MacBook Air versus MacBook 2015

[bubulol]

I plan on picking up on the Macbook, however I'm unsure which to pick. I just need it for basic computing and to write. I decided to go with a smaller machine because it's easier to lug around. Carrying the 15 inch and the big charger is no fun!

After researching on the Apple site by doing a comparison, I'm still unsure what the major difference is. Basically, the Macbook 2015 is newer, retina display, no ports, and better looking. The Macbook Air has some ports? Anything else I'm missing?

Thank you!

It does not having a better looking to me.
Just adding iPhone 6 color and being slimmer don't mean it looks prettier
I find Macbook Air more charming

 

[AFEPPL]

I'd go with the rMB, if portability is the main factor for you.
The single port shouldn't be an issue, the inclusion of the retina screen is great and the performance for general use will be pretty much on a par.

I also like the look of the rMB over the MBA too.

 

[newellj]

True, they're a bit tricky to compare, but I don't think the point on ram/storage is super important in this particular case.

1) OP wants a device for 'basic computing and to write'. That tells me Facebook, youtube, Netflix, Google, Email, Skype, Word etc.

8gb / 256gb isn't going to be really important for that.

Imagine the MB had 5 million RAM and Storage, and the MBA 4gb / 128gb. I don't think it'd make a big difference for this particular OP.

2) If you do want more performance, then sure you get more memory on the base model, but the CPU is a bunch slower, and it needs to push more pixels. So to say that a MBA needs upgrades for it to perform as well as the MB probably isn't true, it's quite likely the base model MBA will perform better than the MB overall.

3) Even if you want extra RAM (again doesn't look necessary at all for his particular use), it's $100 more. You're still paying $200 less, while getting 2 hours more battery, better CPU/GPU, 1.3" more screen and more travel/space on your keyboard.

4) Storage upgrade, the least important for him it seems, is unnecessary. But if he does need storage, a nifty device or external HD are much cheaper.

I think the base model MBA is more than sufficient for OP, if he needs more then (3) MBA with +4gb upgrade, is the most realistic option which is still $200 cheaper.

I think you'd have to pit that against having a retina screen and a slightly thinner/lighter device. I'd personally prefer an HD 13.3" over a 12" Retina because anything below 13" is just too small for me. And if I then get $200, a better CPU/GPU, better battery and keyboard and better ports, I'm happy.

Looking forward to a possible "14 MB retina that's the same size as the 13.3". That'd be awesome.

No disagreements, and I'd point out that the difference in most real world use between the 2014 and 2015 is slender, and the 2014s seem to be selling for $100 of the price of the 2015 models, which is pretty attractive indeed if the rest of the computer appeals to her.

 

[Ati1111]

Don't get the MBA

Most of the MBA '15 out there in the market have a yellow tinge throughout the screen. Don't get. Replaced 3 units and still the same. Fed up.

 

[ghanwani]

Most of the MBA '15 out there in the market have a yellow tinge throughout the screen. Don't get. Replaced 3 units and still the same. Fed up.

Interesting feedback, thanks. Do you happen to have side by side picture comparisons of 2014 and 2015?

 

[Ati1111]

Interesting feedback, thanks. Do you happen to have side by side picture comparisons of 2014 and 2015?

Previously ordered a 2014 MBA, yellow tinge as well when compared to older Air and Pro (non-retina). Suggest you go to the stores and take a look.

 

[ghanwani]

Previously ordered a 2014 MBA, yellow tinge as well when compared to older Air and Pro (non-retina). Suggest you go to the stores and take a look.

Googling around looks like the yellow tint issue has been around for a while. Even some rMBP users complain about it.

 

[Cjshino]

You know you can calibrate the colors right?

 

[ghanwani]

You know you can calibrate the colors right?

Yes, but according to several reports from people that had this issue, calibrating the colors doesn't always work.

 

[cbautis2]

Thanks for this. By the way, it's a "her." LOL!

It's assumed that everybody who is registered on a tech site is a guy

 

[Cjshino]

Yes, but according to several reports from people that had this issue, calibrating the colors doesn't always work.

