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

8 points by wushupork ↗ HN
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

14 comments

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[dead] techn_in
that would be a definite yes from me.
benologist
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.
zeit_geist
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.

stevenwei
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.

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