Macbook Air or Macbook Pro?
 

Hey GFY'ers, the time has come to replace my failing Linux laptop with something that conforms more closely to my desktop environment. With the release of Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), I believe the OS is mature enough to support versioning and cloud storage in a way that'd be efficient and helpful to my workflow. This comes at the right time, since my laptop is dying.

Apple is having a "one day" sale today, and I'm going to buy a Macbook Air or a Macbook Pro. I'm looking for opinions on which to buy, with the option of "neither" not being sought.

I bought a Macbook Air a couple of months ago, and it died after one month -- the SSD shit the bed. I chose to return it rather than taking a replacement.

Anyone have experience with either (or, even better, both)?

My primary use is for development. I use PhpStorm, Xcode, Skype, Adium, and Pages/Numbers (less frequently).

Is there a specific "advantage" to the Pro over the Air, for development purposes? It feels more "solid," but is there something else I'm missing? They differentiate the two very poorly.

2 yr old pro.. with no issues whatsoever Dom... wouldn't hesitate to replace it with another. I never even considered the Air, it looked too flimsy for me.

I have the previous version 17" Pro. I dont use it a lot though, just when I want to work in a different room. My PC does everything it does plus plays better games when I want.

Air
 

I have a MacBook Pro 15" from 2007 that replaced an earlier one that was stolen. It still works, but last night was running slow. Also, there seems to be a battery issue as I have had to replace a battery every year or two. Haven't used it in awhile, was just pulling off my files. Going to sell it. The original I dropped twice. Worked perfect except the DVD quit after the second drop.

My Air is great, no problems after 2 years. I believe lighter is better. Just hook it up to the biggest/cheapest non-Apple monitor there is at home. That and I find using a mouse is much better than the trackpad.

And to top it off, I buy at Nebraska Furn. Mart. Get 24-36 months interest-free financing & their prices are a few dollars cheaper than buying direct from Apple.

Got an iPad. But it's bulky to read books in bed. Soon as the Mini with cellular is out, I'm moving up. As the saying goes, "you can never be too rich or too thin."

On top of everything the Air fits into a leather portfolio my GF found at a garage sale. I'm always getting compliments on the portfolio. When I pull out the Air it blows them away. But workwise. the Air does everything the Pro does.

I tried using a Verizon hotspot WIFI with the Air, but it hardly ever worked. Don't blame Apple. I think the hot spot is a piece of crap. Was going to drop the hot spot account account, but if I can switch the account to a mini it would be great. There's a couple of places I go that AT&T and Sprint have zero coverage. One is a town with a nuke plant. You'd think it would be an emergency requirement all cell services should work there.

If you're on the move a lot, that's the only benefit of the Air, otherwise, Pro all the way.

I'm getting a Pro next month and retiring my 2007 MacBook. :thumbsup

Pro all the way...

Air:
* maxed out at 4GB RAM and not upgradeable
* uses a custom shaped SSD which is also not user upgradeable
* has no ethernet port

OS X... Best unix development environment there is. :thumbsup

I have a 2012 macbook air and macbook pro retina, there is no huge differences if you work within 2-4 applications. My macbook got 16 GB ram while the Air only got 4 GB.

You can check the benchmarks here:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

I scored 11803 with the macbook pro while I had 23 applications open. I ran the 32bit test and noticed no lag on anything (streaming radio didn't even stop playing)

You can get 8 GB in the Air.

The macbook pro also use custom SSD, removed the ethernet and no aftermarket ram upgrades anymore. The memory upgrades are reasonable now, the SSD upgrades is NOT

Hmmm, I didn't even realize that they had released 13" retina, pretty cool.

I use 13" non-retina as my main machine... I bought 500GB SSD from OWC and it's great, awesome portable workhorse if you are mainly doing server side development. They still have ethernet and a standard 2.5" drive so you can swap the SSD yourself.

If you're using VMs for staging then you definitely need the extra 4GB.

To clarify: Apple has "officially" approved a 480GB SSD upgrade from an outside vendor.

According to the feedback here, it looks like I'll be going for the Pro. Thanks so much for all of the reviews; time to hit the store, I guess!

Its strange when web developer (programmer not graphic designer) chooses apple product over anything else

Is that a serious statement? OS X is the best *nix development environment there is, especially for laptops. Everything "just works" without any of the fucking around trying to get linux to work on a laptop, plus you get all the desktop productivity stuff (proper Office, Quickbooks, native Photoshop etc.) that you need from time to time with a slick, well designed desktop interface. OS X gets out of the way so you can actually focus on work.

