Best 13" for graphic design

[KimHansenDK]

I am considering buying a new MacBook Pro/Air that will last me a least 4-5 years. Right now I have a 13" MacBook Air 2012 with 2.0GHz i7 and 8GB ram and it handles everything just fine - but since we are about to have our second child I know that money will be spent on a lot of other more important things in the next few years. So if I was to have a new machine it has to be bought within the next months.

So what are the best 13" (price vs specs) at the moment? It will primarily be used for designing apps for iOS/Android along with some web design and some light gaming (Football Manager etc.)

Will there be any real difference between my current MacBook Air and the new 13" MacBook Pro Retina (2.4GHz i5, 8/16GB ram and 256GB SSD)?? My main concern is the graphics card - will the current Intel HD 4000 be enough in a year or two?

And are there still problems with IR on the retina screens/panels?

Any thoughts are welcome 🙂

 

[Barney63]

The 13" i5 has Intel Iris not HD4000.

Barney

 

[KimHansenDK]

If I was to keep my MacBook Air I would still be using the Intel HD 4000...

 

[Robster3]

Get the 16gb/1TB top end model now🙂

 

[gochi]

iris pro is worth the upgrade for sure.

 

[thekev]

This logic makes little sense to me. You couldn't specifically set aside the funds for a new machine now? Unless you actually experience pageouts, there won't be a lot of speed difference. I think the rmbp has better viewing angles. 4-5 years is also longer than you can obtain warranty. Things do sometimes happen. You would be better off using this one longer then switching up down the line. The exception might be if the resale value on this one is particularly high. I wouldn't worry too much about updates either. There might be a mid cycle .1-.2 ghz spec bump in the next couple months due to availability from intel. Broadwell is still quite far off though. 13" seems like an incredibly small screen for design work. I would require an external display whenever possible.

 

[KimHansenDK]

This logic makes little sense to me. You couldn't specifically set aside the funds for a new machine now? Unless you actually experience pageouts, there won't be a lot of speed difference. I think the rmbp has better viewing angles. 4-5 years is also longer than you can obtain warranty. Things do sometimes happen. You would be better off using this one longer then switching up down the line. The exception might be if the resale value on this one is particularly high. I wouldn't worry too much about updates either. There might be a mid cycle .1-.2 ghz spec bump in the next couple months due to availability from intel. Broadwell is still quite far off though. 13" seems like an incredibly small screen for design work. I would require an external display whenever possible.

I use it at home hooked up to a Thunderbolt Display or sometimes in the couch. At work I have the latest 27" top-spec iMac which will be used for all heavy lifting. But do some light design work at home and my MacBook Air 2012 handles everything just fine at the moment. I guess the question is: Will I see a big difference in terms of graphics performance in Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects (no heavy rendering) moving from Intel HD 4000 to HD 5000/5100?

 

[thekev]

Will I see a big difference in terms of graphics performance in Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects (no heavy rendering) moving from Intel HD 4000 to HD 5000/5100?

No. You've fallen victim to the typical misinformation of the forum. Illustrator zero effect. In photoshop are you really waiting forever for filters to render and not just any filters, but those that are specifically gpu accelerated? This assumes you're on CS6 or CC. Does it actually lag in anything? If so is it low on ram at the time (most common cause of lag in that app)?

After Effects uses the gpu for specific things, but heavy rendering is not one of them unless you are specifically referring to its raytracer. Its raytracer requires an NVidia gpu. There's no way to know whether either of these will ever be supported. Even if they were, they wouldn't be able to access enough vram to be useful. For anything with larger textures you would run out of texture memory. The HD 5000 might be a little faster with OpenGL features, but I doubt it would be enough to influence purchasing habits. The reason they use the gpu for certain things is simply because it's inherently faster than the cpu for those things.

 

[KimHansenDK]

Thanks a lot!

Like I said my MacBook Air handles everything just fine at the moment, and the 8GB ram has not been a problem yet. I don't experience any lag and do not use the filters, that you are referring to. And since I don't do any 3D rendering and heavy video editing, I guess the my current MacBook Air is just fine for now.

So sticking with my MacBook Air until there is something notably better out there - and something from which I will see real difference in performance 🙂

 

[thekev]

Thanks a lot!

Like I said my MacBook Air handles everything just fine at the moment, and the 8GB ram has not been a problem yet. I don't experience any lag and do not use the filters, that you are referring to. And since I don't do any 3D rendering and heavy video editing, I guess the my current MacBook Air is just fine for now.

I'm not sure why people always refer to 3D rendering. Most renderers only use the gpu for draft rendering and drawing viewports. The most commonly used ones do not touch the gpu for final renders. It would seem well suited to things like GI, but memory constraints have limited that considerably. In most cases the offline rendering is 100% cpu bound and whatever is drawn to screen is reliant on the OpenGL performance of your gpu. With video editing FCPX makes heavier use of the gpu than some of the others. This makes sense because it was a ground up rewrite.

So sticking with my MacBook Air until there is something notably better out there - and something from which I will see real difference in performance 🙂

That would be my suggestion. It's also what I do. If you sell the Air as soon as a big change hits without waiting for the used market to catch up, you should do okay. I mean within days of the announcement. This generation wasn't an immense improvement.