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

[hdca18]

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.

For me the deciding factor came down to the versatility of the Macbook Pro; which far outweighed that of the Macbook Air. For example, the Macbook Pro's contain a built in optical CD/DVD drive, which isn't used often, but at least it has one to be used for the odd time you need to burn a disc, watch a DVD, burn a data disk for file storage, etc. Also the dedicated video card is a plus for anything media involved.

So consider the relative HDD space and formats (SSD vs. Hard Disc), scene size for main use, etc.

[AltecXP]

I moved from a 15in Pro to a 13in Air.

I realized that I didn't need the more heavy duty GPU or CPU for just some coding, office, email and instant messaging. I also wanted a higher resolution than the 13in Pro had. So for me the Air was a better option. If the 13in Pro had 1440x900 resolution I'd have purchased that though just for the ability to have a cheaper to replace drive if it fails, and the ability to put in faster 1600MHz RAM.

The fact that I RARELY use optical media and already had an external USB DVD burner, and that most of my files live on a RAID in my house so internal storage size was not a big factor also made the choice easier.

It really boils down to:

1) What are your needs

2) Whats your budget

3) After covering your needs what "nice to haves" does your budget allow for

[rkenshin]

they are a nightmare for us at work...

+1 :rolleyes:

I love my company, because when a developer requests a MBP with extra RAM, we just go ahead and purchase the upgrade from Apple, so needless to say, we get ripped off (among other things).

I have a 13" MBP (late-2010) for portability. The first-gen Air didn't have the price-to-spec ratio I was looking for (second gen Air wasn't out yet).

If I were to buy a Mac again, I would stick with the MBP.

I still prefer my HP Envy 15 though. :D

[RiverCampher]

I would buy an air after the refresh. You lose too much in graphics performance on an HD 3000, although it won't be good for games even with the HD 4000 graphics (40-50% faster than the 3000), the battery life will be better.

If you don't care about games, and just want to watch movies, photos and do Word, Excel, etc then it's just fine.

If you don't care about the weight and would like a more versatile powerful machine, go with the Pro. I would personally take the top spec of the 15" model if I had a choice.

[AltecXP]

I still prefer my HP Envy 15 though. :D

I had one of those, sadly I spilled tea on it. If it had not of died I'd still have it. I wanted to get then an ENVY14 with the Radiance display to replace it but didn't have the money so I got a used 15in Core 2 MacBook Pro, and then bought my Air when I had the money to spend, and the nVidia chip died.

[acseven]

I had basically the same question you have right now.

In the end I bought the MBA 13'', and my only doubt was the 4Gb RAM limit. If I could add another 4Gb then I wouldn't have had any doubts whatsoever.

I had a macbook air from late 2008 and I was getting so used to its protability that I really had to get rid of all my other hardware, including replacing my desktop PC

The MacBook Air (mid 2011) is really an excellent computer. I have Mac OSX running along parallels with Windows 8 Consumer Preview (1.5Gb), and they both run really good. I use the latter mostly for Office and on OSX I use a lot of different applications, including Photoshop, Lightroom and others. It feels really snappy changing spaces around, even when using Chrome with lots of tabs (15+).

Now I'm waiting for my Apple Thunderbolt display to arrive and then I'll see if the MBA holds up as my main computer.

[Guest]

Drive space, i want to load Win 7 and play games. The air is no good for that. Its a nice laptop, but not what i need.

Richard

[Shadrack]

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.

Seriously dude, shop and compare ultrabook prices to MacBook Airs. I had to recently because my boss wanted a very thin laptop. I was astonished at how overpriced the ultrabooks were! On top of being overpriced their screens and resolution were absolute SUCK compared to MBAs.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

I chose a MacbookPro because I needed the extra power so I can run VM's for school and dual-boot it with Windows for gaming

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Seriously dude, shop and compare ultrabook prices to MacBook Airs. I had to recently because my boss wanted a very thin laptop. I was astonished at how overpriced the ultrabooks were! On top of being overpriced their screens and resolution were absolute SUCK compared to MBAs.

hopefully that'll change once Windows 8 comes out and they start to replace netbooks altogether (though I'm hoping the same thing for tablets as well :/)

[capr]

optical drive. easy choice actually. specially combined with a lack of ethernet port on the air.

