rMBP 13 2015 vs MBA

[andy42]

Hi guys,
I need some advice to buy a new mac.
My budget is around 1.350 Euro.

I can get student discount in Germany and I would like to use my mac for next 3-4 years. Is 8GB ram sufficient for next years?
I would use this maschine most time for casual photoediting (darktable/pixelmator/iphoto) and random stuff like office, internet, listen to music etc. and I would like to put Windows on an USB-Stick and use it in parallels (need probably 3-4x per year), so I'm not really interested to install bootcamp.

I checked different shops and I could get the last MBA with 8GB/256GB SSD (1.188,xx Euro) or an MBP 2015 8GB/128GB SSD (1.276,xx Euro).

Usually I use most of my data on an extern hard drive and could put some important stuff on nifty-drive or 128GB usb-stick, so I think it would be ok to go with less and cheaper model of MBP.

Just not sure about RAM, I mean sure 16GB would be really nice on MBP but it will go 200 Euro over my budget, and also Apple still sell Macbook 12 with only 8GB RAM and many other models. I think we will get support with 8GB Ram for next 3-5 years without any big trouble.

Which book would be a better choice?

Kind regards

Andy

 

[cruisin]

For your uses 8 GB will be enough. When 8 GB was the max size people used photoshop and had no issues. If the faster CPU of the Pro is not important, you are mainly deciding on storage. A small difference is that only the Pro has HDMI.

You have a small chance of slow downs using parallels and editing photos at the same time, but in that case you can choose one and close the other if needed.

The Air has a worse screen than the Pro. The colours look faded and the screen is less sharp. So if you can compare both screens in person before purchase, you should see if you can see the difference. Some people don't see the difference.

 

[Tazoawake2016]

Unless you really need the extra storage and longer battery life, I strongly recommend the MBP. You'll have a much better user experience with the gorgeous retina screen.

 

[andy42]

I tested today in Apple store some books.
MBAs display is pretty annoying and of course I could immediately see how bad it actually is (TN and a little bit darker).

MBP with retina is super and luckily they had a basic model in the shop. It was packed with a lot of stuff and around 30GB were free on ssd but I was really surprised how smooth everything worked. Nothing to compare with my Thinkpad T450s, even I have more space and more ram but with Windows 10 (clean install and just few application) still feels kind of heavy and not really smooth. Some websites (I tested them on MBP) worked really nice, cuz many times some of them slow down a little bit on my T450s. Already tried with chrome and opera, but it worked with edge a little bit better, but who the hell wants to use edge? The browser is so limited and I hate it.

I think after eastern I'm going to Apple store and will grab one with some student discount and I still hope that the price will go a little bit down, already happened many times here.

I think I'll be happy with basic model for next 3-4 years