Hello!
I would like to share my experience with current rMB 12", best OSX device I had ever used IMO.
Long story short, my daily usage is:
- browsing web (mostly our gamification apps) using Chrome, I don't like Safari,
- PHP and related web technologies programming with PHPStorm and Vagrant virtualization,
- using mail, photos with 3 Gmail accounts and lots of photos coming in,
- editing tons of documents with M$ Office (Word, Excel),
- Google Drive with 200GB of data being updated live by my team,
- Skype, Slack and Messages for remote communication,
- some light gaming, mostly World of Warcraft
My first thought when I saw rMB specs on paper was - no way Core M can handle my workloads. I bought maxed out rMBP 15" (16GB RAM for example) to be sure it will suit me for 2-3 years. But it was too heavy to have it around every day on me, so after playing with it for about 14 months, I decided to sell. While I was waiting for my CTO order, I borrowed my wives MBA (1.3, that is version 2013 I think) and it worked well: working with PHPStorm was slow, but doable when on the road. Finally it came to me - that 15" rMBP was way too much power for me.
Setting up my rMB was easy and fast, but downloading Google Drive contents and installing other apps at the same time made it throttle a lot. First thought - well, looks like I will have to return this beautiful machine and stick with rMBP 13", because MBA screen is awful when you get used to retina-class IPS. In the end I had to put rMB next to a fan to cool it up and finish setting everything up with decent speed. Waiting for it to cool off would waste lots of time, so I had to improvise.
After everything was downloaded and software installed, rMBP was left for the night to index stuff and in the morning I started working on it. Launching apps and overall experience was great - but there was a lot of UI lag. Since I changed resolution to max (1440x900 retina), that was something expected. I'm really jealous about my wifed MBA, it runs OSX UI buttery smooth. But then 10.10.4 came and it's day and night for me: finally using Safari is fun, lag is mostly gone and overall user experience got better.
The one most thing I am really surprised when it comes to performance is the ability to play WoW (min details, but maxed out texture quality) without problems. I had to limit FPS to 30 since it was running it at 60 most of the time. As a result of limiting fps, I can play fine even on battery power. Content loading time is awesome.
Overall I love this machine, even though it's ahead of its time (overheating when using heavy software for long period of time). It allows me to work on the road, looks great, weights less than bunch of papers I take with me and is mind-blowing performance wise. I wouldn't expect such small device can handle my usage so well. And battery live even when using chrome is 6 to 7 hours. Like I wrote, best OSX device ever
I would like to share my experience with current rMB 12", best OSX device I had ever used IMO.
Long story short, my daily usage is:
- browsing web (mostly our gamification apps) using Chrome, I don't like Safari,
- PHP and related web technologies programming with PHPStorm and Vagrant virtualization,
- using mail, photos with 3 Gmail accounts and lots of photos coming in,
- editing tons of documents with M$ Office (Word, Excel),
- Google Drive with 200GB of data being updated live by my team,
- Skype, Slack and Messages for remote communication,
- some light gaming, mostly World of Warcraft
My first thought when I saw rMB specs on paper was - no way Core M can handle my workloads. I bought maxed out rMBP 15" (16GB RAM for example) to be sure it will suit me for 2-3 years. But it was too heavy to have it around every day on me, so after playing with it for about 14 months, I decided to sell. While I was waiting for my CTO order, I borrowed my wives MBA (1.3, that is version 2013 I think) and it worked well: working with PHPStorm was slow, but doable when on the road. Finally it came to me - that 15" rMBP was way too much power for me.
Setting up my rMB was easy and fast, but downloading Google Drive contents and installing other apps at the same time made it throttle a lot. First thought - well, looks like I will have to return this beautiful machine and stick with rMBP 13", because MBA screen is awful when you get used to retina-class IPS. In the end I had to put rMB next to a fan to cool it up and finish setting everything up with decent speed. Waiting for it to cool off would waste lots of time, so I had to improvise.
After everything was downloaded and software installed, rMBP was left for the night to index stuff and in the morning I started working on it. Launching apps and overall experience was great - but there was a lot of UI lag. Since I changed resolution to max (1440x900 retina), that was something expected. I'm really jealous about my wifed MBA, it runs OSX UI buttery smooth. But then 10.10.4 came and it's day and night for me: finally using Safari is fun, lag is mostly gone and overall user experience got better.
The one most thing I am really surprised when it comes to performance is the ability to play WoW (min details, but maxed out texture quality) without problems. I had to limit FPS to 30 since it was running it at 60 most of the time. As a result of limiting fps, I can play fine even on battery power. Content loading time is awesome.
Overall I love this machine, even though it's ahead of its time (overheating when using heavy software for long period of time). It allows me to work on the road, looks great, weights less than bunch of papers I take with me and is mind-blowing performance wise. I wouldn't expect such small device can handle my usage so well. And battery live even when using chrome is 6 to 7 hours. Like I wrote, best OSX device ever