[cooky560 Veteran]

I bought an iMac, because I wanted more screen estate, and something more permanent, simple :p

[ZakO]

I needed OSX, wanted a 13" laptop, the 13" MacBook Pro has a crappy screen resolution so I went for the Air.

Seriously dude, shop and compare ultrabook prices to MacBook Airs. I had to recently because my boss wanted a very thin laptop. I was astonished at how overpriced the ultrabooks were! On top of being overpriced their screens and resolution were absolute SUCK compared to MBAs.

The Asus ZenBooks are cheaper, same weight, same spec (or better), and have a higher resolution. I would have bought one if I didn't need OSX.

[booboo]

My work machine is a macbook air 13".

It's only the i5 but it's still adequate for what I do, and trust me, I drive it pretty hard. Currently open (and constantly switching between):

Parallels (With Visual Studio, FTP, Chrome)

Chrome (20 so tabs)

Pages (5 docs open)

Photoshop (13 open)

Espresso (Coding program)

Mail

I'm constantly using all of these all day long, and sometimes it stutters when I open a large photoshop file, but the majority of the time its great.

The big factor here is, although it's only got 4GB of ram, the SSD is capable of fast read/writes so is a good alternative for RAM when you run out (I never have any free ram).

My home machine is also a macbook air (although it's the fully specced out 13") and i do programming on that as well.

I had a macbook pro up untill a few days ago, and wow that thing was so heavy and fat. The macbook air really does change the way you perceive laptops!

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I was in the Apple store and realised that due to my needs (HDD space, resolution, optical drive, ethernet port, etc.) I was going to get the Macbook Pro. I've been happy with the decision since, the Air could never compete in my opinion.

[greenwizard88]

I went with the 15" Macbook Pro, maxed out from an Apple store for $2800 (thank's insurance). I then went to transfer all my stuff on it at home, and the thing got HOT. I said "f*** it, it a 3 grand machine can't handle basic I/O, it'll never be able to handle gaming." I returned it for a macbook air the next day and game on my PC laptop (which, ironically, has better specs for $1000 than a $2800 MBP).

[Kami-]

Needed the 'Power of the Pro'; besides, it's running 16GB RAM ;)

[Farchord]

My sister needed a Macbook for university, and she came to me to ask which one she should get. It was simple, I told her: "There's two basic categories: Air and Pro. Air is if you prefer to have an ultra thin, ultra light laptop with a smaller drive just to do the basics, or if you wanna spend more and get a machine that will last you through all of university and beyond." She took the Macbook pro.

Thing is, that machine had 3 sizes, 13", 15" and 17". She thought the 13" was too small and from experience from handling my Dell Inspiron 17", she didn't want 17". So she went for 15", but with the slightly lower spec one.

Like I told her, when time comes and you wanna invest a bit on it, I'll shove an SSD down that laptop's gullot and you'll never go back.

[neufuse Veteran]

it always comes down to processing power and specs... it always has and always will for me... the pro line definatly has more choice in that region

[moloko]

Well I did want a MBA 13" but now that I just bought a 11inch Acer for when I travel, I will get the MBP 13" and max the ram out so I can run win7 and win8 on it too.

I want good screen, SD card slot, backlit keyboard, and lots of RAM. Also I want USB3 but need to wait on that I guess.,

[Damian]

For me it comes down to the more powerful CPU, the ability to add more RAM and the larger hard drive. 256GB or less isn't enough and a external hard drive isn't an option. I like to keep a 1:1 backup of my hard drive with Time Machine.

So my choice would be the MacBook Pro when they release it in June I hope.

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

Looking to do the same thing when the new MacBook Pro's are released: MacBook Pro + Thunderbolt Display to replace my iMac.