[Parthasarathig]

Originally Posted by shankar.balan

My main query. Can this Mac Air effectively be my only primary machine. Or is it better to buy a MacBook Pro and replace my elderly Dell once and for all with that?

If based on my usage patterns as described earlier, the answer to the above Q1 is Yes, then I shall consider the Mac Air.

If not, I shall be forced to waddle off in the direction of the MacBook Pro.

Cheers

Sir
The MBAir cannot be your primary machine.

the macbook air has limited harddrive(hdd) space. At one point of time you are bound to run out of hdd space and depending on an external drive is not worth it as
1. Your computer will start to get slower as the hdd space keeps decreasing. As you keep adding more songs and videos, and since you may want all the photos or videos on your other apple gizmos, then youd need to have everything all the time on your main hdd and not your external hdd.
External hdd can be used to keep backups and other files that you may not use frequently.

2. If however you store ALL your files on the external drive it would be quite a bit of a hassle in case you want itunes to sync a song or a photo that is on the external hdd. Then you have to connect it when needed and probably carry it around everywhere.

3. SPACE SPACE SPACE. Like i said above, its easy to run out of hdd space in a Macbook Air. And with subsequent updates to the OS and other applications it will only eat up space.

4. Lugging around an external drive along with an Air may seem quite un"cool". But seriously how many devices are you going to carry around? External hdd, external dvd drive, pen drive, projector cable are already on your list.

The Macbook Air is an Ultrabook. It is meant for work on the move. Plus if you opt for the 11in MB air, the keys are pretty small. I tried them yesterday at the store. 13in one was better.

My opinion would be to go in for the non retina Macbook Pro 15in. All your needs fulfilled.

Large Harddisk space - check
Dvd drive - check
Processing powerhouse - check
Price - slightly higher than the air but better vfm.
Future proof - for the 3 years Apple protection plan will keep you safe. After that if any component fails, in any apple device, the expenses are pretty high. As you can see in the earlier posts by members, once warranty runs out, its best kept as a showpiece.
In terms of computing, yes they are future proof for your requirements.

Coming to your other query about GPU. It stands for Graphics Processing Unit. The chip that creates what you see onscreen. Gpu intensive applications are those that tend to stress the gpu to its limits. These are video encoding, games etc. Doubtful if you are into these things. But the MBPro has these features also at hand so if you do need them ever, the MBPro is there to help you out.

Id suggest you go in for the Macbook Pro 15in and not the retina one unless you have to impress your colleagues. MBpro maybe heavier than Air but its much much lighter than the weight of MBAir + external hdd + external dvd drive + pendrive. And in the end thats what shall matter. Carrying around one device is much more comfortable than lugging around all the other devices.

Regards.

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by Parthasarathig

Sir
The MBAir cannot be your primary machine.

the macbook air has limited harddrive(hdd) space. At one point of time you are bound to run out of hdd space and depending on an external drive is not worth it as
1. Your computer will start to get slower as the hdd space keeps decreasing. As you keep adding more songs and videos, and since you may want all the photos or videos on your other apple gizmos, then youd need to have everything all the time on your main hdd and not your external hdd.
External hdd can be used to keep backups and other files that you may not use frequently.

2. If however you store ALL your files on the external drive it would be quite a bit of a hassle in case you want itunes to sync a song or a photo that is on the external hdd. Then you have to connect it when needed and probably carry it around everywhere.

3. SPACE SPACE SPACE. Like i said above, its easy to run out of hdd space in a Macbook Air. And with subsequent updates to the OS and other applications it will only eat up space.

4. Lugging around an external drive along with an Air may seem quite un"cool". But seriously how many devices are you going to carry around? External hdd, external dvd drive, pen drive, projector cable are already on your list.

The Macbook Air is an Ultrabook. It is meant for work on the move. Plus if you opt for the 11in MB air, the keys are pretty small. I tried them yesterday at the store. 13in one was better.

My opinion would be to go in for the non retina Macbook Pro 15in. All your needs fulfilled.

Large Harddisk space - check
Dvd drive - check
Processing powerhouse - check
Price - slightly higher than the air but better vfm.
Future proof - for the 3 years Apple protection plan will keep you safe. After that if any component fails, in any apple device, the expenses are pretty high. As you can see in the earlier posts by members, once warranty runs out, its best kept as a showpiece.
In terms of computing, yes they are future proof for your requirements.

Coming to your other query about GPU. It stands for Graphics Processing Unit. The chip that creates what you see onscreen. Gpu intensive applications are those that tend to stress the gpu to its limits. These are video encoding, games etc. Doubtful if you are into these things. But the MBPro has these features also at hand so if you do need them ever, the MBPro is there to help you out.

Id suggest you go in for the Macbook Pro 15in and not the retina one unless you have to impress your colleagues. MBpro maybe heavier than Air but its much much lighter than the weight of MBAir + external hdd + external dvd drive + pendrive. And in the end thats what shall matter. Carrying around one device is much more comfortable than lugging around all the other devices.

