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Am I missing something?? Macbook Air poor buy?

Unless you are doing a lot of GPU-intensive stuff, or a lot of photo editing or video rendering, I can't see how the the MBA would hold you back or not allow you to get done what you need to get done.

The jump in benchmark performance from the 2011 MBA to the 2012 MBA was significant. The 2012 i5 benchmarks just as good as the 2011 i7.

Read this review (and the Ars one):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6063/macbook-air-13inch-mid-2012-review

They'll make you feel a lot better about your decision. I just made the same one - I compared a 2012 13" MBP against the MBA and determined that the MBA was more than fast enough for my needs, and a lot lighter too.
 
Mba

I swore to myself to never ever buy 13" inch MBP until they manage to put dedicated GPU in it. I am always laughing at Mac users with 13" inch MBP knowing that machine is running pretty much the same or even slower (SSD) as MBA AND is super heavy compared to air.

Now really, if there will be a pro with dedicated GPU that will be awesome machine but now both 13" inches MB are equal, both have "just" dual cores and iGPU with (384 or 512 vRAM depending on RAM installed). If you want to have really powerful(video editing capable machine) you have to go with 15" MBP which is too big to carry around.

I really get used to 11" inch (old Hp notebook which I have used for 2 years, been great portable and all, but the plastic is really in bad shape now) and now I use 13" MBA 2012 with i5 and 8 Gb RAM because it is such a great combination of portability, weight, screen real estate, battery life and power.
 
I got the same reaction from all my friends when I got my 13' 2011 Macbook Air. I'm a .Net developer and have spent most of my life an avid PC IT guy. I do software development (C#) and IT work for several doctors. All of my friends are the anti-Apple PC loving crowd.

When I got my Macbook Air, everyone was bashing me for wasting money, getting a laptop that I couldn't do anything with, and what not. I mean everyone. They couldn't believe their eyes... lol

Why did I get the Macbook Air? Cuz after 3 years of crappy Android I got my first iPhone 4s in December 2011 and was so impressed by Apple hardware I just had to get a Macbook. After 10 years of super heavy business Dell laptops, I wanted something mobile, thin, light, and long battery lasting. All of which the Macbook Air has.

I can use Cisco Anyconnect VPN to do my IT work and Logmein to connect to my PC at home if I never need a PC. Unlike all my friends who average 2-3-4 hours of battery life, I EASILY get 7 and if I turn down brightness, 10 hours is very doable. Slipping this thing under my arm or in a backpack is so unnoticeable and so light (after lugging a HUGE D830 with 2 media bay batteries for 5 years...) I'm in heaven every time I walk with this thing.

My friends all are big PC buffs and buy overloaded laptops with the most ram and biggest graphics cards.... That's why they bashed my Macbook Air. But... I have a custom 900watt CoolMaster - Nvidia 570 - 5 hard drive (2 SSDs) - 24GB ram - gaming system that I built myself at home. I bought this for portable note taking, business use, personal reading use. Why would I want to game on something other than my PC at home?

As the posters here said... beauty and utility is in the eye of the beholder. Lugging around a 10 pound laptop? I'm done with those days... Ever since I bought my Macbook Air earlier this year, I'll NEVER look back. Already looking forward to getting a Macbook Pro Retina for my main system in the next few years (using it with my Dell Ultrasharp monitors at home). Besides, the older I get the less I game and the more I work/research. :/
 
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For me personally, I love the MacBook Air. I also like the MacBook Pro of course, but I suspect a lot of people buy the Pro out of sheer snobbery BECAUSE it's called a Pro - so it must be for "professionals".

In reality, most of these same people would notice no difference in performance for what they do, and in the meantime, they're having to cart around a whole lot more weight just to support that "Pro" moniker!

Much of the stigma may come from the first-gen Airs, which were seriously underpowered, but that is completely a non-issue ever since the design refresh a couple of years back. So my suggestion to you is that you've got a cracking little machine, every bit as capable as all the "Pros" for most day-to-day things, and you can feel quietly smug that you have a machine better suited for your needs (smaller/lighter) than all of the Pro-weilding show-offs that don't understand the real capabilities of their machines!
 
