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That's rubbish. I went from a much faster cpu macbook pro 15 to a 2012 MBA last year and the difference in speed was immediately obvious. Even though the MBA had a much slower CPU, common tasks like word processing and browsing and email went much faster because of the much faster disk access and immediately noticeable opening speed.

I'm not sure what's up with the O.P.s post but frankly it's nonsense

1. Since the topic of discussion is the SSD/Hard drive, the CPU speed, either in your MBPro or MBA, is irrelevant.
2. 'Much' is a 'much' subjective term.
 
OP - If you do this a lot, get the SSD.:D

I don't :D

In any case, not looking for a powerhouse, the new laptop is going to be an extra machine, I do the number crunching on my iMac (2.7Ghz Quad core i5 and 16Gb of RAM must count for something ;) )
But might go for the MBA, though, very sexy machine, plus the resolution is better than the 13" MB Pro (non retina)...
 
1. Since the topic of discussion is the SSD/Hard drive, the CPU speed, either in your MBPro or MBA, is irrelevant.
2. 'Much' is a 'much' subjective term.

I pointed out how my MBA with a *slower* cpu speed than my pro still ran things much faster for me on basic tasks due to the much faster ssd.

Reading is fundamental.
 
I pointed out how my MBA with a *slower* cpu speed than my pro still ran things much faster for me on basic tasks due to the much faster ssd.

I did read what you wrote. Repeating irrelevant information, CPU speed, doesn't make it relevant nor do insults.
 
I was in the same boat when I bought my first SSD. Kept hearing about this astounding out of this world performance. And yes it is faster, much faster in the benchmarks, but if you have a little bit of patience (I know a rarity these days) there's really not that much of a difference.

When things get linearly faster or even exponentially so, you notice but after a short while you'll get used to the speed. The biggest difference I've noticed is going back to using a HDD computer from an SSD. When you're used to things loading up fast and booting faster, that will become your new norm and you'll expect all computers to be that fast.

It's a personal thing whether you'll notice the difference, some people don't see the difference between HD and DVD or the difference between Retina and non Retina or don't care or don't put it high on their list of priorities. I used to want to overclock everything I owned, now stability and reliability are the most important to me.

So yeah the new SSDs in the MBA will be sweet but there's only so fast you can load a webpage and most people aren't turning on and off their computer 50 times a day to notice the boot difference.
 
When I purchased my last laptop, it wasn't a priority to go SSD, I just knew I wanted THIN, with THIN laptops, these days I don't think they give you a choice. And if you want an Air, you don't have a choice. End of story.
 
I haven't got any personal experience with SSD's (well except the flash storage in my iphone but that doesn't count) so that MBA in the store was my first hands-on experience. Just my PERSONAL opinion and quite probably, I had based my expectations on nothing but hype.
That's not to say that MBA wasn't fast, it just wasn't as fast as I'd expected it to be, that's all. Maybe I'm just too demanding...
IIRC, when the first MacBook Air came out back in 2007 (wow, it's been half-a-decade already?!), someone did a speed test between the SSD model and the HDD model.

The SSD model was "WARP 10" when it came to how quickly the Mac started, and how quickly apps launched, the first time after a reboot.

The HDD model was noticeably slower in both those tasks.

In this test, there wasn't a noticeable difference in speed between either models when it came to relaunching apps that had been used since the system booted up.

OS X usually does a good job of keeping closed apps cached in RAM for as long as it can. Relaunching an app that is cached in RAM is leaps and bounds faster than even the speed of a SSD.

So to me, it's no surprise that walking up to demo computer and launching a popular app (like iTunes) wouldn't be much quicker on the Air (with the SSD) than any Mac you've used with the slower HDD. Chances are that the demo computer has a lot of RAM, and that someone before you had already used the app once, so relaunching it pulls from RAM.
 
ssd prices are almost down to 1$/gb, i mean cmon...if you don`t see the difference between a ssd and hdd you are doing something wrong :)

Why does Apple rape on their prices? When looking at the base rMBP.

+$200 for 128GB more
+$500 for 384GB more
+$900 for 640GB more
 
Some people here seem to be professional rebooters.

----------


I download Mountain Lion via my 56k modem! This is fast enough (like my HDD)!

I think the boot time is a good benchmark of the SSD, because the OS is just a large application. Look at it this way, if the SSD can boot the OS faster, it will also launch applications faster.
 
Why does Apple rape on their prices? When looking at the base rMBP.

