MacBook Pro 13″ Retina > MacBook Air

hero

If you are deciding between these two new machines, highly recommend you walk into an Apple store and literally hold each laptop in your hand — you’ll be amazed that there is nearly no difference in weight, and the MacBook Pro is actually narrower.

And I was a bit of a skeptic on the whole Retina thing, but the high resolution display does in fact makes a huge difference, to the point of making non Retina screens pretty tough to look at. Battery life has a slight edge on the Air, but still solid overall (12 hours for Air VS 9 hours for the MacBook Pro 13″).

Mashable literally just weighed-in with the same conclusion:

The 13-inch rMBP weighs just 3.46 pounds.

While that weight is north of many Ultrabooks, it’s still plenty light (which I acknowledge is an oxymoron). I had no issues with taking it to meetings, throwing it in my bag to take home every night, and flipping it open for some comfy computing on the couch when I got there. The 13-inch MacBook Air, at 2.96 pounds, may be lighter, but its overall footprint is actually larger than the 13-inch Pro’s by about a centimeter in width. The Pro’s thickness is just 0.71 inch, almost the same as the Air at its thickest point (0.69 inch).

Setting up my new MacBook Air in the age of the “cloud”

Everything today is in the Cloud – our photos, documents, sites, etc.

What I hadn’t realized was how much my own laptop’s initial setup was tied to the cloud.

I just got a new MacBook Air 13″ — which I must say is a big improvement over the 2010 model, and here were my steps to getting things setup:

  1. Install Dropbox (love LAN sync)
  2. Install 1password (which for me requires Dropbox)
  3. Install Evernote (via Apple App Store — runs locally, but cloud’ish)
  4. Install Skype (non-cloud)
  5. Install Adium (non-cloud)
  6. Install Spotify (all my music is in the cloud)
  7. Install mailplane (all my email is in the cloud / google apps)
  8. Download Chrome and watch in real-time as extensions appear (they sync) – pretty cool.
  9. Install sophos anti-virus (shows how popular Macs have become)
  10. Install office for mac (Downloaded trial version & put in my purchase code. I also use google docs a bunch, but for contracts Word is still the best w/ tracking)
  11. Turn off OS X auto correct !

So these 11 steps took all of about 25 minutes and then another hour or so for Dropbox to fully sync. And obviously nothing was installed from a DVD or USB.

I’m guessing that in 2 years when I setup the next new laptop, everything will either be in the cloud or get installed via an App store.

There are downsides in terms of control and what this means to some independent software publishers — but overall from a user experience, it’s pretty amazing to me how quickly things have shifted, and how just a few years ago you would spend a bunch of hours installing software, and do so largely from DVDs.

Apple MacBook Air Commercial – Catchy Song

The marketing geniuses at Apple have done it again ! 🙂

From the second I saw & heard the MacBook Air commercial I felt that I knew the background song.

Well I finally realized that I did – it was a song from the French-Israeli singer Yael Naim (iTunes Album, official site). I had heard the song a few times on 102fm Tel Aviv.


(direct video link for RSS readers)