Hello, I have a question to users who have owned both the higher-end MacBook Pro model and the latest MacBook Air 13".
I have been using two MacBook Pro 17" for a few years. I am feeling the weight and want to get a newer computer. The MBPr is lighter but I don't like the fact that are lot of applications look bad on such an expensive machine. It may also be difficult to use it on the bus. Now, I am considering to get the latest MacBook Air 13" rather than the MBPr 15". How do you feel about the latest MacBook Air 13"?
Any experience appreciated. Thank you.
You are comparing apples and oranges and at opposite extremes. Yes, the 13" Air is lighter than a 17" MacBook Pro, but you lack up to two extra processing cores, a discrete GPU, many ports and connections, and removable/replacable drives and RAM. If these are no sacrifice for you, then you had no reason to be using the 17" MacBook Pro to begin with. If they are, the 13" Air is not the Mac for you. It's that polar of a difference.
That being said, to compare more similar Macs, say the 2012 13" MacBook Pro and the 2012 13" MacBook Air, for instance, is much more fair of a comparison, and if that's the comparison you want to make, it becomes a question of importance. Do you want removable/replacable drives or are you the type that will never open your computer at all? Do you like the convenience of an internal optical disc drive, or are you fine with an external (if any at all)? SSD or Hard drives? Weight vs. Minimalism? Ethernet and FireWire 800 or do you not care? The answers to those questions dictate the recommendation.
As for the 15" rMBP vs. the 15" MBP, yes, software looks crappy TODAY. Tomorrow everything will look awesome. Though if you're still using pre-Final-Cut-Pro-X versions of Final Cut Studio, it will ALWAYS look crappy. IF you're using earlier Intel-native versions of Photoshop, it will ALWAYS look crappy. If you are gaming with games older than Civilization V or Diablo III, it's a crap-shoot. Really, it's the web content that I'd be more worried about; but honestly, retina displays on notebooks (and eventually, desktops as well) are not going to be a passing trend; things will eventually update. The odds of everything updating by the time you're ready to discard the machine are slim though. In terms of OS X support, my guess is that, if any disparity at all, the 2012 rMBP will be supported for slightly longer than the 2012 MBP. Otherwise, the two machines have a very similar "which feature set is more important" debate, the results of which dictate the recommendation. That being said, it is likely that the 13" MacBook Pro and the 15" (non-retina) MacBook Pro as we know them today will disappear come next revision; the former likely replaced by either a retina version of the MacBook Air or a dedicated 13" Retina MacBook Pro with the latter simply getting discontinued in favor of the next rev of the current retina design, which will likely get some sort of price decrease to better situate itself as a mainstream MacBook Pro. That all said, analyze your values when it comes to your Mac and the best machine for you should, at that point, be a no-brainer. Good luck.