After reading through this thread, I'm becoming increasingly confused. I have wanted a MacBook Air for college as it is lightweight and powerful. However, I'm not 100% sure it will fit my needs. I will be doing occasional Lightroom work and programming. Will the base 2012 Air be enough for this work? Or should I get the pro? I just feel like I'd be getting ripped off based on the specs of the Pro vs the competition.
 
I'd hypothesize that the 2 factors that are outweighing the MBA v. MBP decision for college is A)Storage space... The cost of getting a large SSD is quite high. And yes, people don't need to carry around EVERYTHING, but they want to and do, and a 500 gig HD is awfully attractive. b)Overall cost. It APPEARS like your paying a premium for the weight loss and SSD.

Now, I just bought a 2011 11" MBA for my wife and have been so impressed with it, that my next laptop will be a 13" MBA when my current 15" MBP dies.

Coachingguy
 
BigMcGuire said:
I have a custom 900watt CoolMaster - Nvidia 570 - 5 hard drive (2 SSDs) - 24GB ram - gaming system that I built myself at home. I bought this for portable note taking, business use, personal reading use. Why would I want to game on something other than my PC at home?
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This description leads me to believe that you aren't as technically savvy as you'd like to appear. You describe the wattage of the system and brand of the power supply, yet don't even bother with a CPU or motherboard, and put in 24gb of ram and only a GTX 570.

007bond said:
After reading through this thread, I'm becoming increasingly confused. I have wanted a MacBook Air for college as it is lightweight and powerful. However, I'm not 100% sure it will fit my needs. I will be doing occasional Lightroom work and programming. Will the base 2012 Air be enough for this work? Or should I get the pro? I just feel like I'd be getting ripped off based on the specs of the Pro vs the competition.
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You would be getting ripped off with the Pro (that is, $500 would get you the same specs without the apple logo). The air sounds like it would be a good fit. For programming and lightroom work it will be overkill 99% of the time. It's a very capable computer, and others have used far inferior systems and done fine. I doubt the pro would be noticeably faster, if at all, and the ssd may make the air perform better for you.
 
The 2012 MacBook Air is a amazing machine.

I bought one last year a 2011 i7 model. But the 4GB of ram did not meet my needs. Gave it to my wife. Kept on with my late 2011 15 with 16GB of ram and SSD. I travel allot for my business. I run heavy apps while on the road, edit and design commercials. Needless to say my hardware requirements are large.Meet with clients in restaurants, hotels, board rooms.

Bought the new retina MBP and thought it was the answer. Well third party support of the apps I use just isn't there yet. So i returned it.

I gave the 2012 Macbook air a try again due to the ram upgrade. Bought a i7 2.0, 256 SSD model for travel.

Since I have been using this machine I havent' touched my late 2011 MBP. I am using it as my main machine by accident, and it eats everything I throw at it 90% of the time. It has been doing everything, i mean everything. Everything that I throw at it it does without any issues. If you are in college don't hesitate to pick this up.

If I can edit, design, and produce commercials for CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. on my i7 Air, I think you can do a little bit of college work on it.

We are reaching a point that computing power is outstripping user needs. Next year with haswell, you will have a Air that can probably produce around 10000 geekbench scores, with a integrated GPU that is as powerful as todays mid range GPU's.

My i7 Air can produce almost 8000 geekbench scores, with a IGPU that is on par with low card offerings. Not bad for such a small machine. It packs a punch. Well worth the money spent.
 
asting said:
This description leads me to believe that you aren't as technically savvy as you'd like to appear. You describe the wattage of the system and brand of the power supply, yet don't even bother with a CPU or motherboard, and put in 24gb of ram and only a GTX 570.
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You like spending your time belittling other people? You must have a fulfilling life... If you wanted I could give you a page description of my computer. But just to humor your fancy... The CoolMaster HAF 932 is the case, the power supply is a Corsair Gold, 850 watts (my bad). The motherboard is an Asus X58 Sabertooth... The CPU is an i7 950 @ 3.07Ghz (I don't like overclocking, prefer stability over speed). The graphics card is for World of Warcraft. Such a game doesn't really need more of a graphics card.

Figured peeps here would be bothered if I put a 5 page description of my computer and tried to summarize it by letting people know that my desktop more than gave me what I needed for my gaming/computing needs as to show that a Macbook Air is great for portability and battery life - hence why I got it and why I think it's valuable for me - something the OP was getting criticized for (as well as something I was criticized for when buying this laptop).