Worked for me

 

[Ati1111]

Anyone with a calibrated 'white' display profile? Kindly share the file pls? haha

 

[Mal67]

Any reason why the new Macbook should have 480p facetime camera vs the Air's et al 720p? I don't get this machine and my bet is that the Mb will be revised with a better camera, an extra usb connector and a price drop. An sd slot would be nice too. But then again they've already got that with the rMBp Really wish Apple would sell the Air off the shelf with 8 gig of memory though.

 

[motrek]

Any reason why the new Macbook should have 480p facetime camera vs the Air's et al 720p? I don't get this machine and my bet is that the Mb will be revised with a better camera, an extra usb connector and a price drop. An sd slot would be nice too. But then again they've already got that with the rMBp Really wish Apple would sell the Air off the shelf with 8 gig of memory though.

The bezels on the rMB's screen are thinner and the lid is probably thinner so I assume there are tight space restrictions on the camera and the best they could do with those restrictions was 480p.

I don't see how they could add a 2nd USB port on the rMB or an SD card slot given the size and shape of the laptop. Maybe if they replaced the headphone jack with another USB port and bundled an adapter.

 

[Abbara]

The bezels on the rMB's screen are thinner and the lid is probably thinner so I assume there are tight space restrictions on the camera and the best they could do with those restrictions was 480p.

I don't see how they could add a 2nd USB port on the rMB or an SD card slot given the size and shape of the laptop. Maybe if they replaced the headphone jack with another USB port and bundled an adapter.

The MBA is actually thinner at the point where the camera is than the rMB. And while the bezels on the sides are thinner, the top bezel with the camera looks exactly the same size.

So yeah in 2012 they were able to engineer a 720p camera into a thinner space, while managing 480p years later in a thicker space.

It was disappointing.

It could turn out that 480p is fine-ish. Cameras are way more than just megapixels. Needs testing. But, there was no real hype or talk around the camera so I think it's safe to assume it's not very good.

Normally I wouldn't mind, it's just for videochat after all and it's not the end of the world that your boss can't discern every pore in your face. But it was disappointing in a more symbolic manner: Apple is willing to choose form over function in pursuit of this 'thinness craze' that many people are fed up with. It's a business decision that's not good for their customers.

Customers would benefit with a slightly thicker, slightly more capable device (e.g. more battery life) that will be competitive for 5 years. Apple benefits by reducing that 5-year buying cycle to say an average of 3 years, by focusing not building a device that stays fast for 5 years, but building one that's fast only for 3 years, and goes out of fashion quickly because their focus is on improving and tweaking the form, making everything outdated. It allows you to charge a lot more money for a pretty and fashionable design without spending on the best performing parts, and get people to pay you $1k+ every 3 years instead of every 5. It's a soft type of planned obsolescence that you can get away with, but that can receive backlash every now and then. Like a 480p camera in 2015.

Anyway about your second point, I think a 2nd usb port is definitely coming later this year. An SD card though... I kind of doubt it.

For one, SD cards have lost a lot of their importance. Internet connectivity is becoming so ubiquitous, and there are now over a dozen cloud storage services that give you 5-20gb of free storage. We're seeing entertainment turn to streaming (Netflix, Spotify). We're seeing cameras with wifi that can upload pictures to a printer, flickr or dropbox. So why do we still need an SD card? Sure it'd be nice, but it's probably a bit like the CD pretty soon. Everything is going wireless and to the cloud, storage and transmission of data no longer needs SD cards.

And secondly, it cuts into their products & revenue in two ways. One even the little space it requires needs space, needs parts, needs repairs, takes away from the minimalist design etc. And two, SD cards offer 20c a gigabyte storage. Apple charges (and gets away with it), $1.50 per gigabyte on its SSD drives. The Nifty devices are extremely popular and SD cards allow you to effectively get the 128gb base model and still get 256gb+ storage at a much cheaper rate. It's like Apple had a port that turned your i5 processor into an i7 but at half the price. No way they'd want to keep that around if they didn't have to.

