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Sounds like you should save your money.

A move from ANY rMBP will be a drop in performance. I wouldn't pay a penny for that.

A drop in performance, yes, but not a drop in performance for the programs/apps I run on my Mac. I'm actually going to come out ahead money-wise after I buy the new MacBook and sell my rMBP.
 
Sounds like you should save your money.

A move from ANY rMBP will be a drop in performance. I wouldn't pay a penny for that. Perhaps if you had an old plastic MB I'd understand.

A mac you are willing to use in more places automatically wins the performance battle.
 
A drop in performance, yes, but not a drop in performance for the programs/apps I run on my Mac. I'm actually going to come out ahead money-wise after I buy the new MacBook and sell my rMBP.
Whatever works. Different things for different people. I would feel the performance hit right away. Even web-browsing would slow down. No thanks.
A mac you are willing to use in more places automatically wins the performance battle.
I do see the wisdom in this.

Gen 2 or 3 of this will be much better.
 
Next year I will be an engineering major at Texas A&M, and have decided on getting a Mac.

I was pretty set on the rMBP but this has kinda caught my eye. Obviously with no experience on what I will be running, do you think this machine would hold up as an engineering student?
 
I plan on it being my main machine. I'm gonna upgrade to the 1.2 512gb.


I'm still gonna load WoW on it to see what happens but I'm not a big gamer anymore. :D

It will go *futt*. :p

I tried wow on a 2011 pro and 2011 air i owned for a brief period. Both tried to cook themselves at 90 degrees.

Thoughts... Lets be honest. If any company other than Apple made this... we would be crying with laughter... then pass out when the price was mentioned.

Chromebooks? Yeah. So cheap so they work for many. This can't be compared as its 5x the UK price of the most popular model. "Its all i need" but Uk £49 more than a rMBP 13" 128GB which i take to coffee shops on occasion. I don't cry about the weight. My 2011 bashed up Pro came from a college student. In his bag every day 787 charge cycles. Scrawny guy. I bought it to try Mac's it was cheap. He went with the Air 11" after. Get one of them. :)
 
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Yup, I'm planning on using it as my main computer replacing my mid-2010 13'' inch MBP.

Normal usage:
- Lightroom for RAW editing;
- Spotify;
- Keynote;
- Pages;
- Excel;
- EndNote;
- SPSS;
- 4K video reproduction (recorded on my phone);
- Torrenting;

And the occasional game.

If I can do that on the 2014 MBA, I can do it in the Macbook.

Hmm.. you do know that the core M series chips is equivalent to the 2012 Macbook air in terms of benchmarks right? This was on accidental podcast with marco and john siracusa.

----------

I am also going to be using the new Retina MacBook 12" not only as my main but also as the only machine.

Currently I have a MBA Late 2010 with 2GB RAM and Core 2 Duo and thus I am not doing any graphic/video editing because its not able to handle it.

I am really suffering now because MBA with such low configuration is so slow that I can run only a few tabs in Safari and when I open more apps at the same time, it is almost unusable as I have to wait for couple of seconds to even switch between apps sometimes. Not to mention heavier usage which really makes mu furious. I was considering buying a rMBP 13" a month ago but guys here in another thread advised me to wait a few more weeks to see what they launch (thank you).

Using MBA for almost 5 years, rMBP is just heavy and bulky machine (crazy as it sounds but thats my feeling when I hold it .. just does not seem like 2015 ultra portable easy to carry machine).

If Core M will be able to handle most of this apps simultaneously, its going be ideal Macbook for me:

  • Mailbox
  • Mail App
  • Safari or Chrome (20+ tabs) including various web apps, large gDocs and Facebook etc.
  • Evernote
  • Wunderlist
  • Skype
  • iMessage
  • Spotify
  • Calendar
  • Pages/Keynote
  • Excel
  • MT4
  • + small apps in menu bar such as CloudApp, F.lux, Monospan, Caffeinne, Dropbox etc.
  • ++ I use VPS almost every day and I would need to virtualize some Win apps soon

If I am doing something more CPU demanding, I will easily close some apps to make some computing space for it.

I am sure Apple engineers have done the optimization well and I guess they would not lunch a choppy Macbook. Having 8 GB RAM and superfast SSD (such as in new rMBP 2015) it will be ok imho.

Nevertheless rational part of my brain still tells me to buy the new rMBP 2015 for the same price (with much better processor just better value for that money) because my laptop is laying on my table most of the time in the office (Pro would not be a problem in that case). But I travel from time to time and I carry only light and small backpack with me so rMB 12" will be beautifuly thin and light for that matter and I also prefer the low front lip for long typing stints.

Will for sure wait for some real tests but I truly believe its gonna be fine for what I use. Do you agree?

You'll notice a performance boost. The rMB has been benchmarked to perform like the 2012 MacBook Air.

