With the Best Buy promo sale on the new Air models I am strongly considering getting a 13 inch model to replace my mid-2012 cMBP. My cMBP has AppleCare up to February 2016 and a third party 240GB SSD. I mostly use my laptop to browse the web, manage my photo & music/media library with iTunes & my iPhone. Very sporadical gaming using Windows/Mac via Bootcamp. As far as I know nothing CPU intensive for my needs. The only things that I used once in a while would be the ethernet i/o, optical drive, IR receiver ( I have a Apple Remote) and the ability to use the audio out port to stream surround sound to my home theater. Am I missing something here or is there anything more that I should consider before making the switch? I would like the MBA for the excellent battery life gains and I might benefit from the slight improvement to the integrated GPU.
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Interested in switching from cMBP to MBA
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you will need ethernet adapter (buy the one which acts as a usb hub), IR adapter and obviously external optical drive.
Other than that, it should suit you needs perfectly and have some extra horsepower (it's not a netbook by any means and it's faster than your current MBP) for reserve.
Audio out, as for the integrated DAC, is quite good.
The 1.4GHz i5 Haswell processor would still be faster than my current 2.5GHz i5 Ivy Bridge?
Am also correct in presuming that the MBA doesn't posses digital audio line out from it's headphone port a la cMBP?
Yes! That 1.4GHz Haswell processor turbo boosts to 2.7GHz and unlike its predecessors, it can run stably close to the highest turbo frequency even with a tight thermal budget. Haswell runs faster than Ivy Bridge at the same frequency.
Plus, the memory is faster, and the PCIe SSD is much faster.
Plus, the memory is faster, and the PCIe SSD is much faster.
The 1.4GHz i5 Haswell processor would still be faster than my current 2.5GHz i5 Ivy Bridge?
Actually I may have overstated that a little. If we compare them both at full load and turbo frequencies, i5 3210M used in MBP has marginal advantage over i5 used in MBA. But you shouldn't feel any real world performance difference between them as they are damn close.
I just went from a Late 2013 rMBP to a Early 2014 11" MBA and I haven't looked back. The decrease in screen size hasn't affected me at all, especially since I have a 24" external display. I still use my MBA for photo editing in Lightroom 5 and Aperture 3 and have no problems power wise. I did upgrade to 8GB of ram, 256GB SSD, and the 1.7GHz i7 but I think I would have been fine with even the base model. I just like to future proof my machines.
Was portability the reason for the switch? Does the 11 feel too small when not using it with the external monitor?
Yes, portability was the reason why. No, to me the 11" screen is just right. I wouldn't want a smaller screen but the 11" doesn't bother me at all, even when I'm traveling and away from my external display.
I upgraded from a 15" cMBP to a i7 Ultimate 13" MBA and couldn't be happier. This thing flies. It's PCIe SSD is lightening fast and the i7 processor handles everything I've thrown at it with ease. Best notebook I've ever owned.
