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Anyone got the latest Air? wobbling between an Air and a Pro


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what can I say...

the differences are significant, and the subjective choice is yours, personally, to make.

IT DEPENDS on what your own personal wants, needs, priorities,and expectations are...

just what other response did you expect ?? the Air sounds better ?? the Pro is bigger ??

if that is what you want, you have my permission to buy anything that you want, that your wife lets you buy! ::)

Edited by studiomprd
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My wife and I have an agreement, which I recommend to you all.....

My day rate, after tax and other deductions is a contribution to the household income, my kit hire is my money, to be spent as I want. It's a great system, I recommend it to all!

Meanwhile, taking a break from bullshit corner, anyone got a new Air?

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I think your wife would be thrilled w/ a new AIR unless she's a video editor or a heavy user of video graphics apps etc, or is doing something that requires a lot of ports. My wife won't allow the money to be spent on such a computer to replace her ancient Powerbook, but I'm getting tired enough of dealing with it that I might take matters into my own hands and just buy an Air for her on my own. The only real choice I see (within the Mac universe) is whether or not an iPad might do what she /wants needs just as well.

phil p

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I have a 17inch MacBook Pro that's my main computer (no more desktop) and an 11inch MacBook Air for travel.

If you don't need a screen bigger than 13 inches and you're comfortable not being able to upgrade the Air's RAM at a later date then I could easily see using one for just about everything.

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The differences between the Air and the retina-display MacBook Pro boil down to: the former is a little smaller lighter, and the latter has better performance. They dumped the DVD-ROM drive on the latter, which is a bummer if you need that feature. Both of them are now difficult to upgrade, because Apple has decided to start soldering the RAM directly to the motherboard (rather than providing user-serviceable upgrades). IFixit came up with some do-it-yourself tricks, but they are not for the feint of heart.

I agree with Jim, the little tiny 11" Air is amazingly small and perfect for travel. I think the 15" Pro is the best compromise for size, weight, price, and power. The 17" is too clunky to me, but I do see a lot of DITs and on-set editors using them. Apple has apparently stopped making the 17", but I dunno if they'll bring it back or not.

I just looked at the 15" Retina display this afternoon at Fry's in LA (which was a mere 90 degrees inside the store, vs. 105 degrees outside), and it looked dynamite.

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Here's a shot that shows how they took the space left by the DVD-ROM drive and added some more connectors:

rightside-283844.jpg

This smacks of one of those stubborn Steve Jobs decisions: "I don't personally like DVD-ROM or DVDs, so I'm just going to dump them from the computer and force you to transfer files another way." Not always ideal, but you can see it did let them make the machine thinner and lighter, and I'm told the battery life is now better.

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I am in love with my MBA 2011. First time ive loved a laptop since i've had a thinkpad x100. i have really specific wants, but for me the MBA is just the right size and lightness for me to carry around and use all the time, like an ipad, has enough grunt for basic audio work, and, with apptamer, gives me like 6 hrs of battery on the go, which is plenty (i usually only open it up during breaks).

I have a mac pro at home for more heavy duty stuff, but that seldom gets used these days.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I sold my old Macbook and my dated Mac Pro tower and just upgraded to editing full time off the new MacBook Pro Retina and the Thunderbolt 27" Cinema Display in a dual monitor setup with the laptop on a stand. I couldn't recommend switching to this world more. It cost quite a bit, but it makes more sense to me for those who travel at all for work to be operating off the new MacBook Pro. The days of needing a desktop and a laptop are dead in my opinion.

Full setup:

- 2012 MacBook Pro Retina (Max SS Drive, Ram, Processor)

- 27" Thunderbolt Cinema Display

- LG Slim Portable Blu Ray Writer (USB)

- Sonnet Thunderbolt to PCIE (to run eSata hard drives & super fast CF reader)

- Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 adapter

- A few 4TB G-Raid drives (unless you are editing 4K video footage there isn't much reason to pay the extra cash for the Thunderbolt drives just yet... the G-Raid via eStata get damn good speeds)

- A couple Glyph Portagig drives

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And a quick opinion on the "no optical drive" note. I love this. It takes weight and size off of the laptop which is crucial when lugging it around. Also, apple is all "anti-bluray" so even if it had one, it would have no BluRay capabilities. You can pick up a USB powered LB BluRay burner for around $100.

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