You can thank me for the MacBook Pro update, since I bought an Air on June 14th. It was too difficult to keep waiting, and most of my “if only” excuses were essentially removed during the Air’s 2017 update. The entry level got a slightly faster processor and 8 gigs of RAM on the bottom end, just enough to get by. And look at all the ways it’s better than a MacBook Pro…

• USB-A ports.
• SDXC card for cameras
• Magsafe
• DisplayPort
• A reliable keyboard

The last sticking point for me was the price. At $1000, it’s too steep. But Best Buy had a sale June 14th for the bottom of the line Air for $700 plus tax. You can’t beat that. That’s competitive.

I’d been holding out for a new MacBook for literally years now, having gotten a Lenovo gaming laptop to use as my programming rig back in 2016 when I thought Apple had created a MacBook that wasn’t really for Pros with this new generation of MacBooks. Phil Schiller said as much, when he claimed the new 13“ Pro could replace the Air, and Walt Mossberg agreed, saying that ”if these new MacBooks simply didn’t carry the Pro label, we’d all have a lot less to complain about". Wow. This is a consumer laptop.

You might recall my comparison of bottom of the line MacBook processors. Even after last month’s update, nothing’s changed there, at the low end. The MacBook Pro “Escape” 13“ still has a crappy i5–7360U, with a top-end only about 80% higher than the Air. The 12” MacBook is only 6% faster. None of these are speed demons. You’ve got to pay $1799 to get to the new processors in the latest refresh.

Neither step up from the Air are worth the price. The calculus said that I’m much better off spending $770 after tax on an Air, and putting the difference between the Air and Pro (even when the Escape was on sale at B&H for $1200 (which was tempting)), towards a new desktop or a future MacBook. In a sense, I can get an Air to bide me over now, and bank over $400 of my budget to put towards my next MacBook.

Marco agrees

Heard a lot of my reasoning coming out of Marco Arment’s mouth on the most recent episode of The Talk Show. He basically said that laptops are optimized to run [predominantly] at a nice, low clock speed that sips power. You can get this low-power mode from an Air or the most powerful 15" Pro. Your compilations will suffer, but as I said when I talked about my $100 Lenovo S100, small computers with great battery life are a lot more useful than you’d think. Work on headless tasks in console apps (rather, make your tasks into many headless programming tasks), and you’ll be surprised how much you can get done.

Laptops – all laptops – are made for low power tasks. If you want as much power as you can carry, sure, max something out. But unless you’re okay with a “tall” gamer laptop (Marco actually talks about this) with the requisite fans and sorry battery life (hello, Lenovo Y700!), you’re not going to be able to cool your proc, no matter who you are.

You really want power? Stay at home and get a desktop.

At some point, I’d settle for a quality mini upgrade, which sounds like it could happen soon, but I’m hopeful the new Mac Pro will have an entry level that’s worth a look.

But you get the point. If I want portable macOS, the answer was and, I think, remains the Air on sale. It’s cheap, convenient, and reliable. Even after the update, it’s not worth paying $300 more for a 8250U i5 8210Y (4141 score) and a Retina screen. Instead, I’ll pocket that cash and hope for something that makes sense later.

To date, the only thing I really dislike is that HDMI out (via DisplayPort adapter) is limited to 1920x1080. You have to use DisplayPort input on your monitor if you want higher resolution. This has been a Mac hardware limitation for a while that I’ve never really understood.

Labels: apple, bargain, benchmarks, best buy, hardware, lenovo, mac pro, macbook, macbook pro, marco