MacBook Pro vs. MacBook Air - Apple Club

MacBook Pro vs. MacBook Air - Apple Club

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MacBook Pro vs. MacBook Air
Should I get a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air?
  MacBook Pro
 MacBook Air
 

  Picture

 Portability
 Portable Very Portable
 Ports  Headphone, SD Card, 2-3** USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire, MagSafe Charger, CD drive
 Headphone, SD Card*, 2 USB (one on each side), MagSafe Charger, Thunderbolt
 Sizes  13-inch, 15-inch
 11-inch, 13-inch
 Storage  500GB or 750GB Hard Drive
 64GB, 128GB or 256GB Flash Storage
 Battery Life
 7 hours  9 hours (11") hours, 12 hours (13")
30 days of standby time (both)
 Pricing  $1199 (13" w/o Retina)
$1299 or $1499 (13" Retina), $2199 or $2799 (15" Retina)
$999 or $1199 (11"), $1099 or $1299 (13")
 Advantages  Larger, better processors, better screen (for Retina display model)
 Thinner, lighter, faster, less moving parts
*  SD card is only on the 13-inch model MacBook Air
**Only the 17-inch model (discontinued) MacBook Pro has three USB 2.0 ports. The smaller sizes have two USB 3.0 ports.

Our Recommendations:
If you are looking for something extremely portable, and the cheapest, the MacBook Air is for you. The MacBook Air also uses flash storage, which means that it has a longer lifespan than a spinning hard drive. For Office/iWork applications, web browsing, games, music, and more, the MacBook Air can definitely handle this. The MacBook Air does not have a CD drive, but you can get a MacBook Air SuperDrive.

If you plan on doing graphic-intensive work, or other work requiring a lot of processing power, the MacBook Pro is for you. It also has larger storage capacities for large files or if you want to partition the hard drive or run a virtual machine.



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