I figured you'd get the point, but instead you go out of your way to try to inflate your ego and make it look like you know what you're talking about. Pretty sad...
 
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I took delivery of a new MacBook Air 11 inch (8gb/i7/256gb) yesterday. My 2010 MBP (same basic specs as the Air) will now stay tethered to my desk with an external monitor. I do a lot of web design / front-end coding so I'm running CS6 / Parallelised Windows 7 for testing. It runs fantastically in the Air. Finally I'm not constantly having to make the choice of whether to take the laptop out to places, it's so light it's a no-brainer. I've been eyeing up the various FPSs on the App Store this evening for a new time waster, I'm sure it'll run one of either Doom 3, Quake 4 or COD 4, I just need to pick one :)
 
The Bad Guy said:
Er...no it's not. Well at least not in my 12 years of selling Apple products.

The entry level MBP outsells everything by a wide margin.
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I don't think that's the case anymore. Back in November '11 the MBA was accounting for almost 1/3 of all Apple notebook sales. It can only have grown with this recent refresh... They have been flying out of the stores.
 
Mike in Kansas said:
I don't think that's the case anymore. Back in November '11 the MBA was accounting for almost 1/3 of all Apple notebook sales. It can only have grown with this recent refresh... They have been flying out of the stores.
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I'm at work right now.

So far this morning, 5 x 13" MBP, 3 x iPad, 1 x 15" MBP (non retina) and 1 x 13" MBA

And yes...it's been a slow day. Hence me posting on here. :)

Edit: Oh and contrary to popular belief on these boards - people do tend to like get a decent lifespan on their investment. The ability to upgrade your RAM and HDD (or SSD) later down the track is an appealing option.

Without being rude, I do wonder where a lot of posters here get their ideas from. Because it's certainly not the real world.
 
Mike in Kansas said:
I don't think that's the case anymore. Back in November '11 the MBA was accounting for almost 1/3 of all Apple notebook sales. It can only have grown with this recent refresh... They have been flying out of the stores.
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In other words, more than 2/3 were NOT MacBook Air. It's a great computer that, IMO, is a better deal than the 13 MBP for 90% of the people buying it, but the 13" MBP remains the top seller by a 3:1 margin over any other model.

The last breakdown of MacBook sales posted here:

https://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/23/apple-predicted-to-discontinue-17-inch-macbook-pro/


According to Kuo's estimates for the first calendar quarter of 2012, Apple sold roughly 3.1 million notebooks, with nearly half of them being the 13-inch MacBook Pro, far and away the company's best-selling Mac product. But while Kuo predicts sales of nearly 1.5 million units of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, he sees much lower sales of roughly 500,000 15-inch models and only 50,000 17-inch models.

Kuo estimates Apple's first quarter MacBook Air sales at roughly 1.1 million, split nearly equally between 11-inch and 13-inch models.
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LittleGwen said:
So.... I had to say goodbye to my much loved macbook that I've been using for 6 years... and purchased the macbook air because it's very light and easy for me to carry around. Plus, I don't need as much firepower as I would get with Macbook Pro since I just need an everyday light laptop. However, when I brought it to work after purchasing it, all my coworkers were asking me why on earth I bought the Macbook Air instead of the Macbook Pro. When I attend classes at my school, all the students there are carrying Macbook Pro as well. I thought since the Air was lighter, it would be more popular with students. I haven't seen one student (besides me) who has the Air and the majority of students here use a macbook. Am I missing something here? Is the Macbook Air looked down upon by Apple fans or what?:confused:
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What you are missing is a few pounds of weight that other students are lugging around all day. Do you really miss hauling the extra weight?
 