So I've got my doubts. The rMB is definitely the device to fully usher in an era of wireless & cloud. (safe for the USB-C port for charging and video output, which are both still sub-par. Slow to charge for wireless charging, and no way to currently reliably do 5k throughput on wireless with near zero latency.) So an SD card is not an automatic choice, especially for future 2016-2020 generations.

 

[Mal67]

Then to add to my own post above the air gets intel hd 6000 graphics and the macbook hd 5300 but they give it the Retina resolution. Why?

 

[newellj]

The MBA is actually thinner at the point where the camera is than the rMB. And while the bezels on the sides are thinner, the top bezel with the camera looks exactly the same size.

So yeah in 2012 they were able to engineer a 720p camera into a thinner space, while managing 480p years later in a thicker space.

It was disappointing.

It could turn out that 480p is fine-ish. Cameras are way more than just megapixels. Needs testing. But, there was no real hype or talk around the camera so I think it's safe to assume it's not very good.

Normally I wouldn't mind, it's just for videochat after all and it's not the end of the world that your boss can't discern every pore in your face. But it was disappointing in a more symbolic manner: Apple is willing to choose form over function in pursuit of this 'thinness craze' that many people are fed up with. It's a business decision that's not good for their customers.

Customers would benefit with a slightly thicker, slightly more capable device (e.g. more battery life) that will be competitive for 5 years. Apple benefits by reducing that 5-year buying cycle to say an average of 3 years, by focusing not building a device that stays fast for 5 years, but building one that's fast only for 3 years, and goes out of fashion quickly because their focus is on improving and tweaking the form, making everything outdated. It allows you to charge a lot more money for a pretty and fashionable design without spending on the best performing parts, and get people to pay you $1k+ every 3 years instead of every 5. It's a soft type of planned obsolescence that you can get away with, but that can receive backlash every now and then. Like a 480p camera in 2015.

Anyway about your second point, I think a 2nd usb port is definitely coming later this year. An SD card though... I kind of doubt it.

For one, SD cards have lost a lot of their importance. Internet connectivity is becoming so ubiquitous, and there are now over a dozen cloud storage services that give you 5-20gb of free storage. We're seeing entertainment turn to streaming (Netflix, Spotify). We're seeing cameras with wifi that can upload pictures to a printer, flickr or dropbox. So why do we still need an SD card? Sure it'd be nice, but it's probably a bit like the CD pretty soon. Everything is going wireless and to the cloud, storage and transmission of data no longer needs SD cards.

And secondly, it cuts into their products & revenue in two ways. One even the little space it requires needs space, needs parts, needs repairs, takes away from the minimalist design etc. And two, SD cards offer 20c a gigabyte storage. Apple charges (and gets away with it), $1.50 per gigabyte on its SSD drives. The Nifty devices are extremely popular and SD cards allow you to effectively get the 128gb base model and still get 256gb+ storage at a much cheaper rate. It's like Apple had a port that turned your i5 processor into an i7 but at half the price. No way they'd want to keep that around if they didn't have to.

So I've got my doubts. The rMB is definitely the device to fully usher in an era of wireless & cloud. (safe for the USB-C port for charging and video output, which are both still sub-par. Slow to charge for wireless charging, and no way to currently reliably do 5k throughput on wireless with near zero latency.) So an SD card is not an automatic choice, especially for future 2016-2020 generations.

What we don't know about the cameras is how the lid/display assemblies are laid out. It's possible that the enormous bezel on the MBA permits a deeper camera assembly than the possibly more densely packed lid on the rMB.

Having said that, I'd be very surprised if Apple doesn't figure out a way to upgrade the camera in the rMB for the next version.

Cynics are already posting that Apple has intentionally "crippled" the FT camera in the 2015 rMB to try to compel people to upgrade next year.

 

[tmarks11]

Cynics are already posting that Apple has intentionally "crippled" the FT camera in the 2015 rMB to try to compel people to upgrade next year.

People seem to think that this is a demonstration of "bad business practices", rather than a sharp practice. Many companies leaves something on the table when they build a device, so they can get consumers into the upgrade (every year) cycle.

