Macbook Pro 13" late 2013 Vs MacBook Air 13" 2013

I'd go with the Air. Much more portable for going to classes and a 15 hour battery to get you through those blackouts.

MBA - not much difference between the Air's and 13 rMBP - but I think the Air wins in this situation.

I'm waiting to see review of the 13 rMBP -- particularly battery tests.

For what it's worth, I had that exact model of Macbook Air in my possession back in July when they first came out and returned it. The screen is absolute dog$4!t for 2013. 1440 TN panel looks blurry as hell

deadwalrus said:

The screen is absolute dog$4!t for 2013. 1440 TN panel looks blurry as hell

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No, it's actually pretty good. Not blurry at all.

Brandon263 said:

No, it's actually pretty good. Not blurry at all.

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deadwalrus said:

I'm waiting to see review of the 13 rMBP -- particularly battery tests.

For what it's worth, I had that exact model of Macbook Air in my possession back in July when they first came out and returned it. The screen is absolute dog$4!t for 2013. 1440 TN panel looks blurry as hell

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LMAO It's not at all blurry, plenty good.

AnorexicPig said:

LMAO It's not at all blurry, plenty good.

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deadwalrus said:

Image

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Actually you have got it upside down I guess. It is not at all blurry, blurry means text and images are fuzzy and not clear-they are absolutely clear.

Definately not Retina level, but it's still a great display, not having IPS display makes more of a difference when you view it at odd angles.

It is the first time I am seeing anyone saying MBA having a blurry screen-so in this case it's your 'opinion'

How much battery life do you need?

The rMBP is much more powerful and only slightly heavier. I think it might have better resale too. You probably will get 9-10hrs battery life which is enough for 1 day.

If you must need the lighter weight and 14hrs, then get the Air. IMO the lower pricing of the 13" MBP makes it cannibalize Air sales.

AnorexicPig said:

Actually you have got it upside down I guess. It is not at all blurry, blurry means text and images are fuzzy and not clear-they are absolutely clear.

Definately not Retina level, but it's still a great display, not having IPS display makes more of a difference when you view it at odd angles.

It is the first time I am seeing anyone saying MBA having a blurry screen-so in this case it's your 'opinion'

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No.

Text is incredibly blurry on MBA. The machines simply do not have the resolution to render text accurately, so they anti-aliase the f%$# out of the text which makes it look incredibly fuzzy. If you can't see it, either you aren't looking or you need glasses.

And in my opinion, text actually looks worse than Windows at the same resolutions because Microsoft modifies their fonts to fit better within the pixel-space. Apple stays "true" to the fonts. Which is great if you can actually display them properly. But an MBA screen cannot.

Sorry to disagree with the fact that the MBA screen is so great. It's just not. It's a low-resolution TFT. Which means it has mediocre color accuracy and bad off-angle viewing.

But it's cheap. Which allows Apple to make a killing off of each unit sold. I just think it's sad that even the cheapy Windows machines are using much higher resolution IPS today.

I have a 2013 MacBook Air and have had no issue with blurry text. There is the LCD smoothing option you can fiddle with...

ecrispy said:

How much battery life do you need?

The rMBP is much more powerful and only slightly heavier. I think it might have better resale too. You probably will get 9-10hrs battery life which is enough for 1 day.

If you must need the lighter weight and 14hrs, then get the Air. IMO the lower pricing of the 13" MBP makes it cannibalize Air sales.

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I read few reviews and it seems the 13" rMBP is not more powerful than the MBA. So decision comes down to baterry life vs screen. I was hoping the MBP would be more powerful.

Standard Intel Iris (i.e. not Intel Iris Pro) and the Intel HD 5000 might be the same thing. Not sure about that; don't quote me.

I guess it depends on how much of the stuff you are using will be optimized for retina as non-retina-optimized software on retina is somewhat ugly. Though a lot of that depends on how much you care about that (unless we're talking about games; because non-retina games on a retina can be almost unplayable due to the interface not rendering properly). Personally, the Thunderbolt 2 alone would sell me on the Late 2013 retinas, but if you do not do all that much data transferring, then it probably doesn't matter all that much.

I would go with rMBP. tests shows the battery gets close to 11 hours too

According to everymac.com comparison benchmarks, Macbook Air 13 i7 1.7 is far superior to newest Macbook Pro: Air got 7097 points, MB Pro (Iris) only 5482.

See here:
http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-comparison-chart/

It reminds iPad 3 problem, where retina screen turned out to be to heavy for CPU.

Namaste

My comment is that either machine would get you through those 'load-shedding' hours in Nepal. My suggestion though would be to ensure you create a USB bootable system drive for recovery/maintenance tasks. My last attempt at internet recovery in the sticks of Nepal, was a painful time of many failed attempts due to the load-shedding - only saved by firing up the generator to ensure I got it in the end!

I came across this review, I thought it might be good as a review via Ars for helping you choose.

But really there's not much in the spec you're suggesting, both would be awesome computers for taking to college.