For precise testing and staging before pushing to production you can use VMs - which you would probably do on linux in any case, because your dev environment isn't going to exactly match your production environment anyway.

A friend of mine is a security researcher at Google, and he reckons it's 60/40 OS X vs linux in engineering.

you can boot to any os, making them real nice to dev on.

The windows guys In the office always have to ask me to pull shit up so they can verify it works on mac.... I Never need to ask them,I just load up winxp, win7 inside osx and never need them to verify anything

They are nice... but fucking expensive :D

This. :thumbsup


This. :thumbsup


This. :thumbsup


This. :thumbsup


This. :Oh crap

macbook pro then, unless you really need portability and a light machine.

Macbook Pro it is!

I use air when traveling, pro daily use, the retina is great

I typically bring my macbook air and 18.4 hp laptop whenever I travel. I use the air for most things though unless I need the bigger screen size.

If you're like me and walk into a clients business and show them some final touches on a website design via localhost, get an air.

Granted the Retina Display on a pro but that's about it, for the nimble mobility of an air it's hard to beat. Talked my friend into taking his pro back for the air :winkwink:

For desktop I got a dual display 27" iMac setup.

I'm typing on a dual monitor windows machine right now.
Even though os x has parallels I still like having one OS per box as there are less things to worry about, especially with OS updates. :(

Yes
 

Or just an iPad for those road trips.
Yes Macs seem overpriced. But the after purchase service is where it's at. I don't get crap about "unused icons." I don't get gigabytes of CRAP software preloaded onto my computer.
I get a defective iPad, make an appointment and swap out for a tablet that does what it's supposed to do. No questions asked. try that at Best Buy with a Dell or HP.

iPads are worthless for other than casual browsing. How can you do on-the-fly changes to a website with an iPad? Even if you can it's not very effective.
Stick to what works and listen to me, because I know what I'm talking about. :)

Changes
 

Wasn't thinking so much about changes as just showing someone your site or checking email. I agree with you on doing real work.

How do you know if it's effective or not if you have no idea if you can do it or not?

Lolsome

Yep Apple fucks with euro prices bigtime.

Pro............

Because I have an iPhone, an iPad, an ACER windows desktop, a 27" iMac, and a Macbook air.

Now do a magic trick, bring Paul back early!

Get windows laptop http://a.fsdn.com/con/icons/tr/troll...et/problem.png

I have both, the 2012 Air is nice as in light but the fan constantly goes through a noisy blow phase and whenever that happens you have to close your lid for 15-20secs. If you travel alot which I do, its real nice cause of the weight.
The Pro has extra USB/ CD/DVD drive which is very nice and I can't understand why they don't add that on the Air. The body for the 2013 pro looks like its more of a cut sharp rectangle shape.

Side Note - The resale value of these things are really good. I sold one of my Pro notebooks on Ebay for £540 GBP (Approx $850 US) for my 2010 model (4GB/320GB) standard specs, you wouldn't get the same price tag on the Air.

I just put a new 500gb SSD in my mid-09 15" MBP and its like a new computer. I was thinking of upgrading to the 13" Macbook air, but don't think I will need the upgrade for at least another year now!

get a PC .. lower price with same quality ...

That's what everyone who has never used a Mac says.

I've pretty much had a Pro for my last two laptops simply because I need the power. I'd love to be able to switch to an Air though. Would in a heart beat if they were able to beef them up in power.

Too funny. :1orglaugh


I'm pretty sure he was trolling, but you're right. Productivity went through the roof when I switched to a Mac in 2008-2009 or so. Ever Mac product that has so much as hiccuped has been replaced or repaired with fanatical enthusiasm. It's almost ridiculous how well they treat their customers, warrantied or otherwise.

The fan shouldn't be constantly on. Something must be maxing out your CPU...

A quick google search says sendtokindle causes some problems...

Either way, I'd take it back to apple store and get it fixed...

And the reson there is no optical drive in it is because it couldn't have been made so small and light otherwise!