+$200 for 128GB more $1.56/GB
+$500 for 384GB more $1.31/GB
+$900 for 640GB more $1.41/GB
Rape?

Who is forcing you to buy an upgrade?

If you don't like the price, don't buy. Simple.
 
I was in the market for an MBA so I went over to a retailer to try them out. Very nice machine, quality, etc.
I am, however, disappointed with the SSD. Now that may not be the problem of the MBA but rather SSD's in general.

My point : where's that phenomenal speed everyone's talking about ? SSD's get so hyped and so you build up expectations. I thought that clicking on an application in the dock would launch it instantly, instead of me having to wait 2 seconds. The applications in question were iTunes, iPhoto and Activity monitor and to be honest, launching these on my iMac with HDD is only slightly slower.
So, based on my first impressions, SSD's aren't worth the money (well, not now anyway, perhaps in a year or two when they become affordable).

I'd do anything to have my 2010 iMac to open an app in 2 seconds.

First world problems much?
 
I love my 2011 13" MBA let alone my new 2013 model when it arrives. How you can not be impressed with the MBA is beyond me, i love the combination of Speed and Portability.
 
I was in the market for an MBA so I went over to a retailer to try them out. Very nice machine, quality, etc.
I am, however, disappointed with the SSD. Now that may not be the problem of the MBA but rather SSD's in general.

My point : where's that phenomenal speed everyone's talking about ? SSD's get so hyped and so you build up expectations. I thought that clicking on an application in the dock would launch it instantly, instead of me having to wait 2 seconds. The applications in question were iTunes, iPhoto and Activity monitor and to be honest, launching these on my iMac with HDD is only slightly slower.
So, based on my first impressions, SSD's aren't worth the money (well, not now anyway, perhaps in a year or two when they become affordable).

Your experience is in sharp contrast to what I have found. I own a number of Macs and have done some recent testing just to re-confirm what I already know.

I use VMWare and run Windows 7 64 bit in a virtual machine. For years I have been saying that a Mac is the best Windows PC on the market.

I have a 2011 MBP with a 750 gig HDD (spindle type). Takes over a minute to boot Windows 7 in VMWare 5.xxx

For comparisons, I have a 2012 rMBP 15" 2.6 i7 with 16 gigs RAM, and 512 gigs SSD. Takes under 15 seconds to boot to Windows 7.

Just received a 2013 MBA 13" i7 8 gigs RAM, 512 gigs SSD and unbelievably it will boot to the same virtual machine in under 15 seconds (13 seconds just now).

From my real world testing in database applications, which is what I develop, I think it is not unusual to see 10 times the speed of an HDD. Judging by iTunes, iPhoto, etc. may not be a reliable estimate of the speed improvement in switching to an SSD laptop.
 
I come from using a 2009 laptop PC, that has 5400rpm hard drives.. Now that I've got my first apple product, being a MBA 13in with an i5 and 8GB with a 256GB SSD, I can only say.. !@#$%$@...

A 1080p movie transfer (around 15GB) took me around 20 minutes, now with my MBA it takes less that a minute, and that is a huge file!

When I transferred an album from my USB to the SSD, it probably took 1/3 of a human eye blink.

Not kidding. I can't fathom how awesome of a machine I got and can't understand the OP.
 
As I said, it's not that an SSD is 'not fast' by definition, it's just that I more or less expected Warp 10 (as opposed to impuls power on a HDD), if you know what I mean...
But you're right, I shouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly.
After all, the MBA isn't that much more expensive and it has a better resolution than the MB Pro. I still use DVD's from time to time, but I've got my iMac for that.
And it kinda sucks that they don't fit the MBA (and the MB Pro) for that matter with 8Gb RAM as standard. These days it's no luxury...

Frankly your observations are sort of meaningless. Until you've worked with the same general workload for a period of a few weeks with each (with the other hardware specs the same) you can't fully appreciate just how fast an SSD is.

I replaced the 7200 RPM mechanical hard drive in my 2009 iMac with an SSD and (with everything else the same) the speed improvements were rather remarkable. I could launch several applications that normally would take 30-60 seconds to start up and with the SSD the startup was almost instantaneous.

If that's not enough of an improvement for you I don't know exactly what you are expecting.
 
Rape?

Who is forcing you to buy an upgrade?

If you don't like the price, don't buy. Simple.

Wow, thank you Captain Obvious. Kudos on doing the elementary math too, I'll send you a cookie.
 
Wow, thank you Captain Obvious. Kudos on doing the elementary math too, I'll send you a cookie.

