Aperture on 11 inch Air?

[Ichneumon]

I'm thinking about buying a Macbook Air 11" with 4 gb Memory. Can anyone tell me how well it will run Aperture? Thanks for the information.

 

[Rob.G]

It runs fine on mine, but I stopped using Aperture because I think it sucks and is a PITA to use.

 

[natebookpro]

Really depends on what you are going to be using it for. I have the base MacBook Air and Aperture runs fine when working with jpg. When I play with some of the raw files from my d40 its still acceptable and even with the d90 files its not terrible. If you are going to be doing multiple effects though I would stay away from it. But if you just want it to touch up some files on the road, change white balance, a little retouching, and adjust the contrast then it should suit you just fine.

 

[alwaysg5]

I'd say if it can be trusted the 1.6GHz 4GB model that Rob.G is talking about, then you're fine seeing as that's the top spec and moving down to 1.4GHz isn't much of a difference.

 

[Rob.G]

The MBA's saving grace is the SSD drive. That's why it seems faster than it actually is. In day to day use, my MBA11 feels faster than my 17" MBP. Only when I get into very heavy CPU use situations does the MBP feel faster... an example being running Windows under VirtualBox and doing something heavy in that, like a big database operation in MSSQL.

FWIW, the reason I dislike Aperture so much is that I spent a bunch of time moving my photos into it, only to have it get slower, and slower, and slower (on my MBP) to the point that it was unusable. I finally exported everything back out and only use it for importing pix from my digital camera.

Rob

 

[jdavtz]

It's surprisingly acceptable for minor editing of RAW files from a Canon 5DMk2. Obviously not what you'd want to be using day-to-day for major projects, but it's okay for the odd touch-up.

 

[Cerano]

at first i thought it was all due to the SSD
later i found out that the Su9600 is actually about as powerful as an I5 430um CULV. marketing LOL

 

[neteng101]

Just got back from the Apple Store - with the App Store pricing for Aperture, I was tempted to get it and wanted to play around some with it. Here's what I noticed...

13.3" base MBA - launching Aperture is lightning quick. Loading up photos (loading on display) because they are all in RAW in the sample projects, does have a lag. Making adjustments for RAW (eg. sharpening) is noticeable.

15" MBP i7 - launching Aperture is dog slow (why does Apple even bother with those lumbering 5400rpm drives anymore?). Loading up photos is a lot better (to get the loading to go away), and RAW adjustments is much quicker but still not instant.

27" iMac - launching Aperture is not bad (not SSD quick, but nothing like the slowness of the HDD-based MBP). Again, RAW adjustments can still take a second or two to process like the MBP.

And the default sample library the install for the store displays isn't too large. I image a huge Aperture library on a slow drive is going to be a nightmare to deal with. Hence the SSD is actually a huge boost in getting the photos into memory, but the CPU will matter when working with RAW images.

Not a biggie for me - haven't really been taking photography seriously for a long while thus no RAW shooting, but I imagine a working pro photog would want more CPU muscle than any MBA can muster, though some light editing is certainly more than possible.