Apple knows the novelty of the new form factor will result in a huge leap of early adopters onto the product line. I am sure (like all new Apple products) that the wait for this device will stretch to weeks or a month because of everyone who wants one. Giving themselves a clear upgrade path, Apple will be able to advertise more advances next year rather than just a CPU upgrade, and hopefully drag those early adopters along to buy the next generation.

Yes, as a consumer we would like to have everything in the world for the cheapest price possible.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

"Cynics are already posting that Apple has intentionally "crippled" the FT camera in the 2015 rMB to try to compel people to upgrade next year."

Currently, I own an iPad Air2, and iPad Retina Mini 2, (as well as 4 from the past), camera's on the iPad are of no value to me, have not taken a single pix with any iPad, now the phone, however, is another matter

 

[AFEPPL]

"Cynics are already posting that Apple has intentionally "crippled" the FT camera in the 2015 rMB to try to compel people to upgrade next year."

Currently, I own an iPad Air2, and iPad Retina Mini 2, (as well as 4 from the past), camera's on the iPad are of no value to me, have not taken a single pix with any iPad, now the phone, however, is another matter

So true, who cares about the camera it makes no difference.

 

[motrek]

The MBA is actually thinner at the point where the camera is than the rMB. And while the bezels on the sides are thinner, the top bezel with the camera looks exactly the same size.

So yeah in 2012 they were able to engineer a 720p camera into a thinner space, while managing 480p years later in a thicker space.

Don't know if it's thinner or not. The lid seems to have a similar taper to the MBA to me so I would expect it to be thinner since the entire laptop is thinner.

Well, regardless, we don't know the engineering that went into the decision. Maybe the laptop had to have an extra strip of backlights at the top to properly illuminate the retina display and there was almost no space left over for a camera.

I don't think Apple is above planned obsolescence strategies but I doubt they would do that with the camera. I assume the vast majority of people don't know and don't care what their camera resolution is, and I can't imagine any significant number of people getting all excited about getting a new version of the laptop because of a higher-res camera.

As for the SD card slots, I think you misunderstand me. I was just replying to somebody else's post, not saying that I would like to see an SD card slot in the future on the rMB. For one, I don't think there's enough space anywhere on the laptop to put one. And two, I personally don't understand the point of SD cards and couldn't care one whit whether or not my laptops have one.

 

[Abbara]

What we don't know about the cameras is how the lid/display assemblies are laid out. It's possible that the enormous bezel on the MBA permits a deeper camera assembly than the possibly more densely packed lid on the rMB.

Having said that, I'd be very surprised if Apple doesn't figure out a way to upgrade the camera in the rMB for the next version.

Cynics are already posting that Apple has intentionally "crippled" the FT camera in the 2015 rMB to try to compel people to upgrade next year.

Again, the bezel at the top is the same for the rMB and MBA, there's no difference. It's the side bezels that are thinner, but they don't house the camera.

But the MBA is thinner at the place where the camera sits.

So on the same bezel size, in a thinner space, as of 2012, they were able to get a better camera in there than the new MB in 2015. That's what it seems like. Not very thrilling.

 

[Abbara]

Don't know if it's thinner or not. The lid seems to have a similar taper to the MBA to me so I would expect it to be thinner since the entire laptop is thinner.

Nope the MBA is thinner where the camera sits than the rMB.

As for the SD card slots, I think you misunderstand me. I was just replying to somebody else's post, not saying that I would like to see an SD card slot in the future on the rMB. For one, I don't think there's enough space anywhere on the laptop to put one. And two, I personally don't understand the point of SD cards and couldn't care one whit whether or not my laptops have one.

2nd USB-C port seems completely fine. Hell even with more space around the port left than around the USB-ports on the MBA. SD card looks possible, too, but again I don't think they'll go for it for earlier mentioned reasons.

I don't think Apple is above planned obsolescence strategies but I doubt they would do that with the camera.

You don't follow. My point is not that the plan obsolescence by putting in a weak camera, and then upgrading it later saying 'hah you must want a better camera now'.

My point is that they chose to put form over function. If they didn't pursue the thinness craze, they could have had the camera they wanted, the second USB-C port, an even better battery life, the travel on keyboards we have come to expect from $1300 machines, the slightly more powerful CPU that we've come to expect from $1300 machines etc.

