MacBook Air or iPad Pro for Journalism

[David30L]

Hi,


I’ve just been offered a journalism position, and figure it’s time to abandon my old Dell laptop that’s become cumbersome and sluggish.

I’m eyeing up either a MacBook Air or an iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard. Nothing smaller than a 13” screen.

I’d be typing articles in Word/Pages, importing photographs from a Canon DLSR via USB-C (cropping them via the Photos app), browsing Safari, sending emails, and downloading/streaming podcasts.

The device would be used at my office desk and taken home to use on Wi-Fi. Very rarely would it be taken on long journey rail trips etc.

Can you guys help decide which device would be best? Looking for something to last 3-5 years. None of the tasks would be too intensive on the processor, and I’d opt for the 1tb memory for either.


Thanks, David.

 

[MrAperture]

MacBook Air.

Could set up a Monitor + hub for both office and home as well.

 

[aihpcfl]

I agree, MacBook. @MrAperture makes a good point. And maybe I'm biased, but I think of an iPad as pretty much an iPhone. I would be more confident with a MacBook that if down the road you think of something you want to do that you hadn't thought of, you would be more likely to discover that you already have that capability if you choose MacBook.

 

[chown33]

I expect you'll be doing a lot of typing, so which keyboard feels best to you? If it's the Magic Keyboard, then I think the iPad should be a strong consideration.

Another thing is how frequently you'll be switching between the tasks you listed. The iPad will probably be more single-focused, and doing things like importing pics and putting them into a Word document will probably take more steps, or be more difficult with larger numbers of pics. To find out, you should do a test: import 30 pics from a camera into each device, and count the number of steps and the difficulty for getting them all the way into a Word document. Also go the opposite way: export a Word doc with 30 pics and a bunch of text to an HTML web page.

 

[MBAir2010]

Can you guys help decide which device would be best? Looking for something to last 3-5 years. None of the tasks would be too intensive on the processor, and I’d opt for the 1tb memory for either.

last August until December, I used an older MacBook Air from 2010 i5 intel that was still running snow leopard OSX to
manipulate over 4000 headshots or photos and addd text to these images for a freelance project
using older software, CS4 and word for Mac without any problems.

im positive a newer MacBook Air will do wonders!

 

[TechRunner]

Over the next three to five years of expected life, your software needs might change and the odds are good compatibility will be much easier to find on an Air than on an iPad. Adding in what others have already said, the MBA seems like the better choice to me.