171–180 of 212 posts
Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that: - The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ - Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well. - The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the h…
Six months ago I had a iMac 24" and a MacBook Pro 13" for studying and portability. I noticed after I bought my MBP that I didn't use my iMac as I thought to be using. Not because it was slow or bad or something. No it was just horrible to synchronize both devices with my work and study related stuff (Yeah I know now better that it is a charm with Dropbox).
While I was deciding if I should sell my iMac I decided to sell both iMac AND my MBP. Why, you ask? My MBP was just fine but sometimes I had to carry a heavy books plus MBP with me and this was why my back was hurting. So I decided to switch to something lighter and faster (and yes my MBA is way faster than my MBP ever was).
After selling both devices I bought a MBA with 128GB SSD and 4GB Ram and happier than ever before. This was one of the best decisions I made in my environment. And if anything happens to my MBA I will order a new one with thinking a moment about it.
Pro's:
* It is very fast,
* it is light as nothing else,
* I have instant-on (something which is really important to me),
* I have 5-6 hours of battery life,
* Eclipse runs really really smooth,
* XCode runs even smother,
* and every other development related works just fine (and sometimes I think even better as on my MBP)
Con's:
* No glass display (I loved it cause it was way easier to clean than a "plastic" display)
* No keyboard backlight (while this was bothering me at the very beginning, I have to admit that I don't care anymore)
At the bottom-line I want to say that unless you are working on really high computation stuff (like 3D rendering or something) a MBA will do it smoothly. I never encountered anything which I had performance problems with. (If you ask me I would wait a second longer in exchange to carry much less weight with me)
Disclaimer: I don't play any games and try to escape Flash everywhere possible (cause it lets the fan freak out).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> my Time Machine backup would ever get off the ground without the initial Ethernet plugin For this one time usage the tiny USB/Ethernet adapter seems like a fine compromise. > Even the SD card reader is quite handy. The MacBook Air has an SD card reader.
> For this one time usage the tiny USB/Ethernet adapter seems like a fine compromise. How's the speed on that? > The MacBook Air has an SD card reader. Ah, I was looking at the 11" oops
In practice, it probably depends on your GigE hardware - NIC, cable type, etc...
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You say you get 3-4 hours in Linux, but the benchmarks you link to claim easily 7 hours in OS X (though dramatically less if you max out the CPU). Are you pretty much always at high CPU utilization, or is Ubuntu's power management of Mac hardware that poor?
I get only about 2.5 hours when running Arch Linux compared to almost double when I used to run OS X on my MBP 5,3. I rarely use my laptop unplugged though so it doesn't make a huge difference to me. I think a large part of the difference on my machine is that you are forced to use the 9600GT for video as opposed to the more efficient 9600M that is available in OS X.
I think I'm really late into this and nobody will read my comment but I will give it a try. Six months ago I had a iMac 24" and a MacBook Pro 13" for studying and portability. I noticed after I bought my MBP that I didn't use my iMac as I thought to be using. Not because it was slow or bad or something. No it was just horrible to synchronize both devices with my work and study related stuff (Yeah I know now better th…
1. With an SSD, any current MBP would feel just as snappy. 2. Can't get around that - though I seldom feel my 4lb MBP is too heavy. 3. I've always had this, I call it Sleep. 4. My 13" i5 gets me >7Hrs. 5. Eclipse/XCode - will run just as fast with an SSD. Compile times - no contest, i5 beats the crap out of a 1.3-1.86Ghz C2D.
The i5 in the current 13" MBP is nearly twice as fast as the C2D in the model it replaced - e.g. even faster when compared with the lower clocked MBA processor. Most things in day to day operation are HDD limited. Anything CPU limited will fly on a MBP compared to an MBA - I'm thinking compiling mostly for developers... I suppose web dev doesn't require compiling much - except when using GWT (which i what I use most often...)
Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that: - The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ - Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well. - The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the h…
Oh, and it's worth mentioning--I fully expect Apple to remove the optical bay entirely in their 2012 design refresh. Mayyyybe they'll keep a second bay as a stock option, but I doubt it!
It's also feasible that they could fit a normal SATA form factor drive and the new slot-style SSDs in a thinner form factor.
They'll have to release some product that makes it easy for non-technical folks to offload low-performance files to the spinning disk versus the SSD, or they'll just market the spinning disk as a built-in Time Machine + Auto Save target.
Info on Auto Save: http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/
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Right, but even then that's not a clear comparison. Maxing out a 15" MBP makes no sense for him--he bought a 13" MBA, so he clearly believed that 256 GB SSD + 4GB RAM would cover his needs. Does he have to always max out his Apple equipment purchases?
I feel that it makes sense. When weighing the options I came to the exact same conclusion as the author, except my notebook is If I were to buy a Pro it'd be the 15" for its resolution, and I definitely want 8GB of memory. However the 13" Air is compelling because of the size & weight. If it were available with 8GB of memory that would be the way to go, but it's not. Personally I'm holding out for the 15" Air. Ideall…
I'm really not a fun for Mac stuff. It's just a fashion thing, not for work. For the money you spent on Mac, you can definitely buy a cheap powerful machine with free reliable Linux system. No matter to say its monopoly of market, even an adapter to projector need its own. I have seen so many times someone using a Mac but forgot bringing that stupid adapter for projector, she/he had to change to PC to do the presenta…
Macs "just work" for things where Linux doesn't. Photoshop doesn't run natively on Linux, that's alone is enough for many to choose OS X over Linux. For many people the price difference (if it's there) doesn't matter.
Workflows vary, of course. And yeah, for non-programmers, I think the Air is a great machine--good enough to be the primary machine for most people. But for full-time programming work, I think it is absolutely fucking batshit insane to use anything less than a modern 12-core Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM and an SSD RAID boot volume (at which point multiple 2560 x something monitors are de rigueur ). That's certainly true fo…
On a separate note, does anyone know where one can buy a 12-core, 32GB RAM, SSD RAID machine that's not made by apple? I've looked around and I can't find any. Blade servers, sure, but desktop workstations? I think it's interesting how apple has claimed the ultra high end user market in addition to it's other markets.
You can configure HP's Z800 workstations with two 6-core Xeons, including some higher-spec CPU models than the ones Apple has available, and up to 192GB of RAM, 6 HD bays, way more graphics options, etc., for a system costing up to several tens of thousands of dollars.
I did one HP Z800 configuration similar to the Mac Pro 12-core, with the same CPU and RAM and slightly better graphics, and it came out over $1000 more expensive than the Mac Pro.
My MacBook Air was $1,799 and the equivalent MacBook Pro (top of the line 15″, because why would you buy the 13″?) would cost me just over $3,200 (adding 3rd party SSD, Apple 8GB RAM and the Hi-Res screen). Man, this is disingenuous. 8GB RAM? As if you can't get it cheaper (or the MBA even offered 8GB RAM as an option)? Or as if the 15" MBP doesn't blow the Air out of the water in every other aspect? I bought a 13" P…
I agree the comparison was not valid, but the MBA's value is more than just a built-in SSD. It is significantly lighter.
It really is about tradeoffs. My MBP is my only computer, and I need the above.