Regards.

Thanks!
Shall certainly sleep on it and mull over what you have said.
However, the 15 incher is too big. The 13 incher is fine by me. I use a tiny little old Dell 700m 11 incher now so am cool with the small size.
Another thing, I wont be lugging everything around with me all the time. Most of the stuff will be lurking at home and I will mostly use those things when I am at home.
I carry a tiny office bag inside which the dell, the power cord adaptor, my normal diary, pen drive etc fits perfect. Because the Air is even thinner, i can probably carry the Air and my iPad together all the time in the same bag!

I manage quite well with my iPad 32 gb wifi 3g and iPod touch 32 gb for most of my music and movie and app needs.
The Air will be the base machine and as of this moment I am using about 80 GB of office data files and another 40 to 50 odd GB of home personal files including i tunes.
I ve still got good amount of space left in my Hard disk. If I buy an Air with 256GB space it should do the trick don't you think?

I don't really need to impress anyone except myself. I need to carry less weight and enjoy my being on the move. I dont want all the hassles of booting and rebooting and all that if it is possible to avoid.

Finally it is a choice between 256 gb 13 inch Air and 500 gb 13 inch Pro.
Will think before I leap!

Thank you!

[shajufx]

Originally Posted by shankar.balan

......Finally it is a choice between 256 gb 13 inch Air and 500 gb 13 inch Pro. Will think before I leap! Thank you!

In that case 13" MBpro non-retina would be the best fit for you. I have come across atleast over 30 to 35 people using a mac in the last 1 year and majority had 13" MBpro, never seen an Air either with friends nor at airports where people always try to pull out and show off ! Its very easy to spot an Air and MBPro from a distance because of its thickness and body design.

Even if its an ocasional use, I would not prefer an external hard drive & optical drive personally, it kills the beauty of a product which is supposed to be all-in-one. If iPad can do majority of your stuff, I really doubt why you need a notebook at all ? I am not buying an iPad because I find the physical keys comfortable for all my communications. I think I type over 2000 words a day in various forms, and its 100% systematic ten-finger typing, not the 2 finger for all keys type

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by shajufx

In that case 13" MBpro non-retina would be the best fit for you. I have come across atleast over 30 to 35 people using a mac in the last 1 year and majority had 13" MBpro, never seen an Air either with friends nor at airports where people always try to pull out and show off ! Its very easy to spot an Air and MBPro from a distance because of its thickness and body design.

Even if its an ocasional use, I would not prefer an external hard drive & optical drive personally, it kills the beauty of a product which is supposed to be all-in-one. If iPad can do majority of your stuff, I really doubt why you need a notebook at all ? I am not buying an iPad because I find the physical keys comfortable for all my communications. I think I type over 2000 words a day in various forms, and its 100% systematic ten-finger typing, not the 2 finger for all keys type

Thats what the traditionalist in me says. And thats what all my modern thinking friends revile me for. They, given a chance would force feed me with the Mac Air on account of the combined computing capability plus portability and lightness aspects. I appreciate these qualities a lot but will this alone work for me?

However, I have yet to learn to change my mindset from carrying my virtual world with me in a box, to accessing it in bits and bobs as necessary through modern cloud related tools.

Let me think on it. The broken Dell is working as of now. Will use it for a bit more and then choose this new machine carefully and I hope, wisely. Cant go about burning 70 grand without a reasonable amount of thought and due diligence.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by shajufx

In that case 13" MBpro non-retina would be the best fit for you. I have come across atleast over 30 to 35 people using a mac in the last 1 year and majority had 13" MBpro, never seen an Air either with friends nor at airports where people always try to pull out and show off ! Its very easy to spot an Air and MBPro from a distance because of its thickness and body design.

I think that is because, the Air was never so cheap and fast as of today. It was always much slower and the SSD was only 128GB. But now with 256, its very comparable.

But today, its the cheapest MAC computing system one can buy !
(apart from the mac mini)

That I would call a transformation.


Coming to Disk Requirements:

My 4 year old white colored Mac Book has a 120GB hard disk and I could manage with it well.

For music, it all depends on how often you access you itunes. I do it only to add new music and copy it to IPOD. Since most of the time, I hear in ipod, I dont need the library on the Air to play music. Hence I keep my library is in a separate HDD.


Given this background, I think 256GB is more than enough. But with increase disk requirements, it is never enough ! So one just needs to draw line somewhere.

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by ampere

I think that is because, the Air was never so cheap and fast as of today. It was always much slower and the SSD was only 128GB. But now with 256, its very comparable.
It was also costier than the basic Macs.

But today, its the cheapest MAC computing system one can buy ! That I would call a transformation.

Coming to Disk Requirements:

My 4 year old white colored Mac Book has a 120GB hard disk and I could manage with it well.

