2012 how many would buy a mba over mbp

[halledise]

No matte display, no Macbook Air.

the Air has a non-glossy, non-matte screen.
that's to say, it's in between the mirror of the 'glossy' display and the true matte.
check out a MBPro 'glossy' sometime when it's turned off, and you'll see what I mean

 

[dsc888]

the Air has a non-glossy, non-matte screen.
that's to say, it's in between the mirror of the 'glossy' display and the true matte.
check out a MBPro 'glossy' sometime when it's turned off, and you'll see what I mean

I have to agree with this one. What is particularly interesting is that the 11" MBA seems to have a much less aggressive anti-reflective coating, if it even has any at all. The 13" has a more aggressive coating that makes white light reflect a dim, pinkish color. I wonder if this is the reason why the screen on the 11" looks to be brighter at maximum brightness vs. the 13".

 

[bdodds1985]

I would rather have the MBP for it's 15" model. But if it were down to 13" for both, MBA it is!

I agree, the 13" seems way too small for me. But no doubt about it that if I wanted something small under the 15" (which I don't) it would be the 13" MBA

No matte display, no Macbook Air.

MBA pretty much does have a matte screen😉 it's just not full anti glare like the MBP's.

 

[jj48]

MBA + Cheap external display = best of both worlds for my needs. All for the price of a MBP.

 

[torbjoern]

Why is this guy getting downvoted?

I'm actually thinking the same.

Hive mind.

 

[gpat]

Swappable RAM or no deal. No planned obsolescence for me.

 

[jmgregory1]

I already chose the Air and have a difficult thinking I would ever go back. I too was fully prepared to get a new 15" mbp to replace the 2007 model I had been using.

Spent 30 minutes working with the 13" Air and although I like having the screen real-estate that the 15" offers, the speed of the Air, the weight, the form factor - I really love having my hands not have to make the jump from desktop up to rest on the Pro. It was giving me horrible wrist pains (when I'm in the office, I'm on the computer for 12+ hours so this 1/2" jump was a significant issue for me.

I would definitely consider a 15" Air, should Apple make one available. Maybe offer it with even greater battery capacity and real world use-time. Then again, I could just get a TB display for office use. Maybe that's what I'll do.

 

[S.B.G]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4S: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

just curious. how many of you would rather have a macbook air than a macbook pro?

In my current situation I really don't need a MBP, but an iPad or a MBA would be nice.

The only thing I don't like about the Air is the wide silver bezel around the display. If they could make it smaller or make the display end to end, I could just go right out and get one.

 

[jimboutilier]

For my wife who had an immediate need and requires more CPU and RAM than current MBAs provide I ordered a maxed out 15" MBP.

I had been hoping to hold off until the rumored 15" slimline MBP or MBA was released to see if it would meet those needs but could not wait.

For myself, the MBA line offers enough CPU but I likely wouldn't buy another until they offer 8gb or RAM.

 

[HabSonic]

MBA pretty much does have a matte screen😉 it's just not full anti glare like the MBP's.

It's not glossy as the MBP glossy screen, but I would still prefer a true antiglare display.

 

[scupking]

If the air had the ability to expand ram up to 8 or 16gb and also be able to expand hard drives then I would like an air. For now I love my 2010 13" MBP with 8GB of ram in it.

 

[bdodds1985]

It's not glossy as the MBP glossy screen, but I would still prefer a true antiglare display.

Image

great pic for comparison! how about one more with the screens on? i find it hard to work on a computer with a pitch black screen. same angle if you will. I would like to see it compared to the anti glare both on and off as well.

 

[cr2]

Ditto

Myself: No.
My wife: YES.

I'll be upgrading to 1TB hard drive when the price goes down a bit, so MBA is out of the question.

Ditto:

Myself: No. (MBP 13: Home Video, Photos, iTunes repository for every iOS device)
My Wife: Yes. (MBA 11: Facebook, email, shoping sites)
My Daughter in 6th grade: Yes. (MBA 13:Study, internet)

We are a recent converts from PC to MAC and I hardly ever have to touch my daughter's or my wife's MBAs. Things were different during windows days (We had Vista and XP..... )

If I had infinite money then would have got a nice iMac + MBA13 for me. But right now waiting to get upgrade my MBP to 16gb RAM and bigger disk.
Maybe in future will get a Tbolt display.

MBA is great but limited by Memory and disk space. I would not mind getting an MBP(or whatever it would be called) without optical drive but an ability to add RAM and disk.

