My 2008 13.3″ (1280 x 800 18-bit 113 ppi) aluminum-unibody MacBook went to my favorite nieces so they could do school work.

The 2012 11" MacBook Air has TEN keys worn to blobs of backlight. Several wonky; typing is a beetch. Five years of steady blogging. Plus everything else, like taxes, memes, tracking cat food vs litter usage. So it is going bye-bye until it is refurbished. It fits in a slim accordion folder and will be a classic.

I've ressurected an inherited 2011 13" MacBook Air but like all my computers, I've only acquired base or refurb; it will not run a higher OS than High Sierra. Yes, I bitched about change, but I've gotten accustomed to the new OS, specifically in Pages and Numbers.

Plus going from 11.6-inches (1366 x 768 @ 135 ppi) and 13.3-inch (1440 x 900 @ 128 ppi) resolution to the new Air or Pro display should be eyeball-helpful. 13.3-inch (2560-by-1600 native resolution at 227 pixels per inch)

But Air or Pro? Who buys the Pro over Air?

Disclaimer, I'll buy a refurb direct from Apple, the cheapest one. $809 vs $1059. Plus 6% tax.

Woodman, check your email. I may have something that interests you.

get either the M1 chip or go get the 16" MacBook Pro. I hate Apple and these two computers are the snizzel.

I have the 13" Pro. My daughter has the Air. She says she wished she had spent a little more $ for the Pro.

One word: Pro

quote:

Originally posted by sig229-SAS:
One word: Pro

Yup. I'm a zero fan of Apple but my wife is. Pro is the only way to go in her opinion.

BC, yes. I'm hitting the REPLY now.

No answers so far. What's the hip of the Pro? Mo' slots? The battray gives a little more hours, but I'm plugged in most all of the time.

MB Pro

The Air is a pleasing development in design, however unless you're constantly traveling, I prefer the MBP.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
The Air is a pleasing development in design, however unless you're constantly traveling, I prefer the MBP.

My 11" Air has jetted / road-tripped 15-20 times. Makes travelling for 2-3 weeks with a single carry-on duffle easy to do. I'm mostly a reclining user. Did my state tax return this morning laying on the couch. Pretty much zero table computer work over the past several years, since I've gone digital-everything.

Just bought my wife the Air. She's an Apple user. I actually recommended it for her considering her immersion in the Apple world with the iPhone, icloud, etc.

Just a heads up, I purchased online through Best Buy. My Amex had an offer for $50 credit if you spend at least $50, and it can be used two times. So i got $100 off her Air. The offer was for online orders only though.

My MIL boght from Best Buy. It had BB software on it, including BB Safari favorites and BB Safari homepage.

The Pro is $200 more than the Air for a similar configuration.
You don't get more slots, though: it has only 2 Thunderbolt 4/USB 3.1 slots like the Air.
You get the Touchscreen which is not very useful; both the Air and Pro have fingerprint ID which is very useful.

Note that with either M1 chip computer, it will NOT run on anything before MacOS 11 Big Sur.

I bought my wife an M1 Air for Christmas (see my thread on that for more details), and am using it now.

I am waiting for spring, when I hope Apple comes out with a more powerful 12-core M1 chip MacBook Pro, hopefully with more slots.

The current M1 MacMini does have USB A slots in addition to two that are Thunderbolt 4 (basically same as Thunderbolt 3) and USB 3.1 compliant.

The base M1 MacBook Air (MBA) has only 7 graphic cores vs 8 for the 13" MacBook Pro (MBP).

The MBP has a fan for when additional cooling is needed (for most is rare).

Here is a comparison: M1 MacBook Air vs M1 MacBook Pro which should you buy

There are rumors of a new form factor MBA. Though I would expect any announcement of new Macs with a new design to be announced at some sort of event; be it a special event (March or later in the year) or the WWDC (usually June).

depending on the generation, beware the new flat butterfly keyboards. I bought my kids Airs over Pros for college because they actually will need to type a lot, and the Pro (a few years ago) was a horrible keyboard. Not sure on the new. But if you're in refurb, you may be a little older?

My first foray into Macs was a 13" Air. There was a learning curve that I never quite got over. However, I think it's called bootcamp that allows you to install Windows onto separate partition. This laptop is a 2010~ model. At any rate, to give you an idea of age, it supported Windows 7.

So that's what I run on it and all's well in the world. I don't do anything on it that's all that demanding. I will tell you that Windows does run the battery down faster than if I'm running Snow Leopard. So if I know I'm going to be using it for extended period of time with access to power, I'll run on native Snow Leopard.

I would imagine latest MBP still allow bootcamping and have much improved battery life since mine was made. Remember these machines originally came with the equivalent of SSD, I forget formal term for it, it's on a chip...So they are still plenty fast for what they are.

If you value price and portability, the Air is better candidate; otherwise you'll probably prefer the Pro.

 
I haven't had occasion yet to try out the new M1 Macs, but from what I've read, there is very little difference in the Air and the Pro for these first new M1s. I believe that's mainly because the 13" M1 MBP is a low end model of the Pros. There are supposed to be 14" and 16" models coming out later this year that will be more in line with a "pro" MBP.
 
So I guess what I'm trying to say is if you were to buy an M1 right now, the Air is the way to go, plus save some $$ in the process.

I vote Mac Pro, just because mine was my favorite computer ever. That was years ago, sure they have changed things since. Good luck with your choice!!!

I have the $999 8-core/7GPU-core 8GB ram MacBook Air and I cannot slow this thing down. Let’s be real though: I don’t do any rendering or compiling or major LightRoom job queues.

That being said, I hit it hard with a huge mailbox in Outlook, probably a dozen spreadsheets, dozens of Chrome tabs across three desktop full-screen Chrome instances, Slack, VMware View session, Box, OneDrive, a split-screen finder desktop, GlobalProtect VPN + a full screen Microsoft RDP connection to my tower at the office.

And a full screen Spotify desktop.

I can’t get the memory pressure to go higher than 50ish percent, and it never slows down and never gets hot and I run 8-10 hours and never even look at my battery.

Unless you’re a gamer or run video rendering, I can’t imagine getting a beefier M1, and unless you HAVE to buy an older refurbished Mac, I can’t imagine anyone ever buying an Intel Mac in the 13” package. Ever again.

Intel is a hot mess compared to what’s possible with these new Macs. Hell, I can open a 50mb spreadsheet 3 times over before my coworkers Intel quad-core 16g 2020 MBP can launch it once.

Anywhoooooo

EDIT - Whoops hit submit on accident.

YMMV, and I realize this is all anecdotal. The fan equipped MBP M1 is a smart choice too as is any Mac that fits your budget.

I sure as hell love the M1 tho and I love what it means for not only future Apple computers, but the industry in general. Intel and Microsoft have a problem and I can tell AMD is aware of it too.