Yet they don't try to build the best performing pretty laptop. They first try to build the prettiest looking, and then see how far they can push performance. That's why you first get a thin looking laptop, and then they see what the best camera is they can put in, and it turns out it's an 480p. Same with the ports. They first go 'what's the thinnest possible'. And then go 'well ports is tricky, 1 is fine'.

That's a specific choice and while generally I'm okay with it, a single port and a 480p camera in 2015 is symbolic for this strategy to have gone a little bit too far.

And when that prettiness factor changes a few years later, it's not fashionable anymore, and obsolete for many customers. As opposed to a laptop that's build for performance first, and that stays relevant because its performance is so damn good.

Apple can get away with it because their build quality is so great, and because the OS doesn't come with bloatware and is on the whole very streamlined, so their devices generally perform well for long. And because even when fashion changes, old Apples are still stylish. So they can get away with it.

Yet, at the end of the day I think many users are stuck feeling that they wouldn't have minded something not quite as thin, something between the MB and the MBA, that was a bit more powerful, didn't have a camera from the 90s (Apple's quicktake 100 did 480p in... 1994, over 20 years ago) and could actually charge and do 1 other thing without requiring external devices.

Anyway don't get me wrong this isn't something I'm passionate about. But these engineering choices were a bit symbolic I think of a thinness craze going a bit too far, a bit too early.

 

[motrek]

...
2nd USB-C port seems completely fine. Hell even with more space around the port left than around the USB-ports on the MBA. SD card looks possible, too, but again I don't think they'll go for it for earlier mentioned reasons.

I think you misunderstand the engineering problem here. Putting a port on a computer isn't as simple as being able to draw it on the side with Photoshop. When you plug something in, it occupies physical space inside the dimensions of the chassis, it doesn't simply disappear.

Notice how the keyboard in the rMB is now offset about half an inch more towards the user than the 11" MBA's keyboard, and the USB-C port is right "above" the keyboard. This is almost certainly because the port can't be placed alongside the keyboard--the components would occupy the same space. Thus, extra ports where you've drawn them in your mockup is a physical impossibility, not just Apple being cranky.

I don't know what engineering constraints there were around the camera but I find it very unlikely that Apple could have included a better camera and simply chose not to for business reasons. Higher-res cameras are cheap and the business justification is not convincing.

You might not know what engineering constraints they were operating under but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

Anyway don't get me wrong this isn't something I'm passionate about. But these engineering choices were a bit symbolic I think of a thinness craze going a bit too far, a bit too early.

I think Apple has just taken the laptop to its logical conclusion re: size, i.e., the width of a full size keyboard and the height necessary for a 16:9 (or whatever) screen of that width. I don't find the device very appealing myself but somebody was going to make it eventually and Apple just got there first. If you do want a laptop with more CPU power and ports and so forth, they have offered those for years and still offer them.

 

[newellj]

Again, the bezel at the top is the same for the rMB and MBA, there's no difference. It's the side bezels that are thinner, but they don't house the camera.

But the MBA is thinner at the place where the camera sits.

So on the same bezel size, in a thinner space, as of 2012, they were able to get a better camera in there than the new MB in 2015. That's what it seems like. Not very thrilling.

The point is that we have no idea what's behind the camera. The thinner MBA may have nothing there but the camera. The thicker rMB may have electrical components behind the camera. External dimensions tell us nothing until someone tears one down.

----------

Nope the MBA is thinner where the camera sits than the rMB.

Again, external dimensions tell us nothing about what's inside.

My point is that they chose to put form over function. If they didn't pursue the thinness craze, they could have had the camera they wanted, the second USB-C port, an even better battery life, the travel on keyboards we have come to expect from $1300 machines, the slightly more powerful CPU that we've come to expect from $1300 machines etc.

Of course they did - that's the point. Dell made a similar and even more ridiculous engineering decision with the camera in the 2015 XPS 13, for a similar reason. Anyone who wants a 720p FT camera, more ports, and deeper travel keys still has the option to buy an MBA or an rMBP. It's not like they're all that much different at the end of the day.