Blackberryroid said:
My colleagues went for the Pro because they said they hated the Air, it gets hot.
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Playing some games (like trackmania and need for speed) will make my 13" MBA get hot near the hinge, as any other mac laptop would.. not unbearably hot or anything but yea..


the Pro gets hot too, ya know? :D
 
They probably look at the size and shape of the air, and assume it to be the Apple version of a netbook (portability over specs), while thinking that a macbook pro must be the quintessential workhorse laptop because of the "pro" tag. :p
 
Abazigal said:
They probably look at the size and shape of the air, and assume it to be the Apple version of a netbook (portability over specs), while thinking that a macbook pro must be the quintessential workhorse laptop because of the "pro" tag. :p
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I think you're exactly right... All the netbooks I've seen are almost unusable because of lack of hardware. Not only that, they're so tiny that my eyes hurt after 30 seconds of looking at a friend's netbook. I couldn't read on that thing for hours. I think you're onto something - the fact that people think the Macbook Air is a Netbook.

I usually try to do WCG (world community grid- http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/) in the winter and I was surprised to see my Macbook Air's cores out performing my Desktop's i7-950 cores (on a per core basis). I have the i5 in my 13' 2011 Macbook Air.

No, I didn't do it more than a few hours, I just wanted to see what would happen :). And to my surprise the Macbook Air is a very VERY powerful machine. A netbook it is NOT. And I can read on it for 6 hours with happy eyes.
 
LittleGwen said:
So.... I had to say goodbye to my much loved macbook that I've been using for 6 years... and purchased the macbook air because it's very light and easy for me to carry around. Plus, I don't need as much firepower as I would get with Macbook Pro since I just need an everyday light laptop. However, when I brought it to work after purchasing it, all my coworkers were asking me why on earth I bought the Macbook Air instead of the Macbook Pro. When I attend classes at my school, all the students there are carrying Macbook Pro as well. I thought since the Air was lighter, it would be more popular with students. I haven't seen one student (besides me) who has the Air and the majority of students here use a macbook. Am I missing something here? Is the Macbook Air looked down upon by Apple fans or what?:confused:
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The air is ahead of its time. Everyone else that has MBP's, has old MBP's (save the retina.) They're lying to themselves if they say the Air doesn't do what you need it to. I've also never seen another person with an Air at my school, and I'm in the computer engineering program.

I know enough about computers to know that the Air blows the MBP out of the water as far as my needs are concerned and as long as you don't need to use cd/dvd's regularly, it does what you need it to do too.

How many people do you see with iPad's?
 
The Bad Guy said:
I'm at work right now.

So far this morning, 5 x 13" MBP, 3 x iPad, 1 x 15" MBP (non retina) and 1 x 13" MBA

And yes...it's been a slow day. Hence me posting on here. :)

Edit: Oh and contrary to popular belief on these boards - people do tend to like get a decent lifespan on their investment. The ability to upgrade your RAM and HDD (or SSD) later down the track is an appealing option.

Without being rude, I do wonder where a lot of posters here get their ideas from. Because it's certainly not the real world.
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Are you implying that you WON'T get a decent lifespan on a MBA because you can't upgrade the RAM (true) or the SSD (not true)? I don't buy that. The paradigm has shifted - 4GB RAM on a notebook with an SSD will act much faster when paging out than 4GB RAM on a notebook with a 5400 RPM HDD. Users will not notice the page outs on the MBA anyway near as much as the page outs on a MBP with a spinning platter hard drive. To the average purchaser, this makes the MBA just as, or even more, future-proof than a typical MBP with 4GB RAM and a 5000GB or 750GB HDD. I say "average purchaser" as I seriously doubt that many people buying an entry level MBP or a MBA think that far down the road. With all of the new customers coming to Apple due to iPhone/iPad, I would suggest that most are not as computer literate as the folks on these boards, and as such, would never even consider upgrading RAM or the SSD.

I'd be interested in how you (personally) position the 13" MBP and the 13" MBA. Do you take the customers through a discovery process by analyzing their present and future needs, their budget, their tech savvy-ness, etc., or do you just sell them what they come in an ask for? I ask this because the allure of owning a 13" Macbook PRO at $1199 seems to be what sways people I've spoken to, and who also (mistakenly) view the 13" MBA as a toy.
 
I've seen very few 13-inch MBA and tons of entry level MBPs in the wild here in Brazil, but I think the reason behind this is the ridiculous prices of 13-inch airs here. The 13-inch MPB sells for roughly 2000 USD (google conversion from Brazilian reais) whilst the 13-inch MBA goes for 2500 USD. The cheapest 11-inch MBA costs about 1800 US dollars.
 
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