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Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

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Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#71

Post by etherealG »

gambiting wrote: post #63
etherealG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh? the pro has more pixels, and you can scale the ui up/down as you prefer. i'm pretty sure you get way more effective screen space at the highest density setting.

The highest density(native res) is too small to work with, half resolution that scales every pixel 4x gives you actually less workspace than the Air does. Anything in between is blurry. Really, the Retina crammed a lot of pixels into that screen,but without any effective way to use them efficiently.

ah, i see, didn't realise the inbetween scaling was blurry. on the 15 i find the inbetween scaling pretty good myself.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#72

Post by dchuk »

__david__ wrote: post #38
dchuk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A half pound is barely something to care about when you're talking about non-handheld devices.

A half pound sounds like nothing, but the air is about 15% lighter than the 13" which is pretty significant.

Not really. The difference between 3.5lbs and 3lbs isn't even really something worth discussing when the device will always be resting on something when you're using it. If we were talking about the iPad or a similar tablet then yeah, of course that would be a big deal.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#73

Post by LeafyGreenbriar »

jpb0104 wrote: post #18
joshontheweb wrote: post #3

Unless they come out with an 11" Macbook Pro, I'm sticking with the Air. If you have a 13" Air then yes, the pros have made more sense for awhile IMO. For me the 11" Air with 8 gigs of ram, i7 processor and a solid state drive plus a Thunderbolt display is the ideal setup. Super portable and powerful enough for anything but the latest 3d gaming plus the display for when I'm in the office.

I'd like to hear more about your experience working on the 11", when you're away from the external display. Are you cramped because of the resolution? Keyboard and trackpad?

I've used the Air as a full-time development machine in the past. It can be great if it fits how you write code. I write code in emacs or vim, so I would run that in a fullscreen terminal window under tmux, which allowed me to quickly switch between my editor and various zsh prompts.

I'd also have Chrome open in another fullscreen window, and use the four finger swipe gesture to navigate between the two.

For other apps I'd use hotkey combinations and Alfred to do as much navigation as possible to minimize using the cursor.

The biggest downside of the setup was when I needed to use a web page or video for reference while coding, which I basically couldn't do. I know a lot of coders like to have two monitors up so they can have a browser visible at the same time they are working in their editor, and none of them could understand how I could use the 11 for my main machine.

The resolution was a bit constrained for working in an IDE with a lot of information in frames, so it isn't idea, at least for me, of using IntelliJ or similar programs.

And that beings said, what really ended up killing it for me, is that the screen resolution is fairly high for the display size, or at least I thought so. Basically, type wound up being just a little smaller than I was comfortable with, and making it larger did leave me with too little space on the screen.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#74

Post by gambiting »

gte910h wrote: post #70
gambiting wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest density(native res) is too small to work with, half resolution that scales every pixel 4x gives you actually less workspace than the Air does. Anything in between is blurry. Really, the Retina crammed a lot of pixels into that screen,but without any effective way to use them efficiently.

They allow native res access now?

No, you need a special program to enable it.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#75

Post by kevinherron »

auggierose wrote: post #55
kevinherron wrote: post #42

Can't believe nobody mentioned this, but for me the Air is still the winner because it has more usable screen space. The 13" rMBP, while nice, only has an effective resolution of 1280x800, which I find to be unusable. With the Air you get 1440x900 at a DPI that's still pretty nice.

Nope, got the new 13inch retina today, and it has 1680x1050 resolution. It astonishingly usable in that resolution, although I was sceptical before, my doubts are gone. Only thing: When working with my 17inch macbook, suddenly everything looks so freakishly large!

It has scaled-mode resolutions including 1440x900, 1680x1050, and maybe 1920x1200, which all have noticeable annoyances.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#77

Post by __david__ »

dchuk wrote: post #72
__david__ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A half pound sounds like nothing, but the air is about 15% lighter than the 13" which is pretty significant.

Not really. The difference between 3.5lbs and 3lbs isn't even really something worth discussing when the device will always be resting on something when you're using it. If we were talking about the iPad or a similar tablet then yeah, of course that would be a big deal.

Well, yeah, if your laptop is always sitting on a table and you walk up and type on it without ever moving it, then you really have a desktop and weight is irrelevant.

But laptops get carried, they get held in odd positions while you're moving around. If they're light enough you can hold them above you in bed without your arms falling off. You can sit sideways on the couch and prop them on your knees. At that point, ever 18% lighter is very important.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#78

Post by twiceaday »

rayiner wrote: post #9

The price difference is $200 in the U.S. The wedge profile of the MBA makes it feel a lot smaller than the MBP (e.g. when shoving it in your briefcase). The trade-off for the lower-resolution screen is much better battery life. The MBA gets 15+ hours for web browsing with Mavricks. http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/23/13-inch-2013-macbook-air... I'm upping my MBA to an rMBP, but I can totally see why someone would get…

Apple made it abundantly clear that they wish to differentiate current Airs on battery when they doubled battery life instead of adding a retina/touch screen like the competition. However the 2013 Air is actually slightly slower than the 2012 one in CPU benchmarks [1]. I think this is the last hurrah for this generation of Airs. The current Air body is about as old as the Pro was then the Retina refresh occurred. I think next June Apple will release a new Air body and I can't wait to see it.

[1] http://anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-1...

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#79

Post by vinceguidry »

dchuk wrote: post #72
__david__ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A half pound sounds like nothing, but the air is about 15% lighter than the 13" which is pretty significant.

Not really. The difference between 3.5lbs and 3lbs isn't even really something worth discussing when the device will always be resting on something when you're using it. If we were talking about the iPad or a similar tablet then yeah, of course that would be a big deal.

That something it's resting on is my chest half the time, so yeah, it makes a difference.

Re: Apple Just Cannibalized the MacBook Air

#80

Post by MetaCosm »

npalli wrote: post #67
antirez wrote: post #49

IMHO the "real" MBA, from the point of view of what happens when you use it as your main computer, is the 11" version, and there is a huge difference between that computer and the MBP 13". The MBA11 means that your computer is from the point of view of portability no much more than an iPad with a keyboard. It has a minimal weight, minimal impact even on a very small table, and when you close it you can walk with it i…

Among the apple products, the 11" air seems like a oddball option to me. Two things 1. For people who say it is like an iPad with a keyboard, I find that the iOS apps I use (games, camera, touch based things) are very different than those on the MBA (Developer tools + Adobe stuff). So not sure what the connection to the iPad is. It is not even touch enabled. How can you say you are getting an iPad/Tablet experience w…

Umm, the 11" and 13" use the same keyboard -> http://blog.timecenter.com/content/uploads/2010/08/macbook-a...
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