For music, it all depends on how often you access you itunes. I do it only to add new music and copy it to IPOD. Since most of the time, I hear in ipod, I dont need the library on the Air to play music. Hence I keep my library is in a separate HDD.

Given this background, I think 256GB is more than enough. But with increase disk requirements, it is never enough ! So one just needs to draw line somewhere.

Im listening Amp. What happened to your TD of the FF?
You better give me an hour of your time and we ll go and TD the Mac Air also.
What say?
And will you wait 5 days before leaping onto the FF?

[quickdraw]

After using my 17' Pro for a long time (and getting one of my shoulders busted in the process) I decided it was time to change, and I sold my MacBook Pro in Jan in anticipation of the new Pro, got it a few days ago and thought I should post here. I've started this thread and ran away for years

Lovely box, makes me want to take my time in unboxing.


Here it is, wrapped in the same plastic wrapper like the iPad.


Here you can see my 27' iMac and AudioEngine AE5 in the picture.


Opening it up!


Indian SKU (Horrid Apple India pricing, I got this for 1.25lakh on ebay.in)


Apple attention to detail really stands out.


Retina


Amazingly light


Thought ill share some of my initial observations after using it for a couple of days.

• Amazingly light, it feels lighter than the 13' MacBook Pro, you have to hold one to realize. Just the weight enough should warrant a switch for people using a Pro as their workhorse.
• The Retina display is gorgeous, I had to download 4K videos to actually show off this display.
• In day to day usage you will not notice the 'retinaness' of the display, most apps are yet to be optimized for it. But text looks magnificiently crisp. This display has to be the best consumer display I've worked on. It has to be seen to believed.
• Its very very very fast. It takes about 8ish seconds to boot up, thats crazy!

[shankar.balan]

Done deal in my case!
One Mac book Air 4 GB Ram and 128 GB SSD purchased today along with the Office for Mac software and the SuperDrive CD Drive.
Am awaiting stock of the VGA adaptor for presentations.
Already have one external hard disk. Will be buying another one soon along with another pen drive too.

So the Macbook becomes my primary business machine along with my ipad which s my personal entertainment machine.
Am very pleased with this journey of conversion to apple from windows after nearly 22 years of my using windows products..
Thanks to all who helped with inputs especially Ampere who was instrumental in convincing me.

Now its the mac air, ipad2, ipod touch and apple tv. Next will be the iphone I guess!

[adroit_91]

Originally Posted by shankar.balan

Done deal in my case!
One Mac book Air 4 GB Ram and 128 GB SSD purchased today along with the Office for Mac software and the SuperDrive CD Drive.
Am awaiting stock of the VGA adaptor for presentations.
Already have one external hard disk. Will be buying another one soon along with another pen drive too.

Congratulations!! Don't forget to buy a high capacity external disk for Time Machine backups. Need not be portable, but it's the best possible backup for consumers!

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by adroit_91

Congratulations!! Don't forget to buy a high capacity external disk for Time Machine backups. Need not be portable, but it's the best possible backup for consumers!

Thank you.
Shall I buy 1 terabyte?
Or shall I go with a Seagate 500

The 500 gb costs 4500 ish
The 1 terabyte costs around 6700
Or are these prices too high?

[joe1980]

Congratulations to all those who purchased the Mac Book Pro. I got mine a couple of weeks ago and I'm pleased so far with the purchase. What I love are the keys and the keyboard. They are so soft and I love typing on them. I'm using this as my primary development machine where I have my dev environment set up with a couple of servers running. Though it lacks the speed that I expect, I'm satisfied overall.

[sids911]

I have a late 2011 Macbook pro 13' model. It already has 4GB RAM, but i am looking to upgrade it to 8 GB and therefore looking for best price for a single slot 4GB Ram chip here in Pune or Mumbai. Anyone knows where to purchase the same without getting ripped off?

[shankar.balan]

Apple joins the list of super brands and love marks for me personally with the purchase of this macBook Air.

It is very user friendly and I am finding it a lot more aesthetically appealing than any of the windows based machines I saw in my rounds of pre purchase research.

Now I would imagine it is only a matter of time before I abandon the Nokia phone ship for the iPhone.

[akbaree]

Originally Posted by ampere

I think that is because, the Air was never so cheap and fast as of today. It was always much slower and the SSD was only 128GB. But now with 256, its very comparable.

But today, its the cheapest MAC computing system one can buy !
(apart from the mac mini)

That I would call a transformation.

+1
Just a few days back I checked the new Air and I cannot agree more with ampere. And with the new ivy bridge processors (and Intel 4000 graphics) the graphics performance is top notch. Windows performance index showed a score of 6.5 for the native gpu. This is same score that one was able to get only with discrete graphics card with 2GB VRAM and after paying couple of 100 USD xtra.

The graphics card companies will have to do some serious rethinking.

Congratulations shankar.balan on buying that great piece of computing device.

[M5_fan]

What is the cost of the 11.6" macbook air (64 and 128 GB) in India?