Anyone move from 13in Retina to 11in Air?

[Mac.User]

Work has given me a Retina to work on, and I like it, but I need to buy my one machine since I am looking for a new job.I mostly sit at my desk with a 23in 1920x1200 LCD, with some travel. I do like working with both my LCD and Retina @ 1920x1200 resolution.

I was looking at an 11in Air with i7 and 8GB RAM. Has anyone else made the change and do you regret it? Should I just wait till the Haswell Retinas come out?

 

[robvas]

The smaller size is nice but the 13" rMBP is a little shorter/narrower than the 13" Air, and I couldn't handle the 1366x768 for doing programming and sysadmin work. Had to use an external monitor to get stuff done.

 

[Tinknock71]

Going to a 11" MBA might be hard to do, coming from a Retina a 13 MBA might be a little easier to do

 

[djfirth]

Retina, no, but I haven't looked back from having 13" MB and MBP and switching to an 11" MBA back in 2011. I'm very happy with my mid-2012 unit, though it would have been nice to have the extra battery life of the 2013.

 

[sergioarista]

Using both

I have both computers: a late 2011 11" mba and an early 13" rmbp, I love both of them but you would be surprised how much (very) more portable mba 11 is.

rmbp 13" is ideal for portable streaming work station for the 2 thunderbolt ports, if you don't do rendering or 3d imaging, cpu difference will not be noticeable, however if you do a lot of spreadsheet on the move or need multiple windows visible 13" mbpro is the go

both machines hooked up to a monitor are quite similar for design, office, etc

new mba has more battery life than rmbp in real life

In short in my opinion is that you mobile needs determine which machine best suits

in both machines i have:
Parallels ans win xp and 7
cs5
FCPX
Motion 5
Office
Iwork

and except for rendering they work pretty much the same.

On the 11" those 2" less and a pound less seems not much of a difference, but believe me it is; that makes a huge difference in having a carry case for your laptop (13") or just tossing your laptop to your brief case (11")

 

[fotuwe]

I believe this is one of the best answers you can get!

Thank you very much sergio for summing it up that nicely!

 

[Boyd01]

I went from a 2011 13" MBA to a 2013 11" MBA. I agree about the portability - you can carry around the 11" MBA and not even realize it's there. I also run some high powered software, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, VectorWorks, etc. This is one very fast little machine - I have the 512gb SSD which incredible, I get 700MB/s write and 730MB/s read performance.

I did consider getting the 13" rMBP instead, but the little size of the 11" MBA is really nice for travel. I mostly use it at home with a big monitor however.

For some things, the MBA is actually faster according to this article: http://www.macworld.com/article/204...13-holds-its-own-against-the-macbook-pro.html

 

[MacPC]

I have the 2013 13" 8G 500G SSD i7 Haswell MBA, I am not sure what you will be using your MBA (graphics design? video editing?) But I can tell you the display is absolutely beautiful, just the MBA is awesome. I don't see the need for retina display(I am a software engineer). But I can tell you that I definitely won't go for the 11" tho, 11" display is just too small to work with when I am on the road

 

[richorlin]

I went from a 2013 MBPr 13" to a 2013 MBA 11" and never looked back.
I have a 27" iMAc for the heavy lifting and the MBPr was overkill for what I use a laptop for. I'm happy AND I have an extra $400