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Macbook Pro vs. Macbook Air (Again)

R

rwh63

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 24, 2010
642
420
New England
ok, been on the fence for a while now. been watching the evolution of both models over the last several years. currently running a late 2011 MacBook pro. its starting to "breakdown" in certain soft and hardware ways. i can still do a lot with it (always light use with it). but, i know a new one is near on the horizon. i'm happy with the 13" size, though 14" would be ok. my biggest hangup is that i use the built in ports a lot on laptop. my usb ports don't work anymore, but i use firewire/thunderbolt-minidisplayport, SD sometimes, and yes, believe it or not, the superdrive. the Air has almost no built ins, and barely any ports at all. the Pro has a decent assortment, incl. SD and HDMI. i really did not want to have to buy a hub (added cost and something else to carry). would have to buy a superdrive (yes, i use physical media a lot). i also like to have the option to connect hardlines.

i see M2 Airs going for about $1000 new w/512 gb storage (currently maxing out 320).
 
I don't get it.. what are you really asking for. someone to tell you its alright to but the MBP?

you give a wonderful list and then say something rather silly

"i really did not want to have to buy a hub (added cost and something else to carry)"

so you are going to justify spending likely $5-600 more to buy a MPB so you don't have to spend $40 to buy a usb hub? Please explain where the logic would be in that.

"my biggest hangup is that i use the built in ports a lot on laptop. my usb ports don't work anymore, but i use firewire/thunderbolt-minidisplayport, SD sometimes, and yes, believe it or not, the superdrive."

And considering that the MBP (and MBA) do not have a thunderbolt/minidisplayport on the unit, you are going to need to get a dongle for that as well. And I wonder, what sort of plug does your superdrive take? So if you are already needing to carry a dongle for the TB2/TB3 to get your display to work I gather, and the superdrive, why not just get a small hub that will allow you to plug those two devices in.

By all means. The MBP is a great piece of hardware. it has lots of other things going for it than just a few extra ports on the side of it. Buy for what you really need, and if the MBP better fills the needs then that is the unit you should buy.
 
You could check the apple USB‑C Digital AV Multiport Adapter. It gives you one usb-a port and one hdmi. This is what I got for my MBA. For SD card you need another dongle.
 
admittedly, i have been out of the laptop buying (though not researching) market since 2011. and peripherals as well.
i'll probably have to stop into an apple store and try some of the newest machines. wonder when the newest pro is due?
 
Let us know what you end up deciding — and why. That will help others in a similar situation!
 
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Unless you specifically need or want something that one model has over the other, you can just pick the one you prefer based on size, form factor etc.

All of the Apple Silicon laptops are incredibly capable machines.
 
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yes, compared to my 2011, all of the M series laptops would be much better performance. i do like that apple listened to customers and returned ports to the pro line up. i see the m4 is due later this year.
 
how important is it to pay (attention) to core cpu/gpu? i see it affecting price noticeably. also, i see liquid retina display advertised. much improved over the old retina?
 
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There are two reasons I'd go with the higher core configuration:

1) The obvious performance benefit - extra cores. 10 GPU cores vs 8 GPU cores should give around 20% greater performance on GPU tasks that are multicore aware. It's not going to be exactly that as the process is not perfectly efficient, but there's some gain there for sure. That's not an overall 20% improvement in system performance, just GPU tasks that can leverage multi-core.

2) The less obvious benefit - higher quality silicon. Apple is likely doing an 8 core GPU vs 10 core GPU due to binning of the chips. Typically this results in the higher core processors being generally a slightly higher quality than the lower core processors, but obviously individual chips vary. There should be a very slight increase in efficiency of the higher core chip on CPU (as well as GPU) tasks given a large enough sample size.

How much is that worth in terms of purchase price is up to you. Would I pay 10% more for extra GPU cores? Possibly. I do some light Lightroom work but I'm not a power user. Would I pay 20% more? No, I don't think I would.
 
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