Ram or proccesor?

Nothing in this indicates you need any more than the entry-level MBA.

 

Agreed. 13" i5 2012 would be fine. You'd have to decide if the RAM upgrade would be worth the $90 (I'd say yes).

 

RAM can only be upgraded when purchasing, as the RAM is soldered onto the logic board. As for what is better, I would go with more RAM and use the i5 for your stated needs.
Mac Benchmarks by Geekbench

 

Less RAM would limit your more compared to slightly slower CPU. So better spend money for RAM; cause less memory swapping and will be finally faster (or snappier in case of Safari )

 

Mba

But Ram is a much simpler and cheaper upgrade. the cpu you cant generally upgrade yourself. you would just have to be comfortable with breaking the sodering, because of it being a MBA

 

Not in the MBA; both RAM and CPU are fixed; only SSD can be replaced

 

Here's a good review that compares the two processors with various benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6063/macbook-air-13inch-mid-2012-review

If you had to choose between RAM or processor, I'd go with RAM. Not only does the RAM affect your storage, but your available vRAM as well. The 4GB model make available 384MB of vRAM for the Intel HD4000, while the 8GB model makes available 512GB or vRAM. The vRAM should help with your little bit of work in FCP. It FLIES in iPhoto due to the SSD. Getting a standard HDD in a MBP would be a step down in performance in my opinion.

You really can't upgrade the RAM. It's a series of chips soldered onto the board.

You ARE joking, right?

 

i thought that the ram was just sodered in place on the mba. my bad.