Do the Air's have retina display by default, or no?
Hell no. The rMBP's are the only Macs with Retina displays. To be honest, the display is the weakest aspect of the MBA. The MBA is the only Mac model still shipping with a TN display rather than IPS. The viewing angles aren't as good and the color accuracy isn't either. This isn't even taking retina into account. The old, "fat" MBP's had much better displays than the MBA's too.
Unless you're a photography professional it really doesn't matter, but as someone with both a MBA and MBP (non-retina) in the house, I definitely notice the difference. The MBP's display looks substantially better.
One more thing - How big of a difference is the "Intel HD 5000 Graphics" in the MBA vs. the "Intel Iris Graphics" in the rMBP?
As far as the actual compute power of the chips are concerned, the Iris model is more powerful. The Iris Pro is
significantly more powerful, but only available in the 15" rMBP. It's 2013, you don't want a 15" notebook. Take it from me. Over the past year or so I've moved from a 15" cMBP to a 13" cMBP to my current 13" MBA. Lately I've even been looking over at the 11" model with lustful eyes.
Unless you need the extra juice for work purposes, portability is king.
As you can see, "Iris" is just Intel's marketing slogan for the higher-end Haswell GPU chips. There are three models this year. The jump from the HD 5000 to the HD 5100 is big, but the much more significant performance rift occurs when you go from the Iris (HD 5100) to the Iris Pro (HD 5200). The Iris Pro has its own on-package eDRAM that greatly improves its performance. It also greatly increases its power draw (45w!), which is why you can only get it in the 15" rMBP and its
much larger battery modules.
When comparing the standard HD 5000 of the MBA to the Iris (HD 5100) of the 13" rMBP, things get quite a bit more complicated due to the retina display. Since the demands of simply running the pixels on the desktop are so much greater, the rMBP might not necessarily "feel" more powerful during day-to-day tasks despite the better GPU chip. I haven't used the 2013 rMBP yet, but this was definitely the case with last year's model. The 13" rMBP (2012) felt quite a bit much more sluggish than the MacBook Air. 2560x1600 is just a ridiculous number of pixels to drive with integrated graphics. For those counting at home, that's almost 70% more pixels than the 1440x900 resolution of the 13" MBA. The HD 5100 is faster than the HD 5000, but it's not
70% faster.
Keep in mind that even the "base" HD 5000 is
significantly more powerful than last year's HD 4600. The 2013 MBA will give you way better raw GPU performance than 2012's 13" rMBP. The jump from the HD 4600 (Ivy Bridge) to the HD 5000 (Haswell) is much more drastic than the jump from the HD 5000 to the HD 5100 (both Haswell). As long as you buy the 2013 model of either laptop, you really can't lose. That's not to say that the HD 5100 (Iris) isn't more powerful than the HD 5000. It definitely is, by a fairly decent margin.
However, it stands to reason that the MBA will probably
feel faster when browsing intensive web pages or doing light Photoshop work (again, I haven't tested the 2013's yet). The Iris chip will definitely provide better performance when running a video game (assuming you're connected to an external display and using a standard resolution like 1280x720 or 1440x900), but with your dedicated gaming PC you shouldn't be doing that on a MacBook anyway.
In my opinion, Apple should have waited until 2013 to release the first 13" rMBP's. The Intel 4600 they used last year was simply not powerful enough to provide the snappy experience one expects from a $1500+ computer. This year's Iris chip is likely the
minimum spec needed to drive the 13" rMBP's display properly. With the MBA, the minimum spec needed was achieved several years ago. We're now at the point where the MBA's GPU is
way more powerful than what is required to comfortably drive its 1440x900 display. 1440x900 has been a walk in the park for just about every integrated GPU from the past five years. Personally, I'd much rather be using the product that's at this mature stage of its life cycle.
I think the rMBP's will really hit their performance sweet spot with next year's Broadwell refresh. Until then, I think the MBA is the much better buy for the average consumer. The only real exception is if you're a serious photographer or do Photoshop work that requires perfect color accuracy. For the time being, the MBP really only makes sense for actual "Pros."
In other news,
over 15 hours of battery life with OS X Mavericks. Yowza.
If you want to hedge your bet, do the i7 upgrade on the MBA. With the education discount, the 13" MBA with the i7/8 GB upgrades comes to $1279. If you don't mind waiting a couple weeks, you could even get a refurb model with the i7/8 GB and
256 GB SSD for $1319. Just sign up for a text message alert at
Refurb.me to be notified when one is in stock.
Yes, I buy too many computers.
And where did you get $1289 for that MBP? When I click on Education Store, I do not see $1289 anywhere.
Base model 13" rMBP with 8 GB RAM upgrade comes to $1289.
That's also why you're seeing $1049 for the price of the 13" MBA. That's not a price drop, you're just looking at the education discount.