If I were you, I'd wait until they do a similar redesign to the Macbook Pro. Doing any virtualization is out of the question with these processors.

I don't think people realize how crippling core M processors are? It's as if they think Apple will make Intel change the way core M works.

It's a macbook, it's literally an iPad in laptop form with OSX. If you don't believe me, run it through it's paces, you have 14 days to return.
 
It will go *futt*. :p

I tried wow on a 2011 pro and 2011 air i owned for a brief period. Both tried to cook themselves at 90 degrees.

Thoughts... Lets be honest. If any company other than Apple made this... we would be crying with laughter... then pass out when the price was mentioned.

Chromebooks? Yeah. So cheap so they work for many. This can't be compared as its 5x the UK price of the most popular model. "Its all i need" but Uk £49 more than a rMBP 13" 128GB which i take to coffee shops on occasion. I don't cry about the weight. My 2011 bashed up Pro came from a college student. In his bag every day 787 charge cycles. Scrawny guy. I bought it to try Mac's it was cheap. He went with the Air 11" after. Get one of them. :)

WoW is not a demanding game. It runs just fine on my 2010 Air - the fans spin up more often than on the desktop, but it looks and plays great. If only more games were like that. Game developers target the latest and greatest desktop graphics too often.

I went in PC World yesterday to look at Chromebooks. £150 or a bit more for a machine with a Tegra K1. ARM works just fine in my iPad and I learned to program on an Acorn, back in the day. The K1 is a proper Nvidia GPU, and can be built fanless. I would have bought one (and promptly installed Linux because Chrome OS is a joke), except whoever is designing these things has no clue.

That Tegra is a low-power fanless chip, with a powerful mobile GPU. So what do they do? They tack on a display with bad viewing angles, build the body out of tacky plastic, and design a relatively thick, chunky machine. It looks and feels cheap - like a Fisher Price 'My First Computer'.

I'd totally pay double what they were asking for those Chromebooks for a machine with the Tegra but with better industrial design, no Chrome OS, and a bit more storage. Just to try something new.

In that case I would need a second machine, though. But the new rMB is going to be orders of magnitude more powerful than a Chromebook.

I'm going to wait and see the real reviews of the rMB and have a look myself next month.
 
WoW is not a demanding game. It runs just fine on my 2010 Air - the fans spin up more often than on the desktop, but it looks and plays great. If only more games were like that. Game developers target the latest and greatest desktop graphics too often.

I went in PC World yesterday to look at Chromebooks. £150 or a bit more for a machine with a Tegra K1. ARM works just fine in my iPad and I learned to program on an Acorn, back in the day. The K1 is a proper Nvidia GPU, and can be built fanless. I would have bought one (and promptly installed Linux because Chrome OS is a joke), except whoever is designing these things has no clue.

That Tegra is a low-power fanless chip, with a powerful mobile GPU. So what do they do? They tack on a display with bad viewing angles, build the body out of tacky plastic, and design a relatively thick, chunky machine. It looks and feels cheap - like a Fisher Price 'My First Computer'.

I'd totally pay double what they were asking for those Chromebooks for a machine with the Tegra but with better industrial design, no Chrome OS, and a bit more storage. Just to try something new.

In that case I would need a second machine, though. But the new rMB is going to be orders of magnitude more powerful than a Chromebook.

I'm going to wait and see the real reviews of the rMB and have a look myself next month.

Dell ships i3's in some of their chrome books. i3s are much more of a performer over core M. You could uninstall chrome os and load Ubuntu.

Granted, I would never use ChromeOS, but the processor is actually better than core M.
 
But why would you buy this over a Pro 13? I don't get it. Everything about the Pro is better and its only 1.45 pound heavier.

Heck, after you buy the required dongles for the Macbook, it'll be cheaper too!

Are you nuts? 1.45 pounds is almost the weight of the new rMB itself!
 
I will most certainly replace my 2013 Air 11" which I use for VMWare Fusion, InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, remote desktop etc.
I often use it with a 27" Dell monitor and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.


I look forward to get a higher resolution screen.

When we say the 12" will be as a 2012 Air, I don't see the big problem. The CPU development in the Air's of the two latest generations hasn't been much to scream about.
With todays ssd and ram technology I am sure the 12" will be enough for most people
Primatelabs:
mba-march-2015-singlecore.png
 
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I think of your needs are light enough, the MB will be fine and from some of the posts in this thread, that seems to be the case, simple browsing, Facebook, office apps. The MB will be ok.

Using VMWare, or photoshop and lightroom, well then the pendulum swings the other way and the MB is not a solution.
 
I am going to replace my 2010 Macbook Air 11" with the new MB. I couldn't care less about the single usb port since I never use it anyway. Portability is so much more important for me as well as a good screen.

