When buying your mac, how did you decide on getting an Air vs Mac Book Pro?

[BoDEAN]

What were some factors that you took into account when making the decision to purchase your Air or Mac Book Pro?

I have an old windows laptop which is dead, and would like to replace that with an Apple laptop. I currently have a powerful windows desktop computer that I spend most of my computer time on when at home. I am a pilot who travels a lot, and have been using my iPAD 1 to replace my old windows laptop on the road. It has done a fine job.

I am now moving into a phase of my life where I am working on more reports for myself (MS word, but excited to try Pages). I also will be doing a lot of wordpress work and development. I am finding the iPAD is not an ideal tool for this. So I am now looking for an Apple laptop that I can take on the road, and use around the house. I've looking at 13 or 15 inch, nothing bigger than that. Would love to hear input from others. Thanks.

[+Jester124 Subscriber²]

I went with the 15in Macbook Pro mainly for the dedicated video card. It still has good battery life and if I want, I can still play games on it.

[Rudy]

I went for the 13" MBA because it has the same resolution as the 15" mbp and it's tiny compared to the 15"

[OOOOOOOO]

Spec. The Air's aren't as powerful, and have smaller screens.

I have a Corsair Force GT in my Macbook Pro too so it's not like it's hard drive doesn't rock it either.

I actually now plug into a Thunderbolt display at home and in the office. So I never really use the 15 inch display for anything but Spotify :D

[Miuku.]

Power. I needed more horsepower, memory and drive capacity than the Air offered.

[John S. Veteran]

size and weight when i got my daughter an Air for college...cd/dvd drive wasn't an issue, i already had an external she could use when she needed it

[rajputwarrior]

macbook air's are toys at best. don't come with a USB stick to reinstall and to recover the damn thing you to be on wifi so it can download all of the components.

[kaffra]

i went for the 13" mbp because i wanted something portable, adequate hdd space and a optical drive doesnt hurt incase somebody wants to share via dvd.

[Rudy]

macbook air's are toys at best. don't come with a USB stick to reinstall and to recover the damn thing you to be on wifi so it can download all of the components.

I disagree, I do all my programming on my 13" Air

[ybrett23]

13" air,

purchased in singapore ?400 cheaper than here , was a moment of, "hmmm i dont have one of them, **** thats cheap, il take 1 please" :D

[robertobaggio2k]

i went with the macbook pro because it had the dvd drive :)

[rajputwarrior]

I disagree, I do all my programming on my 13" Air

they are a nightmare for us at work...

[Gotenks98]

Went with the pro so I can play games on it. I do alot of gaming so that was essential. Plus the air is extremely underpowered for its price point. There is no reason why they could put the same processor and card in those systems or at least something closer to it. But again thats apple for you, make you pay more for less stuff.

[Depicus]

Went for the top range 11" MBA because I had a 17" MBP - the 11" is for travel and great for the lap on the sofa at night

I also do video with FCX and it's very good at that so not underpowered at all :)

[Elliott]

But again thats apple for you, make you pay more for less stuff.

Really? Because comparable Ultrabooks are actually just as expensive if not more, and they're apparently still not as well engineered as the MacBook Air.

Also, they can't put the same processor and specs in the MacBook Air because it's a much smaller machine with a smaller battery.

As for perceived speed, my MacBook Air is fast. Really fast. I've actually ditched my iMac and am using my MacBook Air with a Thunderbolt Display because I was tired of maintaining applications and preferences between both machines. Haven't noticed a single hitch in my day-to-day graphic design and web development work. Sure, the MBA takes a little longer to compile an application than my iMac, but that's about the only time I notice the less powerful CPU.

[vhane]

macbook air's are toys at best. don't come with a USB stick to reinstall and to recover the damn thing you to be on wifi so it can download all of the components.

I disagree. I routinely run multiple virtual machines concurrently on an 11" MacBook Air. I am currently working on an integration project for a client and I can take this tiny laptop into a meeting and demo the whole stack right there on one machine. This thing is actually quite capable. The SSD makes a big difference.

I have also done a lot of iOS development on the MacBook Air. It's been my primary development machine for the past couple of years. And I've got a 27" iMac with a quad core i7 sitting on the desk at home.

[123456789A]

Macbook Pro here, because it was easier to set up Windows 7 on it.

[Vice]

17" Display was the only reason for me. If they do release a 17" Air I'd buy one. The display is all I care about when deciding which Mac to get as all the other specs are pretty much the same.

[Biohead]

13" Pro - More bang for buck, and not much heavier in all honesty.

[Motoko.]

What were some factors that you took into account when making the decision to purchase your Air or Mac Book Pro?

I built mine XD

[Manish]

Just wanted to add that you might want to hold out a bit longer (if you can) before you purchase either a MBP or MBA. The current product cycle for both lines is nearing its end and they're likely to get a refresh soon.

[Daniel Tablas]

Just wanted to add that you might want to hold out a bit longer (if you can) before you purchase either a MBP or MBA. The current product cycle for both lines is nearing its end and they're likely to get a refresh soon.

this.

[bbfc_uk]

I went with the 13" inch MBP because I wanted something powerful but not too expensive. It's been perfect for my needs but took me a while to get use to the size of the screen after using a 15" Windows laptop for a few years. The build quality is amazing though and NOTHING compares to it.

TBH nothing compares to Apple's build quality.

[Vice]

Just realised I already posted in this thread haha

[Boz]

I was evaluating Mac Book Air and Mac Book Pro when I was getting a mac laptop and I've decided to go with Mac Book Air 13.3" because it was very light, super thin and very easy to work with and had almost the same power as MBP (with i7 CPU). I wasn't planning on doing desktop level Photoshop on it but it was powerful enough for coding, ocassional graphic work and it was very portable.

Mac Book Pro was too heavy, battery was weaker and the only benefit to me personally was the exchangeable HDD and more ram but in my case I really didn't need it. I wasn't going to use this laptop as a primary/desktop level replacement laptop so Mac Book Air was dead on.

I don't regret it one bit. I do Photoshop work, coding and ton of other stuff on MBA and no issues at all (even with 4gb of ram).

IMO if you want a desktop replacement laptop that will have more powerful processor now, more ram and exchangeable HDD with more connectivity and you will use it as your primary machine by hooking it to your home monitors, Mac Book Pro is still the way to go, but if you want a very light and portable but powerful laptop and you use it on the go and are on the move a lot, Mac Book Air is the winner.

Important to note is that I will probably sell my Mac Book Air when new Mac Book Pros come out in the same design and have 15" screen.

If they don't, I'll probably go with new Samsung Series 9 15" laptop and just install OSX on it but the point is that once you go super slim like Mac Book Air, using any other laptop that's not thin and light like that is a pain.