 

[sundragon]

Grad Student IT guy

My $.02

I've had experience with a few 15" Apple laptops before I purchased my 2011 MBA i7.
2004 15" Powerbook 1.5
2007 15" Core Duo Macbook Pro
2009 15" Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro

I decided to try the 13" Air in 2011 because it's performance has gotten a lot closer to the Pro - my last pro had 2.66 Core 2 Duo and the 9600GT dedicated GPU.

Size/weight:
It's literally 1/2 the weight and I schlep my laptop everywhere for work and for school, and I like it. I didn't think it would make a difference, but it has - It weighs as much as school book and fits better in my briefcase.

I liked the larger screen 15" as it made it easier to edit movies, photos, and game. The upside is that the 15" didn't fit on the tray in economy on planes, the train, and forget about the bolt bus. The MBA does that well.

Performance: I used the 9600M GT in games so I am taking a penalty with the integrated GPU - but it's not super noticeable - I'm lvl 57 in Skyrim and play Civ 5 (in bootcamp). The CPU is considerably faster than my old system and the SSD combined make it feel faster overall. I handbrake movies in 1/2 the time. OSX and Bootcamp load really quickly - if you get the MBP get the SSD - you'll love it.

Photoshop, iMovie all work well - Screen real-estate is the only hit for me - You can get a second monitor if you really need it.

Overall MBA over MBP:
Weight and portablity (fits on tray in airplanes, trains, buses, weighs nothing).
SSD makes it blazing fast - Skyrim loads much faster than my friend's gaming rig.
My MBA doesn't creak like my previous MBP (unibody) did.
My MBP 15" roasted my thighs - the MBA is cool as a cucumber...

MBP over MBA:
15" screen - I miss it for photo editing and iMovie.
Dedicated GPU (the 330M GT) is considerably faster if you really need it for apps. Compared to my 9600M GT (the older GPU) it's fast enough.
Screen on my MBP was easier to clean.

end of my $.02 😀

 

[HabSonic]

great pic for comparison! how about one more with the screens on? i find it hard to work on a computer with a pitch black screen. same angle if you will. I would like to see it compared to the anti glare both on and off as well.

Not my pic. I didn't find anything better. But still, this picture show without a doubt that the MBA screen is glossy. I know it's far better than that when the screen isn't dark, but like I said before, I would still prefer a true antiglare screen.

 

[gentlefury]

Not my pic. I didn't find anything better. But still, this picture show without a doubt that the MBA screen is glossy. I know it's far better than that when the screen isn't dark, but like I said before, I would still prefer a true antiglare screen.

Its not NEARLY as glossy as the MBP....I have used my MBA outside and it was perfectly useable.

 

[bill-p]

If only the screen is made of glass and the body doesn't flex...

But really, for what I do, nothing less than a 15" Pro with a quad-core CPU would feel right. So Pro for me.

Went with an Air for a while... then Lightroom and Photoshop reminded me why thin and light wouldn't work.

If I was down to 13" form, I'd go with Air, though.

 

[Hellishness]

Just bought a 2010 13" MBA Ultimate...I'm sure I'll love it as soon as I can actually get Lion installed (it's stuck...). I was looking to upgrade from my blackbook to a pro or air, but for my needs it's much nicer to have a thinner laptop that processing power I don't need.

 

[grape ape]

Love my 11" 2010 MBA! Use to hook it up to my 20" monitor right next to it but got use to the screen size. I haven't used the 20" in a while. Also, love that the 2010 models didn't have back-lit keyboard and Nvidia gpu. I can see the keys just fine from the screen light itself and have had many issues with Intel gpu's in the past.

 

[hayden1250]

MacBook Air. Fast, slim and hella gorgeous.

 

[Zetaprime]

2012 how many would buy a mba over mbp

I went with the 13" 250G I7 MBA because I actually use it as a LAPtop. So lighter is better, and the MBA is powerful enough for the stuff I use it for. Storage isn't really an issue with cloud services and the wireless networked drives I have at home.

 

[shinji]

No ethernet port on macbook air is a dealbreaker. Not interested in lame USB->ethernet adapter.

 

[lc25]

I went for the air and glad i did, was working on a 13 pro and couldn't believe how heavy and bulky the thing was...

 

[Vantage Point]

Just glad we have choices. I don't mind the extra pound of two but do prefer the 15" screen, and ability to use more ram and larger hard drives and more ports... so I'm a MBP kind of guy.

 

[kurzz]

My next major computer purchase is definitely going to be a 15" Air of some sort (coming from an iMac). I haven't used a DVD/CD drive for over a year so a thinner laptop hooked up to a big monitor is the way to go in my future.