How well does [enter text here] run on the fully upgraded Air?

[szolr]

I had some fun with an Apple Genius recently. I was TRYING to find out if an Air would cover the equivalent tasks I do on my Macbook Pro now. And he kept saying that the Macbook Pro I've got works better than the Airs. So why would I want an Air? I gave up with him... He kind of tested my patience a bit.

So I gather you can run OS X well on an Air. Also standard stuff like iLife, Office 2011, Skype, Stuffit Expander.

But these apps are what interest me most. How would these run on a 13 inch Air with 1.8 GHz i7 processor?

Civilization V
Contribute
Dreamweaver
Flash Professional
Handbrake
Photoshop

Also, am I right in thinking Civilization is the most demanding app on that list?

 

[TheJing]

Flash and Photoshop run well on my i5 1.6 11" so it shouldn't be a problem for you.

 

[szolr]

Flash and Photoshop run well on my i5 1.6 11" so it shouldn't be a problem for you.

Cool. And Contribute and Dreamweaver are less resource intensive than Flash and Photoshop. So CS5 would be fine. Maybe Premiere Pro would present problems but I'm no pro video editor and iMovie does me fine.

So the question now only is on Civilization 5 and Handbrake really.

 

[jsolares]

I had some fun with an Apple Genius recently. I was TRYING to find out if an Air would cover the equivalent tasks I do on my Macbook Pro now. And he kept saying that the Macbook Pro I've got works better than the Airs. So why would I want an Air? I gave up with him... He kind of tested my patience a bit.

So I gather you can run OS X well on an Air. Also standard stuff like iLife, Office 2011, Skype, Stuffit Expander.

But these apps are what interest me most. How would these run on a 13 inch Air with 1.8 GHz i7 processor?

Civilization V
Contribute
Dreamweaver
Flash Professional
Handbrake
Photoshop

Also, am I right in thinking Civilization is the most demanding app on that list?

Think about it this way, worst case the MBA is 78% of your MBP, and best case it's 100% (unless i'm mistaken both have a 2.9ghz max turbo frequency), and the MBA even has a bit more cache memory so it might be 83%-105% instead.

 

[thekev]

It depends on your file sizes for photoshop/flash. You'll run into ram issues at higher file sizes. Scratching to the SSD is still scratching. Handbrake is quite cpu intensive. It will not run fast on an air "compared to the other macs".

http://www.barefeats.com/macs11_01.html

http://www.barefeats.com/aper313.html

http://www.barefeats.com/macs11_01.html

These are cpu/ram intensive tasks. Note where the macbook air lies. Personally I'd test one in an Apple store if you really want it. If it doesn't run adequately there, it's probably not a good choice if you intend to use this machine at least a couple years.

 

[The Samurai]

I've done some comparisons on my channel should you be interested on the base line MBA 13".

 

[antonis]

Civilization is a completely different thing. The comparison for this focuses on the different graphic subsystems between the 2 laptops.

For the other apps, I'd choose MBA anyway, since SSD is the winner here.

 

[szolr]

Personally I'd test one in an Apple store if you really want it.

I'd love to do that. But Apple Stores don't tend to have upgraded Macs on show. So there's only the 1.7 GHz i5 13 inch Air to play with. Also I've yet to find a Mac they've installed Civilization or Handbrake on.

 

[snowwhite007]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Cs5 and dreamwever run as they should

 

[agentphish]

All of those things will run fine for you. CIV V may be the thing that will run least well.

My 13" is my primary machine.

The genius probably treated you like he did because it's not his job nor his true expertise to explain to you the differences between the machines and tell you which one is best for you.

That is what the sales specialists are for. They're the ones who are trained to ask you the right questions to get you into the machine you need and help you choose if you're stuck between several machines. I heard from a friend who works for Apple that there's also a position called "Expert" in the stores too which are the best of the specialists, you may want to seek one of them out.

What you did is like walking into the car dealership, going to the service desk, and asking the mechanic to sell you a car. Thats not what he does. He fixes them.

 

[szolr]

What you did is like walking into the car dealership, going to the service desk, and asking the mechanic to sell you a car. Thats not what he does. He fixes them.

Maybe I expect too much, but I did rather think that all Apple Store employees will have a basic knowledge on all Apple products.

It's like I went into a sports shop the other day looking for a new wetsuit. I asked the first assistant I found and he said he worked in the shoe department so couldn't tell me where to look or if they even stocked them.

 

[rbrian]

Handbrake runs fine on my Core2Duo, which is definitely worse than any i-series processor. I can convert DVD rips to iPad2 format at around 30fps with nothing else going on, drops to 20fps when I'm browsing MacRumors and listening to iTunes. For some reason it barely cracks 10fps straight off the DVD, so it's quicker to rip the whole DVD and then convert from the HDD.

 

[szolr]

Handbrake runs fine on my Core2Duo, which is definitely worse than any i-series processor. I can convert DVD rips to iPad2 format at around 30fps with nothing else going on, drops to 20fps when I'm browsing MacRumors and listening to iTunes. For some reason it barely cracks 10fps straight off the DVD, so it's quicker to rip the whole DVD and then convert from the HDD.

Not that it matters much I suppose, but...what's the CPU clock speed there?

 

[rbrian]

Not that it matters much I suppose, but...what's the CPU clock speed there?

It's in my sig, 2.66. It's not an Air, but when bare feats tested the 2011 Airs against other Macs, my 2.66 Core2Duo 13" Pro was in the table - near the bottom, well below the Airs. Of course, I can't find it now...

 

[theSeb]

Handbrake runs fine on my Core2Duo, which is definitely worse than any i-series processor. I can convert DVD rips to iPad2 format at around 30fps with nothing else going on, drops to 20fps when I'm browsing MacRumors and listening to iTunes. For some reason it barely cracks 10fps straight off the DVD, so it's quicker to rip the whole DVD and then convert from the HDD.

It depends on what you mean by fine. Handbrake will run, but not very fast, relatively speaking.