New MacBook versa the New MacBook Air

[nrubenstein]

I just bought the 2015 MBA 13. Honestly, I don't get why people say this screen sucks. It's very sharp to me coming from a 2012 non-retina MBP. I guess people have OCD about that kinda stuff. I got it with 256GB and 8GB RAM. It's very snappy as well. My only complaint is the silver bezel instead of black.

I tried out the rMB at the store. I was surprised at how tiny it actually was! To me it kinda seemed like an iPad with a mouse and keyboard. It's very nice.

1) The color accuracy is very, very poor. If you ever edit photos, or care about how they are displayed, this is simply not possible to fix. It's not an OCD issue, it is simply that the screen in the MBA represents the technology of basically ten years ago. Or, to put it another way, when the Air was introduced, the screen was mediocre at best. 5 years later, it still is.

2) The sharpness is essentially exactly the same as any other non-retina display, so long as you run it in the native resolution. Text appears blocky, but individual pixels are, of course, sharply defined. The point of a "retina" display is that images and text are sufficiently well defined that you can not see the individual pixel edges. One of the other advantages of a these displays is that you can run them at non-native resolutions and they will still look good, whereas regular LCDs will look almost unbearably awful.

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I just bought the 2015 MBA 13. Honestly, I don't get why people say this screen sucks. It's very sharp to me coming from a 2012 non-retina MBP. I guess people have OCD about that kinda stuff. I got it with 256GB and 8GB RAM. It's very snappy as well. My only complaint is the silver bezel instead of black.

I tried out the rMB at the store. I was surprised at how tiny it actually was! To me it kinda seemed like an iPad with a mouse and keyboard. It's very nice.

Sounds like you could get everything done with just an iPad, actually.

Honestly, I've basically been iPad only in a mobile form factor for a long time. the number one issue with that are my need for Pages 4.3, Excel, and a decent stand on the go. Once you put a keyboard on the iPad, it's close enough to the same size and weight that the rMB is very competitive. and the screen will stay vertical on my lap.

I like my iPad a lot, but with the 6+ in my pocket, i have less and less reason to actually use it.

 

[iRun26.2]

1) The color accuracy is very, very poor. If you ever edit photos, or care about how they are displayed, this is simply not possible to fix. It's not an OCD issue, it is simply that the screen in the MBA represents the technology of basically ten years ago. Or, to put it another way, when the Air was introduced, the screen was mediocre at best. 5 years later, it still is.

2) The sharpness is essentially exactly the same as any other non-retina display, so long as you run it in the native resolution. Text appears blocky, but individual pixels are, of course, sharply defined. The point of a "retina" display is that images and text are sufficiently well defined that you can not see the individual pixel edges. One of the other advantages of a these displays is that you can run them at non-native resolutions and they will still look good, whereas regular LCDs will look almost unbearably awful.

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Honestly, I've basically been iPad only in a mobile form factor for a long time. the number one issue with that are my need for Pages 4.3, Excel, and a decent stand on the go. Once you put a keyboard on the iPad, it's close enough to the same size and weight that the rMB is very competitive. and the screen will stay vertical on my lap.

I like my iPad a lot, but with the 6+ in my pocket, i have less and less reason to actually use it.

Many people (like me) need OS X and, as such, an iPad will never do. I need an x86 processor that can also run Windows. Not my choice.

 

[Traverse]

Q-6

Did you decide that you were or weren't getting one?

 

[Queen6]

Did you decide that you were or weren't getting one?

Just want to try the MB @ 1440x900 with all apps first. My business trip is delayed a few days so I may just have time to get one, however superficially there appears to be a great deal of interest here in China, nor do I have any idea of numbers of stock. So it will pretty much be a lottery

Worst comes to worse it will be end June, or end August, if the latter I may hold off until revision 2 as I think we will be seeing that Q1 2016 onwards.

Q-6

 

[EnderTW]

I've owned the 11" MBA (twice) so I feel qualified to offer an opinion.

First, although the dimensions appear very similar on paper, in real life - in your hands - the rMB is very noticeably lighter and thinner. Whether that matters is a different question, but if portability is important, it may be a factor for you.

The display is a huge difference. The MBA has never gotten an upgrade from the original TN panels that were so-so when first introduced and have made no progress since then. The viewing angles and color accuracy are poor, and calibration doesn't really fix this. Resolution may or may not be an issue as well. Yet another display issue is that the 11" is 16:9 vs. 16:19 for the rMB, which means you get maybe half an inch/12-13mm additional vertical display space, which is nice if you work with documents or spreadsheets.

I think the port issue is hugely overblown, but if you think you'll have a hard time managing with dongles, avoid the rMB. Personally, I don't see much difference between having a bunch of cords connected to a single cord vs. having a bunch of cords connected individually, other than the fact that unplugging the dongle is faster. If you need the dongle while traveling, though, it could be a factor for you.

MagSafe is a sad loss but i have never had a laptop snagged on the charging cord, and neither have my wife or my two now-adult sons or any of their friends. YMMV, I guess.

The keyboard is different, neither better nor worse. I've had this rMB since Monday night and I've basically used to it. The setup at the Apple Stores is poor because the table height is horrible for trying to type, but you might want to visit an Apple Store and try it out in person.

In real life use, the performance of the Core M is for practical purposes as good as the 11" MBA. I don't do encoding or other long-term CPU intensive projects on any laptop; if you think you might, you might tilt toward the 11" MBA. Personally, for tasks like that, I use a desktop.

Configured "equally," they're only $100 apart in price - but it isn't really equal, because for the extra $100 you get one of the best displays Apple has ever put in a laptop. (See the Anandtech review.)

There is a caveat with the rMB: it is a first-gen machine and there is a big chance that it will be changed significantly in the next couple of product refresh cycles. If you're adverse to early adopter risk, steer clear.

TLDR: the 11" MBA is a wonderful machine crippled by a horrible display. The rMB is better in many respects and worse in none unless your are hung up on ports that you probably don't use. The rMB is a far superior machine for most people.

This equally sums up my review. I've had the MacBook Pro and I've used USB ports maybe once or twice and sd card only when traveling. My use case would probably be suited for an iPad. However this being only a lb heavier I'm going to try it out. I have a rimac for heavy lifting.

 

[tesarver]

Did you decide that you were or weren't getting one?

Yes. I decided on the 13" MacBook Pro. Same price & Technology as the MacBook, but faster, and it comes with all the ports. So instead of buying a dongle, I upgraded the pro to 16G