Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr old MBP?

Posted by wushupork on Sunday August 07, 2011 @03:21PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I've been thinking about seriously replacing my old machine which predates the unibody MBP. I've been hearing rave reviews about the new MBAs but mostly from non-developer/designers. I'm sure it's great for email and documents, but how does it stack up when you are running local dev environments, IDEs, Photoshop etc.

Would love your feedback, especially developers and designers who made the jump.

FYI, I probably wouldn't have any other machine.

Thanks

( 13 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by benologist on Sunday August 07, 2011 @03:43PM (#2857525)

If you don't need the 8gb of ram then yes. If you do then no. My old MBA was the c2d with maxed out specs and I used that as my workstation with win7 vm, visual studio, xcode, eclipse and monodevelop concurrently. The beefier CPU would make it more than adequate except I want the extra ram to run multiple virtual machines.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by Terretta on Sunday August 07, 2011 @03:43PM (#2857527)

This is the first MacBook Air with the performance a developer or graphics designer needs.

It's actually even faster than a 2010 MBP.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/20/macbook-air-2011-benchmarks/

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by wushupork on Sunday August 07, 2011 @04:06PM (#2857590)

Thanks. these benchmarks are very impressive. As they say in the review, the drawback is gaming which doesn't matter to me.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by sbalea on Sunday August 07, 2011 @05:34PM (#2857803)

I'm pondering the same question, only for replacing a 5 yrs old first gen MBP. Just bought a new 13" MBA for my wife and was impressed with the thing. Would probably do well as a dev lappy, the only drawback is that you're maxing out at 4GB ram.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by stevenwei on Sunday August 07, 2011 @04:16PM (#2857616)

I switched from a 2009 15" Macbook Pro to the latest 13" Macbook Air. It's perfectly fine for development work (which for me is mostly Xcode/Komodo/Photoshop), and much faster than my previous machine.

The screen resolution is the same so basically there's no loss there (I haven't noticed a difference despite the smaller physical screen size), but the lighter weight and greater portability are fantastic. Battery life is about the same (~5 hours).

I would highly recommend it as a primary work machine, and cannot imagine going back to the heavier Macbook Pro.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by stanchan on Sunday August 07, 2011 @06:37PM (#2857998)

My opinion is that the current air is great for light weight development and travel, but not so good for heavy development. My use case is probably different then most, as I run 2 linux VMs, 1 win7 VM Xcode, Eclipse IDE, Xcode IDE, Komodo IDE, Adobe CS Suite and compile java, c, c++ in millions of lines of code. I'm currently working on a 17" mbp on 8gb ram and 480GB ssd. I'm usually 12 gb into swap, so I would love 16gb. I heard that the 15" air is in the pipeline, so that might be a good option.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by r00fus on Sunday August 07, 2011 @11:45PM (#2858663)

16 GB upgrades exist http://blog.macsales.com/9283-owc-announces-industry’s-first...

They are pricey but in the same range as a 480GB SSD...

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by zeit_geist on Sunday August 07, 2011 @03:45PM (#2857538)

That's easy: buy it. It's the perfect machine to get code done.

I wouldn't use it for stress tests though. IMHO it's a task for dedicated machines anyways.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by auxbuss on Sunday August 07, 2011 @07:50PM (#2858166)

I would have bought an Air 15" yesterday. And today, as it happens. 13" is too small for older eyes. Looking forward to a 15" Air. I'm already in line.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by wushupork on Monday August 08, 2011 @11:33AM (#2860378)

I guess that's my struggle - I am wondering whether I should hold out for a 15" Air or thin MBP.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by cabacon on Sunday August 07, 2011 @03:43PM (#2857526)

This piece from 100 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493319 has a lot of endorsements for the MBA as a primary work machine. I'd assume it has only gotten better since the latest upgrade.

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by gtb on Sunday August 07, 2011 @08:05PM (#2858199)

http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems/ ?

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Re:Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr... by neilbowers on Monday August 08, 2011 @04:34AM (#2859277)

If 3D graphics performance is important to you, then don't get an MBA just yet, stick with an MBP. I've got a 2010 MBP, my biz partner has an 2011 MBA: for general CPU burning it's on a part with mine; disk I/O it obviously tears mine up. With an external screen it's pretty nice as a development machine, but personally I like the 15" high-res MBP screen too much to downgrade to an MBA.

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