13" Retina Pro v 13" i7 Air

Graham_B18C

As the title suggests, what would be the more capable machine? Currently looking at both but if we decide on the Pro we'll be waiting for the refresh. Living in Australia so the price differences are quite sickening in comparison to Ireland. The laptop will be used for regular enough most of the time. I make small GoPro videos and want to get into a bit of photography. My girlfriend will be using it for some working from home the odd time, python scripting from command line. Then the usual Internet, music etc.

For an 13" i7 Air with 8GB RAM is $1549. Is the i7 upgrade worthwhile? It's a 128GB ssd, we'll be buying a decent external.

Then the 13" Pro is $1649. It's the basic i5 with 8GB RAM and 128GB ssd.

The screen is obviously a big plus for the Pro but the battery is for the Air. Portability isn't a huge thing, in fairness the Retina Pro is seriously small anyway.

Am I silly paying the extra $180 for the processor upgrade? Would the i5 Air be more than enough for our needs? We want to keep the laptop for as long as possible so that's why I'm looking at getting the i7 and extra RAM. But if we didn't get that it'd be $280 difference. I just can't decide! All opinions wanted!

Stuxnet

I went form a 2012 air, to retina...cashed in when haswell airs came out again, and went back to air, both are very capable, but for me, the deal breaker with the retina was waiting for non apple applications to catch up with their gui's. example I do a lot of development as you mentioned, QT creator nor eclipse, or VirtualBox had retina gui's and displayed horribly on retina pro model, I got sick of quirks like this, so went back to 2013 air when they came out, no regrets, I would like to go back to retina when the technology I use catches up. Just something to ponder...the screen is amazing, but the rest of the world needs to catch up in some regards to retina

I just bumped my standard 13" config, air with 8gb ram, and it runs testing openstack, vagrant and lots of vm's and containers easy peasy

miralize

I rarely find or notice any apps that dont have non-retina assets these days thankfully.

nialler

i've a maxed out i7 air, 8gb ram, 512ssd - dream machine, CS6, final cut pro all run excellently on it, adobe media encoder does get the fans spinning up but it comfortable manages everything I throw at it.

N

Graham_B18C

Is the difference between the i7 and i5 major? Like is it worth coughing up an extra 180 for it? If I do it makes it only 100 difference with that and a pro.

Would an air with 8gb of ram and an i7 processor be a better machine than a retina pro with 8gb ram and an i5 processor?

Graham_B18C

Had a look at the refurbs there. 8GB ram retina pro with a 2.5GHz i5 and 128GB ssd for $1350. So that's €930. Bloody tempting

nialler

THere's the geekbench scores

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

N

Graham_B18C

Interesting reading, thanks for that. The refurb has really thrown a spanner in the works. I know it'll be old tech once the refresh happens but at that price I kinda don't care! It's still a few weeks until I can get it so I'll keep thinking about it

Sad Professor

The current 13-inch Retina is near perfect except for the weak GPU. I can see users running into iPad 3-like issues with that down the road. For that reason I’d recommend either getting the Air or waiting for the Haswell refresh of the rMBP.

I’d like my next Mac to be a 13-inch Retina, but if the next refresh doesn’t deliver the goods I may get a 13-inch Air instead or just wait for Broadwell.

Graham_B18C

So it'd be a deal breaker for you even at that price? I doubt I'll be doing any gaming on it so I wouldn't of thought the GPU would affect me so much?

It really is a tough choice this!

Sad Professor

Yes, otherwise I probably would have upgraded already. I wouldn’t be doing any gaming either. I just don’t think the GPU is good enough for the Retina screen and the CPU has to pick up the slack. It’s pushing 4 times as many pixels. More lag, etc, especially if you hook up to an external display.

Graham_B18C

Right, I suppose I'll keep an eye on the Airs in the refurb section to see if any 2013 13 inchers pop up.

Now next question, does the i7 give that much more umph over the i5? In the real world like. I'll be getting 8GB ram either way. I see the i7 is almost 500 more on geekbench, does this mean it'll be 20% faster? 2369 v 2850

Sad Professor

I don't think there's a big difference - not for day-to-day tasks. For what I'd be using it for, I'd be happy with the i5. I'd choose the larger RAM and storage configurations over the processor upgrade.

Colonel Panic

Nah, it means for certain computationally intensive tasks, it will be a bit faster but 20%? That really depends on how well the software is written. You need to leverage extra cores, you need to write programs in a certain way to make the most of extra speed.

You might see some performance gains doing video encoding than the like, but imo, it's really not worth it for most of use cases regardless of what anyone says.

Graham_B18C

Righto it's looking like the Air is a goer, was going to go to the Apple store for it on the weekend but just saw a 2013 13" with 8GB RAM and 128 SSD advertised for $1000, which is roughly €700. For that very model new it'd be $1370.

I'll take a look at it tomorrow and if it's all good I'll make a sneaky $900 offer, hopefully get it for 950 but I'm prepared to pay the asking!

Graham_B18C

Pulled the trigger last week, there was no wiggle on the price though.

Absolutely spotless so I was happy to pay asking. Only using it properly for the first time today, sweet jesus this thing is fast! Had to restart it there a few minutes ago and I turned away from the screen for about 5 seconds, when I looked back it was waiting for me to put the password in!

miralize

Graham_B18C wrote: »

Pulled the trigger last week, there was no wiggle on the price though.

Absolutely spotless so I was happy to pay asking. Only using it properly for the first time today, sweet jesus this thing is fast! Had to restart it there a few minutes ago and I turned away from the screen for about 5 seconds, when I looked back it was waiting for me to put the password in!

Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver Menu to change that sort of thing

Graham_B18C

miralize wrote: »

Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver Menu to change that sort of thing

Change what sort of thing

miralize

Graham_B18C wrote: »

Change what sort of thing

Misread it, thought you wanted to change how long it would take to lock/go to sleep etc...