Things I do:
Internet browsing
Streaming videos from NAS or online
airplay to my ATV
watch twitch.tv and youtube
Spotify
playing Hearthstone

All of those things will be doable with the new MB since if my old Core 2 Duo can do it then the Core-M can as well.
 
WoW is not a demanding game. It runs just fine on my 2010 Air - the fans spin up more often than on the desktop, but it looks and plays great. If only more games were like that. Game developers target the latest and greatest desktop graphics too often.

I went in PC World yesterday to look at Chromebooks. £150 or a bit more for a machine with a Tegra K1. ARM works just fine in my iPad and I learned to program on an Acorn, back in the day. The K1 is a proper Nvidia GPU, and can be built fanless. I would have bought one (and promptly installed Linux because Chrome OS is a joke), except whoever is designing these things has no clue.

That Tegra is a low-power fanless chip, with a powerful mobile GPU. So what do they do? They tack on a display with bad viewing angles, build the body out of tacky plastic, and design a relatively thick, chunky machine. It looks and feels cheap - like a Fisher Price 'My First Computer'.

I'd totally pay double what they were asking for those Chromebooks for a machine with the Tegra but with better industrial design, no Chrome OS, and a bit more storage. Just to try something new.

In that case I would need a second machine, though. But the new rMB is going to be orders of magnitude more powerful than a Chromebook.

I'm going to wait and see the real reviews of the rMB and have a look myself next month.

Wow ran at 60 degrees on my windows machine. I have yet to try it on my Pro. I rarely play it these days.

I think of this The New MacBook as an addition rather than a main. In that case i get it but not at the price it is, maybe £650/$965. As i posted before the Macbook line would go, Macbook, Air then pro. Still expensive but better than being MORE expensive than a 128GB Pro?!?

Then your not paying more for the weaker laptop. I would consider it as a take out device then.

I had a chromebook but i love my iPad and thought it was a bit pointless being just a browser. iPad has apps etc so i sold the chromebook.
 
To solve some doubts, i tested today an MBA 11" and a surface pro 3 (both in max resolution) and later an rMBP 13", and i think its possible to use 12" retina with best compromise possible (with average resolution).

The problem is, i use some sites flash based (like bet365), and we all know what flash does to temperature hardware in unix based systems.
Without fan, if core-m doesn't low the clock when heats, it can be a problem.

But owning a laptop 12" which weights 0.9 kgs, is a must buy for me...
 
To solve some doubts, i tested today an MBA 11" and a surface pro 3 (both in max resolution) and later an rMBP 13", and i think its possible to use 12" retina with best compromise possible (with average resolution).

The problem is, i use some sites flash based (like bet365), and we all know what flash does to temperature hardware in unix based systems.
Without fan, if core-m doesn't low the clock when heats, it can be a problem.

But owning a laptop 12" which weights 0.9 kgs, is a must buy for me...

I think the problem is Flash. Why isn't it dead yet? :)
 
Are you nuts? 1.45 pounds is almost the weight of the new rMB itself!
Yes, but the objective amount of 1.45 is almost nothing.

Choosing a Macbook as their primary PC over a Pro for the same price is making huge performance concessions.

People on this forum tend not to need only a Facebook machine. So people that do more are rationalizing the downgrade in performance. I could never use it as a primary PC, especially when the same money gets me almost double performance.
 
Sounds like you should save your money.

A move from ANY rMBP will be a drop in performance. I wouldn't pay a penny for that. Perhaps if you had an old plastic MB I'd understand.

'for the things I do on my mac' were his key points though.

Im getting it for the same reason. I am not an ipad person, I want a tiny mac for couch surfing and travelling. I used an air for a while but want the weight and screen benefits.
 
It will be my only computer. I am an engineer and I use the following:

MATLAB (Algorithm development and visualization)
MS Office
Parallels
CAD Software (Schematic capture and PCB layout tools)
XCode
Freescale DSP and PIC uC software development/debugging

It challenges my MBA but I love the portability enough that I'm willing to put up a non-ideal set-up (I can bring my work anywhere with the new rMB and the display will blow away what I had before on my MBA)
Do you think it will run fea? Just out of interest.
 
Finite elements analysis. I'm guessing your a software engineer.

I'm sorry, I should have been able to figure that out.

Actually I am an electrical engineer. I use Matlab to develop signal processing algorithns for processing encoded transmitter signals. I work in a small company and 'wear many hats'. Thus I do many different things all the way from designing the transmitter to laying out the circuit board to writing the receiver algorithm software.

I've found that a MBA is really all I need. I can take it anywhere and that makes it such a valuable machine. I'm now planning to move over to the new rMB. So many people seem to think they must have the 'pro' version in order to have enough processing power. I find I'm just fine with less. I don't mind waiting a little bit now and then if I can take it with me anywhere.
 
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