How to Understand Notebook Specs

[Stevi]

Sometime in the next few weeks I'd like to buy a notebook. The problem is it's hard to understand what I might be buying and how it fits with what I plan to do with it. It won't be my primary machine as I have a maxed out late 2012 27" iMac. It will however be my main machine over the summer when I spend time away in the country. I'll only be away a week at a time so it doesn't need to be maxed out. I would like to run Aperture, as I am an amateur photographer. My current DSLR is 14mp and I am possible looking at getting one capable of 24mp. I am not a gamer and won't be editing any movies on it. Although I will use it to watch movies. I was looking at getting an 13" Air 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz; 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM; 256GB Flash Storage. However I am not sure if that will be enough and I am wondering if I should be looking at getting a 13 rMBP with a slightly smaller processor 2.6GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz; but more ram 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM and the same sized drive 256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage. I think my eyes are glossing over just looking at the specs.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Stevi

PS if I have put this in the wrong place my apologies in advance.

 

[Tears Apart]

I'd go for rMBP if you give performance priority. If you give priority to portability, then go Air. If I had an iMac at home I'd probably go Air.

PS if I have put this in the wrong place my apologies in advance.

You can post this also in:

MacRumors Forums > Apple Hardware > Notebooks > MacBook Pro

 

[samh]

Sometime in the next few weeks I'd like to buy a notebook. The problem is it's hard to understand what I might be buying and how it fits with what I plan to do with it. It won't be my primary machine as I have a maxed out late 2012 27" iMac. It will however be my main machine over the summer when I spend time away in the country. I'll only be away a week at a time so it doesn't need to be maxed out. I would like to run Aperture, as I am an amateur photographer. My current DSLR is 14mp and I am possible looking at getting one capable of 24mp. I am not a gamer and won't be editing any movies on it. Although I will use it to watch movies. I was looking at getting an 13" Air 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz; 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM; 256GB Flash Storage. However I am not sure if that will be enough and I am wondering if I should be looking at getting a 13 rMBP with a slightly smaller processor 2.6GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz; but more ram 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM and the same sized drive 256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage. I think my eyes are glossing over just looking at the specs.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Stevi

PS if I have put this in the wrong place my apologies in advance.

If you're going to be doing a lot of photo editing with large files (14MP and 24MP are large), you will probably see a difference in going from 8 to 16 GB of RAM. Portability is not as big a factor since you're talking about really just a half pound of weight. Also, you'll have a much better display for working with images on the retina macbook pro. I would not be as concerned about the CPU horsepower.