How come? I mean did you click your keyboard buttons faster with apple? I read here that there are couple good features on OSx, but they could increase productivity by 1% or so (after all typing actual code takes most of the time)

Writing the actual code of a system is what takes the shortest amount of time

Your previous comments demonstrate to me that a discussion of this nature would be fruitless. If you think typing actual code takes up most of the time in development, you're clearly not a developer -- or not a very good one.

I'm horny

And for those like me that aren't technically oriented I can talk to a real tech person based in the US whose name might really be "Bob"

.

If you want it to be portable and thin and don't mind the lack of optical drive then go with the Macbook Air. For all other reasons, go with the Pro.

Also, the Macbook Air is upgradeable to 8gb now, despite what was said above..

I was exaggerating a little by just typing the code, but if it was like you say (productivity increases a LOT - "through the roof") then there would be ZERO developers developing not on OSx.

This is a strange thing to say. Eating healthy provides an obvious benefit in a number of areas, so why does McDonalds stay in business? This is why I'm not willing to education you ... even a little.

Its wrong comparison. There are many variables to eating MCD, couple of them - takes less time to "prepare", some likes the taste and so on. Plus its food and subjective preferences, and when we are talking about developers and their work/business they do what is more productive.

So on computers and developers:

you have 2 options:
a) buy regular laptop and do your job in x hours
b) buy OSx laptop and do you job in way less than x hours

Why would anyone choose a? Besides tiny fact that osx laptop cost more, but thats irrelevant (because that price difference would be earned back in no time, since developers earn good money).

So serious question - why would any developer choose to have worse productivity?

Its actually perfect logic - why should developer choose non OSx if by choosing OSx his productivity increased a LOT ("through the roof")?

Do you lack basic reasoning skills?

1) Some people aren't willing to invest the time into learning how to be productive on another platform, so they stick with Windows.
2) Maybe they are using windows only software a lot of the time and they only want to run one OS - e.g. physical engineers who may do some coding but also have to use windows only CAD software.
3) Many "developers" are really only glorified hobbyists who can't work comfortably in a true unix environment and need windows gui handholding.
4) Some lunatics probably just prefer windows. There are plenty of windows fanbois out there who refuse to try anything different... Sad individuals that they are.
5) There is a massive and lucrative market for software built to run on windows platforms e.g. all that corporate software that runs on windows / activedirectory, windows mobile, game dev etc. and obviously you have to use windows to develop for MS platforms.

If you are a unix developer and you're using windows then you are clearly insane... If you are not a unix developer or you haven't actually tried OS X for a while then you don't have the the perspective to voice an opinion.

"don't want to learn new platform" - if you run business or job you learn it, its not that difficult to move from windows to mac..
"windows fanboys" - no comment, leave fanboys be, but I assume any person who develops for a living is choosing platform that is more productive, not the one that they are "fanboys" to.
You mentioned few instances where people NEED to have windows, we are not speaking about such cases, we are speaking about people like OP. Why did he switch just recently, was that a big secret that OSx is more productive for him? I mean if its clear that Osx is more productive everybody would know that, he would have know that way before he made a switch and so on.
I mean OSx is such a magical tool that increases your productivity through the roof but no one knows that fact? It should be common knowledge.

I know OP will ignore my post and will talk about how worthless this discussion would be so he would not bother to answer...
So my last question to OP:
When you say your productivity went through the roof, what +-numbers are you talking about? +50% ? +30%? Even it was +10% it would be sensational, however hardly could be called "through the roof".

It is common knowledge amongst the developer community and especially amongst people who work with unix for a living.

Go to any SEO conference, any technical webdev conference, go to defcon, walk into a lab of any science or engineering dept at any university and count how many macbooks you see...

Googlers (technical engineers, not marketing / accounting etc) get the choice of a mac or linux laptop, and the majority choose macs...

It's all already been covered in the thread: OS X gives you bash and all the gnu utilities, along with all your usual desktop software, with a slick and productive UI that requires less clicks to get stuff done than the clusterfuck that is windows, and without the hardware configuration headaches of linux on laptops.

It also really depends how portable you want it, and how much power. I have a Macbook that I purchased before the Macbook Air's came out. It's small and light enough and the battieries last about 4 hours. The MAcbook Pro is faster but that means its heavier too. The AIR is the smallest and lightest and ships with an SSHD standard, but it may be a slower machine when it comes to video editing for example.

Bottom line would be "buy whatever one you want". They are all excellent. Which ever once has the best performance vs size is the best one for you.