Should I buy a macbook pro or an iPad 2?

They are two very different pieces of kit and will deliver different things to you and your household.

If you want something that's very light and portable and can be used around the house for web browsing, emails, watching movies, playing 'light weight' games and the like then the iPad2 will be ideal for you and your family.

If you want to do more heavy duty tasks like editing video or photos, playing multi-player games and you want to do these things alongside emails, web browsing and other tasks then the multi-tasking, extra CPU power, memory and storage available in a MacBook Pro will be perfect for you.

Think about how it will be used and by whom and it will give you the answer you seek.

Everything gets updated sometime and there's not a lot of point waiting if what's out there today meets your needs.

Why don't you just go with a 11" MacBook Air? MacMall had them on sale awhile back for only $850.00.

As with buying any computer, from mainframe on down to tablet, you always do it the same way: Name your usage first, then name the software that supports that usage, and then, last step, buy the hardware that supports the software. If you can do what you need to do on an iPad, you can get that. If you can't, you get the laptop.

Since you like your PC laptop, maybe you just need an iPad which will complement it instead of replace it. But if you wanted to replace the PC laptop, that would strengthen the case for a MacBook Pro. Again, it comes down to what you think is the primary mission of this next Apple purchase of yours relative to what you already have, is it supposed to fit in or replace it.

If your goal in the end is to have both, but buying one of them sooner, and then another later, in my opinion I'd buy the Macbook Pro first. Seems to me the differences and features added between Apple computer refreshes are less significant than the updates to the iOS devices, particularly the iPhone and iPad.

Ask anyone still using an iPhone 3G with the latest software updates installed how their experience today is. Aside from not having the newer features & functions, I've been told by several friends that the iOS updates have **** near crippled the thing, and it's slow as **** to do any of the basic functions (quite the contrast to when it was originally released).

This is largely due to the rapid increase of CPU speed and amount of RAM on the newer models which has lead to software development that's more demanding of the hardware. No doubt next years iPad will have a dual core chip in it, so I can't help but speculate the iPad 1 will inevitably suffer the same fate, and later on the iPad 2, etc... Oh and it will also probably have a flashy new HD camera similar to the 720P iSight found in the new MBP's for facetime calls instead of the current VGA camera (640 x 480)....again though, I'm talking speculation and opinion here.

I don't do much on my laptop, but I am always on it.

😟

The ipad 2 has a dual core 1ghz A5 chip

tysh wrote:

I am a college student that writes a lot of papers and surfs the web a lot. I live on youtube.

A MacBook Pro is a very expensive and overpowered (but nice!) way to do these very simple things. An iPad does most of these, if you don't visit a lot of Flash sites. Except for Flash, you can do all those things on an iPad with the Pages word-processing app and a Bluetooth keyboard. I'm seeing the iPad+wireless keyboard combo around town a lot more these days.

(I use a MacBook Pro because my work demands the powerful processor, large screen, and graphics.)

Germany_chris wrote:

The ipad 2 has a dual core 1ghz A5 chip

so it does. my bad.

The ipad is a browsing toy. A macbook is a real computer.

My iPhone 3GS has a faster processor, more RAM, and more storage than my work-provided PC, which takes 10 minutes just to start up. It's really just a paperweight, my iPhone is a real computer.

Those 'toys' are showing up in all kinds of businesses so maybe your opinion isn't as valid as you think.

I certainly don't like to use the word "toy" to describe an iPad or iPhone. The iPad is basically a media consumption device. It is a closed environment. The idea behind it is that is has what you want on it and how you use it will be dicated to you. Of course you can add apps... some of which will make it behave somewhat more like a computer... but it is still a very closed ecosystem. A MacBook (or Pro or Air) are all real computers that basically let you do anything you choose to do. You can install anything you like and use them how you choose. They are of course capable of doing everything that an iPad can do as well. If your primary use to watch videos, browse web pages, and use the apps you can get from the App Store, the iPad is a very nice piece of hardware. If you plan on creating content (beyond anything basic), installing anything you want, etc. the MacBook would be the way to go. Both are excellent at what they do... but what they do are very different things.

I think I'd buy the IPad then when you need a notebook pick up the MBP, but if you want a new computer get it!!! We're all guilty of computer ****..