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MacBook Air: 11 Inch i7 or Standard 13 Inch?

Power Macintosh

Power Macintosh

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 5, 2012
63
0
I will be using the MacBook Air for Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut is a very processor hungry application that also requires some screen space.

So, would it be 11 Inch i7 or Standard 13?
 
miles01110 said:
Why are you getting a Macbook Air if you're using Final Cut? Doesn't seem to be the best choice. If you're set on the MBA I'd get as much processor as you can afford or want to pay for.
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I really need a MacBook that is ultraportable. The MacBook Pro is not thin enough.

And I'm also tight on the budget.
 
i would say get the 11" macbook air, loaded with the 8GB MHz RAM, and the 256 SSD, and the i7, then get a 22"-24" monitor to hook it up to for the extra screen real estate for your final cut pro when you aren't on the move. 22"-24" monitors are very cheap from companies like dell.

OP: what is your budget?
 
Predator69 said:
Well you can't have a cake and not eat it right
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I like how you've butchered the proverb.

To OP, if you are going to be pushing your CPU to the limit regularly, the i7 will be faster. The question of how much faster, real world, is unclear but benchmarks show a substantial % performance jump over the i5.
 
macmastersam said:
i would say get the 11" macbook air, loaded with the 8GB MHz RAM, and the 256 SSD, and the i7, then get a 22"-24" monitor to hook it up to for the extra screen real estate for your final cut pro when you aren't on the move. 22"-24" monitors are very cheap from companies like dell.

OP: what is your budget?
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Nope, Just the 128 GB, 4GB RAM and i7. That's it. My budget is $1300 and it's only for a Mac. Just a Mac. Nothing else.
 
if its your only mac mba 13. a lot of people moved to 13 mba to replace 15 mbp the past few generations. this generation does really add more speed. i like the 11 as a second mac.
 
Power Macintosh said:
Nope, Just the 128 GB, 4GB RAM and i7. That's it. My budget is $1300 and it's only for a Mac. Just a Mac. Nothing else.
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Then you're just making stuff harder on yourself you obviously need the power, but an 11" screen would be too small for final cut pro IMO. Even safari is too small for an 11" notebook, and those kind of MBAs re for users looking for a secondary mac, not a first one.

A 13" probably would probably not be power sufficient for what you do. And like someone else said, bump up the ram first, as FCP X does take up a lot of resources. Why can you go any higher on your budget? Business, general finance, ?
 
honestly, if you need the juice of an i7, you need the juice of 8gb of ram. If you cannot afford to upgrade both, then you should be saving a little extra. Getting the i7 w/o the extra ram kind of defeats the purpose
 
Presumably you'll have large video files loaded, so the 8gb ram would be helpful.

Also, I think you should go spend some time in store before asking this. The biggest problem I would have would be with the screen resolution. Coming from a 3840*1080 desktop even the 13" feels a tad cramped, however the 11" would be unbearable to me. 1366*768 just isn't enough room for me. So ask yourself, is the resolution going to play into your decision if you can't do a monitor setup?

I assume final cut is like other design work were screen real estate is at a premium.
 
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mattopotamus said:
honestly, if you need the juice of an i7, you need the juice of 8gb of ram. If you cannot afford to upgrade both, then you should be saving a little extra. Getting the i7 w/o the extra ram kind of defeats the purpose
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this. i would also suggest upping the 128 SSD to a 256 SSD as well, as you will have plenty of space for videos and other software on your mac, too.

Power Macintosh said:
Why? My current computer has 8 GB and it isn't really that mind blowing fast.
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it's not a case of 'the more RAM you have, the faster it will be', it's about how much you will have left after a period of time and watching out for page outs on your computer. that's what slows it down. It's probably why you think it isn't 'mind blowing fast'. your computer either hasnt got enough RAM installed, or simply just another component in the computer.

to the OP: i would suggest looking at this.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs/

4GB of ram is clearly not enough for a macbook air for this kind of application, therefore you will probably have to upgrade the RAM to 8GB, so you have some left over, otherwise your computer will slow down because of page outs!
 
