I’m selling my iPad Pro and trading in my current 2019 Air on the new air as I never use the iPad Pro. Now that iOS apps are available combined with better battery life I see no need for the iPad Pro for my personal needs. Just quicker to handwrite some random forms than typing using markup on the MacBook. Small inconvenience.
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MacBook Air or PRO?
- Thread starter Sara Karlsson
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I write in Goodnotes on the iPad Pro 12.9" for at least 4 hours a day. And I use another app called, Explain Everything, which is a real-time virtual canvas over the internet. Love my iPad Pro. Would never get rid of it.
When I was buying it my estimate was up to December 3rd. Right after I hit the buy button the email confirmation had it at 27th. It just gets shorter and shorter.
Hi Guys
I have the 2016 MBP 13" with Touch Bar
3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3
Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB
I was thinking of getting the new MacBook Air with the 16GB unified Memory and 1TB SSD. Would this be an upgrade or a downgrade?
I use my laptop mostly for media consumption, web browsing, downloading , Netflix...etc and only do the odd editing on photoshop/final cut every now and then.
I also use my laptop for trading which is something the new laptop need to handle well. I use interactive broker's Trader Workstation. I was wondering if anyone know if the Trader workstation Mac app with work fine with the new M1 chip? It's a Java based application.
I'm not very technical and have no idea what's what. I imagine the new M1 theoretically would be able to handle most things I throw at it. Or should I really be getting the new M1 MacBook Pro instead? Both seems very similar in specs .Any advise?
I have the 2016 MBP 13" with Touch Bar
3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3
Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB
I was thinking of getting the new MacBook Air with the 16GB unified Memory and 1TB SSD. Would this be an upgrade or a downgrade?
I use my laptop mostly for media consumption, web browsing, downloading , Netflix...etc and only do the odd editing on photoshop/final cut every now and then.
I also use my laptop for trading which is something the new laptop need to handle well. I use interactive broker's Trader Workstation. I was wondering if anyone know if the Trader workstation Mac app with work fine with the new M1 chip? It's a Java based application.
I'm not very technical and have no idea what's what. I imagine the new M1 theoretically would be able to handle most things I throw at it. Or should I really be getting the new M1 MacBook Pro instead? Both seems very similar in specs .Any advise?
It will be a massive upgrade. The M1 will be about 4 times faster in CPU and vastly faster in GPU. My Macbook pro is nearly double the performance of yours, I have the 2020 quad core i5 macbook Pro. It the cross platform benchmarks that I have been able to run, this laptop isn't any faster than the 12z in my iPad and is often slower. The M1 seems to be around 60 percent faster than the a12z. I got the M1 with 16GB of RAM.
If our Monday delivery dates hold, my bet on reviews showing up would be Monday morning (6-9am).
This is how I feel too. I do a lot of photo editing on the iPad Pro now. Darkroom, one of my favorite editing apps, was also one of the first to be optimized for the M1. Can't wait to use it on my Macbook Air.
Great article from TomsGuide justifying the upsell to the Pro. I’m heading that way.
www.tomsguide.com
The new MacBook Air is amazing — but I'm buying the MacBook Pro
The new MacBook Pro looks like it's worth the splurge
Sensible comparison. My 2 cents for my own situation, in case anyone else has similar circumstances:
- The extra processing power enabled by the fan won't be useful to me, as I rarely do anything required sustained loads
- 15 hours of web browsing is more than enough battery power in this day and age. Most flights and airport terminals allow me to charge and I am rarely in a situation where I need to go more than 15 hours without charging (or 12, for that matter)
- At home, I watch movies and listen to audio through my TV/Sonos system. While traveling, I almost always listen/watch through Bose headphones or AirPods Pros, not through the built-in speakers.
- I almost always have my screen brightness at 60-70%, except when I'm using the laptop in bright sunlight outdoors (which is rare)—not just to preserve battery life, which probably won't be an issue with these M1s, but because I dislike staring at a super bright screen for hours at a time.
- The weight difference isn't that significant, but together with the sleeker form factor the Macbook Air does feel noticeably more portable to me. And because of what I wrote above, and that I have an iMac Pro for any serious processing work, the Macbook Air feels like a better option—even though the price difference isn't a consideration for me.
Great article from TomsGuide justifying the upsell to the Pro. I’m heading that way.
The new MacBook Air is amazing — but I'm buying the MacBook Pro
The new MacBook Pro looks like it's worth the splurge
I don't see where that discusses anything we've not already known? Active cooling (higher sustained CPU load), improved speakers/mic, higher brightness screen, touchbar, up to 11% more battery. If those differences are worth a $300 difference - plus another $20 for the more expensive Pro AppleCare+ - then go for the Pro.
Article also discussed an eight year ownership span - while that may be true for some folks, I'd think carefully whether it applies to your own situation.
The choice of Air or Pro depends on the individual's situation. Yes - if your needs involve some combination of frequent sustained substantial CPU load, system speakers/mic are important to you, you've found that a 400nit display is limiting and you need more brightnees, you like touchbar, etc then the Pro would be the better choice. Especially if you'll be holding onto the computer for more than 2-3 years.
Me? My workloads are infrequently CPU bound - only when doing batch photo processing / exports - I dislike Touchbar, preferring hard Fn keys, infrequently use built in mic/speakers, and haven't found my existing 400nit display to be limiting in any way. There's also a decent chance I'll feel like making a change within 2-3 years. So the Air is the better choice for my situation.
If you need a macbook that can sustain high performance and has very fast file read/write performance get the MBP! MBP has a much faster SSD!
MBA M1:
2x faster than Intel MBA (1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, see note 16) = 2 x reads ~1207 MB/s and writes ~1275 MB/s. Thus, about 2.4 GB/s read and 2.5 GB/s write.
MBP M1:
3.3 GB/s read, write speed not reported on Apple's website but I assume about the same as read.
MBA M1:
2x faster than Intel MBA (1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, see note 16) = 2 x reads ~1207 MB/s and writes ~1275 MB/s. Thus, about 2.4 GB/s read and 2.5 GB/s write.
MBP M1:
3.3 GB/s read, write speed not reported on Apple's website but I assume about the same as read.
Interesting. Read/write speeds would affect digital photography work, so the MBP might tempt me here. But I do the majority of my editing on either my iMac Pro (when home) or iPad Pro when traveling. I love using a stylus to edit, and I have a Wacom tablet attached to my iMac Pro and Apple Pencil with the iPad Pro.
I would suggest that even in digital photograph editing, which I do plenty of, the scenarios in are rare in which ~2.4GB/s vs ~3.3GB/s will make a truly impactful difference to the end-user. Not that there aren't potential scenarios where there's a measurable difference, but I'd anticipate the other MBA vs MBP differences and how they relate to a person's preferences/needs will have more overall effect on their experience with the system.
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