So confused..pro or air

As a recent convert to the 13" Air from a being a 13" MB Pro user for the last three years, I have only one—well, two...no, make that three—complaints, none of which cause me any real buyer's remorse.

First, the color saturation on the Air's display is nowhere near as good as it was on my old 2009 13" Pro. I've played with the color profiles until I'm exhausted and I can't make them match. To my eye the colors on the air seem a little washed out.

Secondly, even after fixing the case creaking problem, (and reading about screen cracking issues) I feel like I have to treat the Air with kid gloves. I've never mistreated any of my hardware, but now I find myself worrying over which direction the screen is facing when it's in its neoprene padded case in my backpack.

Lastly, I have a huge collection of vinyl that I've been slowly ripping into iTunes. I hadn't done it for about six months, so I was rather dismayed when I went to hook everything up last week and discovered that the Air does not have a two-way audio jack like the Pro. I know I can buy a USB adapter, so it's not a huge deal...just more of a "*** Apple?"

But on the whole, I'm lovin' the air.

It sounds like, although the Air doesn't have as much power, it is perfect for you. The MacBook Air can easily handle iTunes, Office, Internet, etc. And of course, it's more lightweight, more portable. But the best part is the Flash storage. A hard drive is a moving part, thus may have to be replaced after a while, like most moving parts. That's not a problem with the Air.

The only reason you might stick with the Pro is if you wanted a faster processor or better graphics. Another thing is that the Air only goes up to 256GB storage, whereas the Pro goes up to 750, if storage is something that matters to you.

Overall, I'd say the Air is your best choice. I have both. Ever since I got the Air, my MacBook Pro mostly stays at home (though I still use it a lot), but my Air goes with me all of the time.

🙂

I also have both a 15" MacBook Pro (late 2008, first generation unibody) and, at this point, two Airs (11" and 13"). The 13" is effectively serving at this point as a replacement for the Pro.

The major advantages to the Pro are the fact that is expandable (RAM and fixed storage), has Firewire, Ethernet and audio in ports, it is going to better protect the screen, the screen can be bigger and it does have a faster processor. You can order a Pro with an SSD, so one of the disadvantages you mention can be overcome (albiet at a price).

The big disadvantages are that it is a lot heavier, the screens resolutions are lower (the 13" Air has the same resolution as the 15" Pro), and the non-SSD drives will make for a slower machine in most applications that are not processor intensive. For instance, there's absolutely no comparison in boot times between my MacBook Pro and the Air.

Overheating was a problem with the first generation Airs, but it's not been a major problem for the later generation Airs. I also haven't heard of any differences in battery issues between the MBA and the MBP. The battery isn't user replacable in either machine.

I also tend to actually *use* the Air much more than the Pro. I found myself using the 11" Air in preference to the MacBook Pro, so when it came time to update my "main" machine (which is what the MBP was) I swapped to a 13" Air.

I replaced a mid 2008 13" MBP with a mid 2011 13" MBA so I have a good idea of the pros and cons and the questions you are asking yourself. Amazingly enough, after 3 good years of use my 13" MBP seems fully ready to take on another year or maybe more. That's in large part due to the Samsung SSD I installed in it. I'm now using it as my home office computer and my iMac is ready for eBay.

My impression of the first generation MBA was a solid meh so I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the 2011 model too. When my wife's boss brought his in so I could set it up (he's afraid to even install an update!) I was impressed and when my wife bought hers I had the chance to really give it a workout. My iMac was due to be replaced but the more I thought about it the more it made sense to move the MBP into its slot and get the MBA.

Pros: It is a joy to travel with. Battery life is fantastic, it is so light. Yes, slender but it doesn't feel at all fragile to me. My wife and I have traveled with them and they've held up to luggage racks, bouncy roads in the car trunk, and backpacking around campus.

Cons: 256GB is a bit confining but doable. Will I get 4 years from it? I'm not certain but I'd have to give the same answer for the MBP too. And that uncertainly isn't about sturdiness, it is a question of the demands of the Mac OS and software 4 years from now.

The Air is certainly as dependable. You don't even want to know how much stuff I have open 😉

As far as long-lasting, that's another reason to get the Air. As I said in my previous post, the Air does not have a hard drive that would need to get replaced. Basically it has less moving parts.

You're welcome 🙂
And always know that you have 14 days to return it and get a MacBook Pro.

I have no speed problems with the Air using browsers with lots of tabs open. I do suggest you get the 4GB of RAM rather than the base 2GB (and also bypass the 64GB SSB on the base unit), but even at 2GB on an old early MacBook (Intel Core Duo) the browsers don't cause it to break a sweat. Like browsers in general, though, they have the nasty tendency to fail to release RAM over time (you see that on Windows as well), but that's onlya problem on any platform if you let the browser run and stay loaded for extremely long periods (hint, closing Internet Explorer or Firefox every so often might speed up that Windows box as well :-) ).

I run iStat menus on my Mac just so I can tell at a glance if some process runs off (runaway programs under both OSX and Windows can end up spiking CPU use). It gives information much like Task Manager under Windows or Activity Monitor (which ships with OSX), but keeps it available in the menu bar.

One interesting side effect I've noticed over the years. Windows in a Virtual Machine has often run faster than the Dells, HPs, etc. they replaced, largely because you get a "pure" Windows install in the virtual machine, without the garbage-ware the PC vendors load up. Those Windows machines also tend to be far more stable. They do chew up RAM, though, and that is the one thing that has a "hard cap" on the Air. While you can add external drives to get around the 256GB SSD (and, if you pay for a FIrewire drive, the drive's speed is going to be like it was an internal drive), if you need more RAM with the Air you are out of luck.

But you haven't indicated doing anything that would seem to cause issues. If you did heavy video editing I'd probably suggest bypassing the Air (the extra RAM, processor speed and larger screen would all be useful there). In theory it would also be true for a large Windows virtual machine, but that would be a special case--you'd normally need the large VM if you wanted to runs lots of concurrent Windows programs, in which case BootCamp would seem a better choice on the Air. Only if you just needed one particular OSX application and then lots of Windows applications would I see that "supersized" Windows VM being a real world case--and if that was your case then, again, I'd go for another Mac CPU.

But if you don't have those cases, I think the Air is just fine.

On reliability--clealry the Air's case can't protect the screen as well as the MacBook Pro does. But, arguably, the aluminum probably does a better job than the cheap plastic that is often used around Windows laptop screens. The big danger to the screens is always dropping the machine on the corner. But over the years I've only broken one screen, and that was on an iPod Touch that caught on an item I was taking out of my pocket and got effectively thrown onto concrete, landing on its corner :-).