a 13" MBA in benchmarks. To me, it seems that for "Pro" users, the 13" MBA is the better choice among 13" laptops (the 15" rMBP being the obvious best choice).
If the 13" has discrete graphics, that would be another story. But it doesn't. It doesn't even have more RAM than the MBA. It's just heavier, in some cases slower, and has a pretty screen. All that bother for a whopping $300 more.
I think if my priority was to get a pretty screen and use the computer for graphics, I would opt for the 15" rMBP (the next-revision anyway, I try to stay away from early rev apple products). For any less computationaly-expensive tasks, I would choose a MBA. The 13" rMBP is sort of a pointless machine meant for no one.
If your eye's aren't what they used to be, then you wouldn't even notice that the pixels are smaller. Poor eye-sight means you need to make the text-size larger, or in general lower the resolution/scaling to make everything larger. A good screen won't make up for bad eye-sight.
If the 13" has discrete graphics, that would be another story. But it doesn't. It doesn't even have more RAM than the MBA. It's just heavier, in some cases slower, and has a pretty screen. All that bother for a whopping $300 more.
I think if my priority was to get a pretty screen and use the computer for graphics, I would opt for the 15" rMBP (the next-revision anyway, I try to stay away from early rev apple products). For any less computationaly-expensive tasks, I would choose a MBA. The 13" rMBP is sort of a pointless machine meant for no one.
If your eye's aren't what they used to be, then you wouldn't even notice that the pixels are smaller. Poor eye-sight means you need to make the text-size larger, or in general lower the resolution/scaling to make everything larger. A good screen won't make up for bad eye-sight.
I wouldn't buy or even consider an MBA no matter what screen - the trackpad never worked well for me. I bought one, trackpad was bad, they replaced it, still didn't work, apple genius agreed it didn't work right so I said "forget it, I'm going to return it." Never looked back and bought a cMBP. Maybe some MBA models don't have enough room to click the trackpad properly?
1. For most people the interesting benchmark is not how fast it can scroll, the benchmark is how good the screen looks when it stands still. 99% of the time the screen contents is mostly unchanged and I don't care how fast the graphics is.
2. Your assumptions what happen when eyesight gets worse are just wrong. You may not notice that the pixels is smaller. But you notice that text is easier to read. With bad eyesight, any improvement in the screen helps.
I don't see the point of the MBA being retina. Right now my choice for a laptop would be between a 13" Air and a 15" Pro. If the Air went Retina, I would probably just be looking at the 15" Pro.
The rMBP has twice as much RAM than a BASE 13" MBA. So faster processor, twice the RAM, HDMI port, and a better display seems well worth $300 imho.
I do agree a dGPU in the rMBP 13" would be awesome though.
That gives a screen aspect ratio of 1.77.
The 13" MBA has a ratio of 1.6, so to match that the res would need to be 1728 x 1080.
Maybe they could offer a 1080 screen as a BTO upgrade, and keep the current 900 as the standard screen.
1920x1200 would make more sense than 1728x1080 IMO
There's no way they're going to offer two different aspect ratios on the same laptop. Just not the "apple way"
Sticking an X aspect screen into a Y aspect frame is problematic.
If they switch to 1920 x 1080 in the 13" Air, they get a more vertically compressed 1080 (in order to fit the 1920 width in) and this mismatch wastes precious vertical space in the 1.6 ratio 13" frame, and makes the overall image smaller and text harder to read compared with 1728 x 1080 in the same frame.
To properly fit the 1920 screen they would have to redesign the whole 13" to look like a scaled up version of the 11".
Pretty sure that is not the Apple way.
Only problem with a 1728 x 1080 screen is adapting OS X to use it. I'm sure Apple can manage it, if they choose to. Could be a good long term investment for them to have that aspect ratio fully 1080. Would cover non-retina 13-15" 1.6 ratio screens forever.
Always thought that Apple's choice of 1680 x 1050 res for the hi-res (non-retina) 15" MBPs was a mistake. They should have gone with 1728 x 1080. Full 1080 at a 1.6 aspect ratio.
Agree completely
I agree. I'm nearsighted and the Retina screen is a huge benefit to me. Every time I test one in the Apple store, I am this close to walking out with one for this alone. When I upgrade my iMac, I may very well consider a Retina laptop because I can read it perfectly at varying distances. That would be my main reason to buy a Mac laptop since I use an iPad for portability.
I agree. I'm nearsighted and the Retina screen is a huge benefit to me. Every time I test one in the Apple store, I am this close to walking out with one for this alone. When I upgrade my iMac, I may very well consider a Retina laptop because I can read it perfectly at varying distances. That would be my main reason to buy a Mac laptop since I use an iPad for portability.
I'm not an Optometrist, but I have studied enough optics and physics to get the basic idea of how eyes and eyesight works.
Bad eyesight cannot be corrected by having a better screen. A sharper source image will not correct a defect in eye. For example, I know that nearsightedness is caused by variety of things, but in essense the eye is the slightly wrong shape where the lense is slightly out of line and the focal point becomes in front of retina instead of on it exactly. Blurry is blurry. No screen can fix this. Farsightedness is similar, the shape of the eye or the shape of lense is off a bit, causing difficulty focusing on near things. Again, if your eye has trouble focusing, the screen won't help.
The only thing that computer can do to help is to increase the size or scale of the text itself. Larger things are easier to read when your vision is slightly blurry. Having more pixels has nothing to do with this, and in some cases actually makes text smaller thus worse for those with poor vision.
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Are you sure it's the retina display or the fact that the default setting causes the text to be larger than on an iMac? Take a ruler next time, open up Word and type something in 12pt font on both computers. Measure with the ruler and compare. The scaling on a retina display makes the 12pt text display larger than on a the default iMac resolution.
...1920x1200 is a 1.6 aspect ratio...
Besides, what's the significance of going to 1080 pixels in height when you'd still have to scale any HD content? Without 1920 px width you'd end up with black bars on top and bottom (strictly relating to media).
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I don't think kazmac/gnasher729 were trying to infer that it would correct vision, more so that it would help reduce the strain on their eyes due to the characters/objects being more easily identified due to the higher resolution. Here's some supporting info on this:
http://interchangeproject.org/2013/...ce-eyestrain-and-should-lead-to-more-reading/
I said 1920x1200, not 1080
That gives it the same aspect ratio as it currently has and 1920x1200 is a more common resolution than 1728 not to mention a higher resolution.