What are 'everyday tasks' to you?

[fluidedge]

I hear a lot of people saying the rMB will be fine for 'everyday tasks' or 'it's not even enough for everyday tasks'... what does that even mean? Obviously something different for everyone which is maybe not helping the skepticism over this notebook. An everyday workload to someone could be considered hugely taxing to another. what are your everyday tasks?

 

[boo98]

I hear a lot of people saying the rMB will be fine for 'everyday tasks' or 'it's not even enough for everyday tasks'... what does that even mean? Obviously something different for everyone which is maybe not helping the skepticism over this notebook. An everyday workload to someone could be considered hugely taxing to another. what are your everyday tasks?

My everyday tasks would be checking emails, browsing the web, listening to music, occasional movies/video clips, word processing, spreadsheets, occasional photos organization. This MacBook has been more than enough for what I do and I haven't noticed any lag.

 

[Geert76]

loads of webbrowsing, checking email, maybe editting 6-8 photo's a month, listening Spotify through Airplay ATV, syncing Photo;s iPhone - Macbook, Calendar, downloading movies with NZB's. And all this with my base model with no problems at all.

 

[shenan1982]

I hear a lot of people saying the rMB will be fine for 'everyday tasks' or 'it's not even enough for everyday tasks'... what does that even mean? Obviously something different for everyone which is maybe not helping the skepticism over this notebook. An everyday workload to someone could be considered hugely taxing to another. what are your everyday tasks?

I agree with post 2 and 3 as to what "everyday tasks are" ... I agree it's fully capable, just like I think a Porsche is fully capable of use to move a small apartment, or a pickup truck as a family vehicle. They all work, but they're not ideal. There are trade-offs. But the bottom line is it'll work fine for those tasks.

 

[jimboutilier]

• A web browser with half a dozen tabs is always up and frequently used , mostly Safari, but occasionally Chrome
• Mac Mail, Calendar and Messages are always up with hundreds of emails and messages per day
• Office apps like Word, Excel, Powerpoint are often up and used
• Streaming music via iTunes or Pandora is up most of the time
• Evernote and Dropbox are always up
• 1Password is often up
• McAfee Anti virus is always running in the background (work)
• Virtual Box with a Windows 7 is occasionally up
• MySQL is always up and usually Querious and or DbVisualizer are up ready for queries
• Omnigraffle and Visual Paradigm are often up
• Ultraedit is often up
• Occasionally Photo's is up as are about 50 other apps I routinely but not frequently use (not all at once, but a few at a time)

So I easily have 20-30 items up and running with 2-3 in the foreground and the rest in the background. But most of the routine stuff is dependent on user input or uses a light cpu load so the rMB handles it well.

What I don't have up - because the rMB would suck at it and/or could only be used for the one thing - are any programs that stress both CPU and GPU heavily at the same time (Games, Transcoding Video etc) or stress both cores of the CPU heavily at the same time (multithreaded apps that run heavy calculations) for more than a minute or two at a time.

 

[Queen6]

Typically;

• Mail, multiple accounts
• Calendar, multiple accounts
• Messages, multiple accounts
• Safari, 3-4 Spaces, each with multiple tabs
• Microsoft Office Word, Excel & Powerpoint, 3-4 Spaces
• Anti virus in the background
  
• VPN in the background
• iTunes, direct playback or streaming
• Movist
• EverNote
• Omnigraffle
• Preview 3-4 Spaces (PDF`s)
• Skim
• Facetime/Skype
• Proprietary engineering applications, running in a capability layer

Q-6

 

[Fuzzball84]

Typically;

• Mail, multiple accounts
• Calendar, multiple accounts
• Messages, multiple accounts
• Safari, 3-4 Spaces, each with multiple tabs
• Microsoft Office Word, Excel & Powerpoint, 3-4 Spaces
• Anti virus in the background
  
• VPN in the background
• iTunes, direct playback or streaming
• Movist
• EverNote
• Omnigraffle
• Preview 3-4 Spaces (PDF`s)
• Skim
• Facetime/Skype
• Proprietary engineering applications, running in a capability layer

Q-6

I agree with the above... I actually operate very light so at most Id have safari and two or three tabs. messages and Tunes open (but only actively using one at any one time, as I use my iPod and iPhone for music while web browsing etc)

As long as you have brightness between 50-75% and doing those tasks you should get good battery life of 6-10 hours.

I feel the rMB does equal iPad for battery life under those circumstances. I charge it like my iPad every other evening or so during medium to heavy use in my case.

If Im only occasionally using the device id say you can easily go most of the week without worrying to search for the power adapter.

 

[tbirdparis]

I think everyday tasks isn't that hard to define. It's pretty much everything you do in your personal digital life these days:
Internet, email, social networking, listening to music, watching movies and series, basic content creation work (text, photo editing and management, light video editing for some people). It can also include varying degrees of spillover from your work life, managing personal finances, updating a website or blog. Probably also includes some gaming as well for some people. But since everybody knows that serious gamers are very picky about hardware for a "real" gaming rig, I doubt there's any confusion on their part between an "everyday tasks" machine and a "gaming" one.

Basically, anything which requires specialised software that people don't tend to use unless they work in a specific industry I would say is the "not everyday task" category. There's obviously some overlap - a high school kid might use FCPx to cut skating vids just because it's the software at hand. But there's a different kind of user as well who uses the same software at a more demanding level, and they tend to be pretty up to speed on what they want and need in a work machine. Again, there's not likely to be much confusion as to where this kind of user would draw the line between things to do on an "everyday tasks" machine and things you just need to do on your work rig.

 

[JoePa2624]

• Safari with an average of 6-8 tabs open at a time. (Usually YouTube, this message board, and Grantland).
• MacMail, multiple accounts.
• Calendar, multiple account.
• Microsoft/Apple Office.
• Wunderlist/Todoist.
• Evernote/Onenote.
• iTunes Radio.
• VLC player on random episodes of Entourage or How I Met Your Mother.

Those are usually always open and running simultaneously.

 

[jonblatho]

I view different machines with different use cases in mind. I have this nice, speedy iMac with Retina display for power-intensive stuff like Xcode and photo editing, but that leaves a gaping hole: I can't carry this thing around, and if I am carrying a computer around, I'm probably not much interested in using Xcode. I probably just want to get on Facebook to pass the time.

So for the new MacBook, I checked whether it could support Safari with several tabs, Mail, iTunes, and RadarScope at the same time. It can, surprisingly well. Since I don't use USB much at all, if I had the funds, I'd buy a new MacBook because of its portability.

 

[bossxii]

My everyday tasks would be checking emails, browsing the web, listening to music, occasional movies/video clips, word processing, spreadsheets, occasional photos organization. This MacBook has been more than enough for what I do and I haven't noticed any lag.

This.

 

[Dark Void]

I think for most it typically would include web browsing, e-mail, music, video playback, and documents. That's what I assume when I read "everyday tasks," or in other words "light usage."