I have a 11/i7/8/128 which is a nice combo if you are on a budget. I do some light video editing on iMovie. Base on the activity monitor, editing HD footage requires quite a fair bit of ram. So if you really want to spring for 1 upgrade, I would also like to recommend the 8Gb ram upgrade over the I7.:)
 
It's up to you whether or not 1366x768 on 11.x" is comfortable. My opinion is that it isn't. Set your current screen to that resolution and try it out ;)

I don't dabble with final cut pro x personally so can't speak much for that application. I'm a fcp 7 and avid media composer user and based on those programs I'd say the MBA 11 resolution leaves too little work space.

The ULV i7 is of course better but as I think I wrote in another thread recently, it is still a somewhat similar processor to the ULV i5. On desktop chips the i7 usually means more than a frequency bump (i.e. i7 can have HT while the i5 doesn't), but in this case it is basically a small frequency and cache bump.

Rather go with 8GB RAM. If you end up doing your own graphics (say in the ever so popular Adobe After Effects), you're going to value RAM a great deal.
 
if it was down to choice, i would personally just save up a little bit more money on a $1300 budget to a $1600 one, and upgrade to a 13", with the i7 and the 8GB of RAM. enough screen space, still ultra portable, you will find it easier to see your FCP creations on a 13" screen, against a smaller 11" macbook air.

like i said in an earlier post, 11" MBAs are for those looking at a secondary mac to accompany thier first one, and the 13" macbook air is for those who need a primary mac, and nothing else, like the OP stated.
 
mattopotamus said:
honestly, if you need the juice of an i7, you need the juice of 8gb of ram. If you cannot afford to upgrade both, then you should be saving a little extra. Getting the i7 w/o the extra ram kind of defeats the purpose
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So THATS why my computer is so freaking slow. Just imagine 5 minutes of booting up. Intel Core 2 Duo and 8 GB OF RAM just doesn't work together.

Anyways, thank you for all the help. I have decided to get the 11 inch, i7 with 8GB of RAM.
 
Power Macintosh said:
Nope, Just the 128 GB, 4GB RAM and i7. That's it. My budget is $1300 and it's only for a Mac. Just a Mac. Nothing else.
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I can't see how much work you'll be able to do in Final Cut Pro with just 128 GB of storage, unless you're editing very low resolution footage.

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Power Macintosh said:
So THATS why my computer is so freaking slow. Just imagine 5 minutes of booting up. Intel Core 2 Duo and 8 GB OF RAM just doesn't work together.

Anyways, thank you for all the help. I have decided to get the 11 inch, i7 with 8GB of RAM.
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Intel Core 2 Duo and 8 GB of RAM does work very well. It sounds like the reason for the slow boot is your mechanical hard drive, but even then 5 minutes is excessive. What exactly are you booting up here?
 
theSeb said:
I can't see how much work you'll be able to do in Final Cut Pro with just 128 GB of storage, unless you're editing very low resolution footage.
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The thing got thunderbolt and usb 3.0. Will be able to communicate fast enough with external drives. If OP got none of them, well then the project will have to be somewhat tiny I guess ^^

Grats OP on a decision! Good luck with the resolution, hope you find it workable ;) As theSeb says C2D and 8GB RAM should work anyway and the 5 minute of boot time was probably due to something else. Failing hard drive maybe.
 
theSeb said:
I can't see how much work you'll be able to do in Final Cut Pro with just 128 GB of storage, unless you're editing very low resolution footage.

I have an external Hard Drive. It's also painfully slow USB2.

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Wokis said:
The thing got thunderbolt and usb 3.0. Will be able to communicate fast enough with external drives. If OP got none of them, well then the project will have to be somewhat tiny I guess ^^

Grats OP on a decision! Good luck with the resolution, hope you find it workable ;) As theSeb says C2D and 8GB RAM should work anyway and the 5 minute of boot time was probably due to something else. Failing hard drive maybe.
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Thanks. It's my third Mac. I'll see if I'll find this workable.

By the way, isn't the world's most powerful MacBook Air the 11" version?
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Power Macintosh said:
By the way, isn't the world's most powerful MacBook Air the 11" version?
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Well it's the tiniest. And you can spec it to be as powerful as a fully specced out 13". The difference would still be that the 13" has a larger battery, a different screen resolution and of course size.
 
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