The first and only time I have touched a mac of any sort was back when I was in third grade where my teacher had set up macs in the class. It was the ones that had a colorful computer screen with multiple color choices to buy. This was in the late 1990's. Fast forward to today I've checked some Macbook Airs and pros at bestbuy and wow the OS is pretty easy to use. I tried out a 15 inch windows laptop and hated the keyboard because it was to small and figured it was because of the screen size but wow ive tried both the 13 inch pro / air and the 15 inch and the keyboards are great. I am still in the fence if I want to jump over but if I do I got a few questions. First off which is better the Macbook Pro 13 inch non retina screen or the 13 inch Air? Second question which might sound dumb but I have never used a mac before but you can easily use external storage like a hdd with Macbooks? Do you to do anything special or can you just plug one in and use it?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
My impressions on OSX and the pro/air
- Thread starter Closingracer
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Adding storage is as simple as plug and play and you'll be able to access it through finder and there will be prompts when you plug a device in.
If it's in your budget I would suggest going for a retina pro. The Retina display makes for a much more enjoyable experience. I know that's not answering your specific question but hope it helps!
If it's in your budget I would suggest going for a retina pro. The Retina display makes for a much more enjoyable experience. I know that's not answering your specific question but hope it helps!
The current MacBook Air is better than the 13" non retina MacBook Pro.
I'd suggest looking into the retina models though. The screens are just amazing.
You can use any external storage you like. If it's formatted NTFS from the manufacturer, you'll need to reformat it before you can use it, otherwise it will work fine out of the box.
Just to expand, if it is formatted at NTFS, the mac can still read the data, but will be unable to write to it. That is useful to copy data over from a former PC drive. (There is also a migration assistant included in OS X, to help the switch from PC to mac.)
OS X can read and write the older FAT system (still used on some usb sticks), along with XFAT (typically used with SD camera cards.) Most system and other drives on the mac normally use HFS+ formatting, which any pc drive can be erased and formatted to using OS X Disk Utility.
So if I have a USB stick or hdd formated in FAT I could easily exchange data between my Macbook Pro and Windows 10 laptop?
Update: I decided to get the 13 inch Macbook Pro with retina display. For some reason it's big enough for me considering I had tried a windows Asus laptop 15.6 and found it to be small.
Can I play wow on this laptop? Going to buy a 1TB HDD and just put it on that but curious can it be playable around low to medium settings.
Can I play wow on this laptop? Going to buy a 1TB HDD and just put it on that but curious can it be playable around low to medium settings.
Yes. The only limitation is that FAT can't have any file size more than 4 gigs.
You can also add full NTFS support to OS X, or HFS support to Windows via a 3rd party program. I have not used them, but I routinely don't need to transfer large files via USB drive.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/
Of course, you can always use the local network to transfer files as well between computers. It is easy from mac to mac, and can be set up to from Mac/Windows but I don't know the specifics.
Finally got to use my Macbook pro tonight and wow I am amazed with the OS and the simplicity of using it. I recently found out how to swipe down and up in safari through a friend and i can just say wow so much easier than with Windows. Yeah for Power users I can see this device as something they don't want but for simplicity for most users I find this device to be amazing.
WOW will play fine but I wouldn't boot it from an external drive thats asking for issues with any game but especially an online one.
If you want complete compatability for an external drive between OSX and windows format the drive to ExFat and have any file size you like.
If you want complete compatability for an external drive between OSX and windows format the drive to ExFat and have any file size you like.
Thanks. I did try putting a game on an external and playing it on Windows fine and my Xbox one is currently doing that so that why i was asking. I only have 128GB model since i couldn't really afford getting the 256GB model they offered at best buy at $1,349
.Thanks. I did try putting a game on an external and playing it on Windows fine and my Xbox one is currently doing that so that why i was asking. I only have 128GB model since i couldn't really afford getting the 256GB model they offered at best buy at $1,349
Fair enough it should work over USB 3 but you won't get the best performance.
Wow I have been using this for a while now and I love the device. Wish Windows had some of these features. The track pads on my Windows devices while are pretty good to use as a mouse pointer on the fly I never used the multi touch features nor knew they had them. The idea of using two fingers to swipe up and down on the track pad to read websites is so quick and easy.