Which MacBook?

Mmarques

Mmarques

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Marco
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Hi everyone,

Looking to get a MacBook to do my edits, need some advice on what to go for pro or air? What spec? Etc.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks
 
Pro without a doubt as far as I'm concerned. The screen on the air was horrific and came across as worse quality than any laptop I've ever used previously. The retina screen on the Pro is exceptionally nice, and although I'm not an apple fan I do appreciate the quality of the retina screens :)
 
A vote for the pro from me, for the better spec CPU and hard drive space.
 
The Pro has an all-round better spec than the Air. It has a faster processor and a much better screen. The only upside for the Air is the longer battery life. However my 2012 rMBP gives me 5 hours of working before it goes flat. I'm not sure if you can get a decent calibration of the Air's screen.the rMBP calibrates perfectly.

Gloss screen annoys some people, but to be honest it's never given me a problem. Generally speaking with a laptop you are fairly close to it so unless you are wearing something incredibly colourful you tend to block reflections yourself
 
The air is really for people who spend long hours carrying their laptop and need to use it without ready access to charging points - kind of Apple's answer to the Netbook. It's designed for the lowest weight and longest battery life possible given the design constraint of a laptop-style computer, and everything is designed around those requirements. If you want a computer for working on that is easily portable then a MBP is a better bet, though if you have a good external screen then a Mac mini might also be better still.
 
I will mainly be using indoors at home, I already have a mac, this will be so I can move about in different rooms so battery life isn't too much of a problem, so looks like mbp is the answer :)
 
Don't the air's have really small hard drives? That and the lack of optical drive put me off. I bought a MacBook Pro last year.
 
allanm said:
Don't the air's have really small hard drives? That and the lack of optical drive put me off.
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The Air comes in 128/256GB configurations, configurable up to 512GB. The retina MBP comes in 128/256/512GB, configurable up to 1TB.

Both the Air and retina MBP don't come with optical drives, and haven't been designed with them for a while now.

If you need a Macbook but it's only being moved short distances, and battery life is not an issue, then the 15" retina MBP probably makes most sense.
 
allanm said:
That and the lack of optical drive put me off.
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They also don't come with a floppy disk drive. Neither puts me off because both are dead obsolete technologies.
 
daugirdas said:
They also don't come with a floppy disk drive. Neither puts me off because both are dead obsolete technologies.
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The floppy drive died many years ago, but I put a lot of info including photos onto dvd's and play music cd's and films on my Macbook.
A Macbook without a dvd drive would be of no use to me, whatever Apple think...
Allan
 
daugirdas said:
They also don't come with a floppy disk drive. Neither puts me off because both are dead obsolete technologies.
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There are people with low broadband speeds who would argue that point massively..

A 4gb download doesn't take me more than around 15-20mins, however there are places around me that have around 0.5, 1 or 2mbps broadband, for them it is still a great option to purchase software on DVD and install without having to wait days assuming the connection doesn't disconnect.

Too many companies assume we all have fast internet for software downloads and upgrades when it is not always the case.

And in the case of me, there is something to be said for holding a product that you've paid £££ for, and not just a license in an email, long live the DVD/BD drive!! :)
 
Neilc28 said:
There are people with low broadband speeds who would argue that point massively..

A 4gb download doesn't take me more than around 15-20mins, however there are places around me that have around 0.5, 1 or 2mbps broadband, for them it is still a great option to purchase software on DVD and install without having to wait days assuming the connection doesn't disconnect.

Too many companies assume we all have fast internet for software downloads and upgrades when it is not always the case.

And in the case of me, there is something to be said for holding a product that you've paid £££ for, and not just a license in an email, long live the DVD/BD drive!! :)
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Don't forget external USB - DVD drives are plentiful on ebay and elsewhere. £20-30 should bring you back optical disc era :)
 
External USB DVD drives suck - it's a piece of junk that's always awkward & in the way with a laptop. And most of the UK outside cities is crappy for internet speeds. I couldn't possibly use a cloud solution with the roughly 40k bps up I get here.
 
Are there any places people would recommend to go to buy a mbp?
 
I regularly burn DVD's to give to clients, so an internal optical drive means carting around one less piece of kit.

It may be becoming obsolete, but there is life in the little silver discs yet.

As for where to buy - yes, John Lewis gives 2 yr warranty, whereas most other places is just 1 yr. You can extend with Applecare to 3yrs on both if you want.
 
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Thanks Andrew, will have a look at John Lewis.

Cheese, any bit of discount would be helpful! Will go find a student now haha
 
andrewc said:
I regularly burn DVD's to give to clients, so an internal optical drive means carting around one less piece of kit.
Click to expand...

Get some branded flash drives from somewhere like Flashbay... dirt cheap these days and looks so much more professional to clients... and it makes that optical drive a little bit more redundant!
 
Ok so looked at the different specced mbp on John Lewis site, couple of questions to see which spec to go for, bit of a computer spec illiterate,
What's the difference between flash storage and SSD?
Am I right that Intel core i7 is better than i5?
 
Flash storage is the same as an SSD.

Theoretically an i7 is more powerful than an i5, but in practise you'll probably not notice and clock speed or memory would make a bigger difference....
 
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