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Mid-2015 MacBook Pro Vs. Mid-2012 MacBook Air

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bradPiano

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 10, 2011
34
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I'm a developer who's been very pleased with the workhorse that my 2012 13" MacBook Air has become over the course of my ownership. Recently, though, I'm starting to find a tipping point in what the machine is capable of.

Running it hard 15 hours a day and starting to get into heavier development (mostly web design at the start of it's life and growing into HTML5 gaming and some fairly intensive Xcode Mac App development), I'm starting to experience issues I attribute to heavy wear/tear coupled with tech bottlenecks: random shut-downs when I've got a ton of apps/browsers going on, a battery that needs 'serviced', and loosening keyboard keys (several pop off if struck too roughly or off-centered.

Though the Air is still perfectly usable in most circumstances, especially hooked up to an external display in clamshell mode, I can't help but wonder if I'm limiting my potential with my current setup. I had been keeping my eye on the 2015 MacBook Pros this year, awaiting a refresh in hopes of upgrading both screen real-estate/resolution (my eyes would thank me) and reliability for running dev-heavy apps and handling the process of browser games.

My question is, for those with experience with both the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro, are the latest updates worthy of consideration for upgrading from a 2012-era Air? My primary focuses are on web-based html5 games development, audio recording/production in Logic, and Xcode Mac/iOS with some light Drupal development. I've heard a lot of criticism with the seemingly marginal updates. Would I see drastic benefits with the faster ssd and dedicated gpu?
 
It would be a huge difference, CPU power alone in Mac geek benchmark the 2012 air ges a 5833 vs 14694 on the current 15. Plus going from the Intel 4000 GPU to a dedicated m370x is pretty dramatic as well.the ssd being faster will tie all this together to make it a pretty big update.

https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks
 
bradPiano said:
I'm a developer who's been very pleased with the workhorse that my 2012 13" MacBook Air has become over the course of my ownership. Recently, though, I'm starting to find a tipping point in what the machine is capable of.

Running it hard 15 hours a day and starting to get into heavier development (mostly web design at the start of it's life and growing into HTML5 gaming and some fairly intensive Xcode Mac App development), I'm starting to experience issues I attribute to heavy wear/tear coupled with tech bottlenecks: random shut-downs when I've got a ton of apps/browsers going on, a battery that needs 'serviced', and loosening keyboard keys (several pop off if struck too roughly or off-centered.

Though the Air is still perfectly usable in most circumstances, especially hooked up to an external display in clamshell mode, I can't help but wonder if I'm limiting my potential with my current setup. I had been keeping my eye on the 2015 MacBook Pros this year, awaiting a refresh in hopes of upgrading both screen real-estate/resolution (my eyes would thank me) and reliability for running dev-heavy apps and handling the process of browser games.

My question is, for those with experience with both the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro, are the latest updates worthy of consideration for upgrading from a 2012-era Air? My primary focuses are on web-based html5 games development, audio recording/production in Logic, and Xcode Mac/iOS with some light Drupal development. I've heard a lot of criticism with the seemingly marginal updates. Would I see drastic benefits with the faster ssd and dedicated gpu?
Click to expand...

Most of the criticism related to what some people think was only a "minor" update from the mid-2014 to the mid-2015 models. But compared to a 2012 Air, there will be a significant boost in performance over your current machine.
 
bradPiano said:
I've heard a lot of criticism with the seemingly marginal updates. Would I see drastic benefits with the faster ssd and dedicated gpu?
Click to expand...

Your mention of dedicated GPU means you're considering the upper end 15" rMBP. In that case, yes, you'd see significant benefits. The 15" has a quad-core processor compared to your Air's dual-core processor, and each core in the 15" rMBP is noticeably faster than a core in your Air.

The criticism of faster storage speeds seems to distill between those who are spec hounds and those who would prefer that the quantity of storage be improved over the speed. Relatively speaking, there are few people who will benefit measurably from the increased storage speeds on the Mid-2015 MBPs, however impressive those speeds are from a technology standpoint.
 
What does 'battery serviced' mean? I also have a mid-2012 Air and thought nothing could be done with the battery on these machines.
 
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