If the solution is so obvious, why are you not only complaining about it but using a disgusting analogy?
 
If the solution is so obvious, why are you not only complaining about it but using a disgusting analogy?

I wasn't really complaining, was just wondering why the price per GB was closer to $1.50 instead of $1, which what the original post I quoted said.

I agree and could have used a different analogy, my apologies if you were offended.
 
I meant for SSD in general as OP was referring to ssd`s as general product not necessary for apple`s SSD, i think we all know how apple prices are but considering how fast the new SSD are i think the prices are ok, i mean almost 800mb read/write :O kinda double the speed from the last year :)
 
My 2012 11" MBA boots in 11 seconds, my 2011 iMac boots in 49 seconds. Its a complete night and day difference. I hardly ever use my iMac because of how much faster my MBA is.
 
That's rubbish. I went from a much faster cpu macbook pro 15 to a 2012 MBA last year and the difference in speed was immediately obvious. Even though the MBA had a much slower CPU, common tasks like word processing and browsing and email went much faster because of the much faster disk access and immediately noticeable opening speed.

I'm not sure what's up with the O.P.s post but frankly it's nonsense
Nope, nothing wrong with his post. Yours and quite a lot here are nonsense because they are only aimed at sequential read/write speeds given by a tool from Black Magic. This shows that almost everybody responding in this thread has little to no clue about I/O whatsoever. This leads to nonsense replies like yours.

If whatever you do on a computer is dependant on I/O (your disk) then obviously you'll benefit from storage that will allow lots of I/O. This can be a fast hdd or an ssd. The more I/O you have the bigger the difference will be. In reality this means that things like e-mail, word processing, browsing, listening to music, watching video, etc. will not benefit from an ssd at all. These tasks are not I/O dependant as can be seen by the mere existence of devices like iPods and sd cards. You need a class 6 sd card for video to record smoothly. This card gives you a whooping speed of 6MB/s. Any hdd you can get now can easily do that. A slow usb thumbdrive can do that. Typing won't go faster because it is limited by how fast the user can type on the hardware. Neither will applying text styles when word processing. The only thing you might see is a little speed increase when opening files and you'll see it with the larger files (things like a dvd image).

The reason why that tool from Black Magic is of little use is because of how big files are. Fileservers, database servers and the like will use large files and thus benefit from the high sequential read/write speeds. Any desktop/laptop that is used for things other than file/database server will not use large files. Those machines are more likely to use small files and thus ssd's aimed at desktop/laptop use are optimised for small files. These speeds are never mentioned by the manufacturer but will be pointed out in reviews as the so called random read/write speeds. The difference between the ssd in the 2012 MBA and the one in the 2013 MBA is big when looking at the sequential read/writes but might not differ when it comes to random read/write.

Another thing the use of an ssd can mask is lack of memory. Swapping is something that is very I/O intensive. Using an ssd for swapping is advisable, it makes it a lot faster. The only problem is that swapping is not always a good thing. Swapping may occur because an application has quite aggressive memory management (which is a good thing if the user benefits from it) but it is usually done because there is not enough RAM available. When using an ssd you could therefore see speed increased when you don't have enough memory because the swapping is faster. Increasing RAM solves the problem and costs you much less than an ssd.

CPU speed has nothing to do with an ssd. If the CPU isn't powerful enough you won't see any difference going from hdd to ssd.

When it comes to booting a machine the ssd is only 1 part of the story. There are many other parts that will determine how fast the machine boots. We've seen machines at work boot into Windows (that includes login) in 20 minutes. Putting an ssd in those machines resulted in booting into Windows in 20 minutes. The reason why it took that much time was simple: the machine was desperately trying to find our DC's on a network where it couldn't reach any of them. So did we benefit from an ssd? Nope as I/O wasn't the problem. However, if it wasn't for the ssd we couldn't have ruled out I/O-related problems.

TL;DR: you'll only see actual benefits from any ssd if you have tasks that are I/O intensive (moving dvd's around, virtualisation, swapping). If you don't (web browsing, emailing, office work) then the benefits you'll see are very slim and buying an ssd will result in disappointment (it is not as fast as others claim it to be). I've just seen too many people being disappointed with ssd speeds. Your workload decides if and how much you benefit from an ssd.

Try editing RAW picture from a full frame camera on Capture One Pro or Lightroom and you will see the difference. A big one I mean.
Only when opening the files and maybe when exporting but definitely not when saving your changes (it's RAW so it only stores the changes which is very small). Also, swapping can be something that is done in this case and thus it will benefit from an ssd.
 
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