Grad Student confused about what to buy

The rMBP is better if you will be staring at the screen for long periods of time. The keys also have slightly more travel than the MBA. You lose the 12 hour battery life and 0.6 lbs. of portability.

 

Try the 11" macbook air, does everything you want it to, and more!

 

They are equals in durability, although the Pro has better processor so it can do heavier lifting. The Air has better graphics,though. The rMBP might appear faster by a little bit, but really those are very similar for your uses. I also think the above two models are the two options for portable and fast computers from Apple (and useable for long periods as well).

 

both are fine computers and i doubt you'd regret purchasing either one. For me the real choice is between the 11" MBA and the 15" rMBP.

but you sound like you want a 13...so while the 13" rMBP is a superior computer spec wise, the MBA is the better deal in my opinion.

Do you need retina? Do you want retina? it's another $200 basically...otherwise the computers are very similar. the weight difference is minimal and there is going to be very little detectable performance difference for what you will be doing.

For me I don't like that the 13" rMBP is A - first gen tech and B - doesn't have a dedicated GPU. but otherwise it's an awesome machine.

What i don't like about the 13" MBA is that it doesn't feel like an ultralight - especially once you've picked up the 13" rMBP...it's just a really light laptop. I walked into the store wanting the 13" MBA but after spending 2 minutes with it, i wanted the 11.

the point there is we are spoiled by how light these machines are getting, and that the 13" rMBP confuses everything

if you really want the "pro" specs you could get a non retina 13" mbp and use the money saved on non-retina towards upgrading to a ssd.

 

Hi also a grad student. Your work sounds similar to mind (in terms of what you demand from a computer).

I use my MBA for reading PDFs (a lot), excel, general word processing and making power points. I also have some specialized windows only software that I run in a virtual machine using virtualbox (which the MBA runs wonderfully with 8gb of ram and a ssd). I have no other machine so my MBA needs to do everything.

I'm very happy with my MBA. I'm pretty sensitive to reading small fonts and I find the screen works just fine. Just make sure you calibrate it because Apple computers in general don't always look so good with default display profiles (I had a 2009 MBP before and it looked like crap before I calibrated it). I went to check out the 13" rMBPs too at the apple store and it is also a nice computer. I'm sure they'll update that one to haswell shortly so if you really want the retina display I would suggest waiting just a bit longer unless you can't.

 

The air has a better GPU

 

I think you'll be fine with an i5 and 8gb of ram.

 

I agree. No one should buy an Air with 4GB if they plan to keep it more than 1-2 years.

 

That's the spec I purchased (13", i5, 8, 256). From reading numerous threads on this forum over the past few months it became clear to me that the i5 was serving the needs of many different types of users on the 2012 models, even some of the 'power' users. So I decided to put my $$ towards more RAM and more space since I figured the difference in processor speeds would be something I wouldn't really notice since I'm not into 3D rendering or heavy video.

 

MBA all the way. Been in your exact situation... (I use my mac to do exactly what you stated you're gonna use it for).
Again, get the MBA. If you're still not sure. Go to the Apple store and use and hold both then decide.

 

Integrated yes, but the air doesn't have a dedicated. Not much as concern though as the OP says he doesn't have any heavy lifting.