MacBook Pro 13" vs MacBook Air 13"

Question

I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro 15” that I purchased nearly two years ago as a desktop replacement and which rarely leaves my house. I have been thinking about purchasing a 2nd MacBook to use for traveling purposes when I am out of town on business or on vacation. The question I have is does anybody know or have any thoughts on which of the following has better benchmarks or would be faster and more responsive---with upgraded specs the two would cost me almost the same--about $1500.00. A 2010 MacBook Air 13”1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor 2GB memory comes with a 128GB flash storage (Toshiba) and I would have Apple add 2 GB of Ram. Or, a 2010 MacBook Pro 13” 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB Memory and a 128GB SSD (Toshiba) which is available as an installed option by Apple for $350.00. Both SSDs are made by Toshiba for Apple although the one in the MacBook Pro is a standard SSD and the one in the MacBook Air is a flash drive. I have seen benchmarks for each of these machines on Andandtech and Macworld and other places but I have not been able to locate any results in which a MacBook Pro 13” with an Apple installed 128GB SSD was tested. I have seen plenty of benchmarks in various places with a third party SSD on a MacBook Pro such as OWC and others but none in which the Apple installed SSD was tested (and ideally compared to the current MacBook Air 13” with or without the extra ram). I was wondering if anyone has seen any data on this and/or if anyone has a MacBook Pro 13” with an Apple installed SSD or a new MacBook Air 13” and can relate their experience. Thanks in advance for any helpful responses.

Answer 1

I'm not sure who that's directed at. While I roughly agree with some of your points I think there's more to it.
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First off, the SSD is replaceable and not soldered though I would agree it is not 'easily replaceable' for your average home users. More importantly, the reasons that a user would even WANT to replace a SSD are slim to none. Most people replace their hard drives because they either want a faster one, more space, or it simply fails. SSDs are much MUCH faster than their spinning counterparts and have amazing life expectancy -- usually far longer than the user will actually hold on to the computer itself.
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Slim to none? Hardly. 128Gb is simply not enough for me for my work or play. My MBP has a 240Gb SSD and a 1Tb SATA drive in it. The Air for me is a great travel buddy, it's not a great complete replacement. It would mean carrying around with me an Air & External storage. Cloud storage? Understand that for some stuff, but storing my DVD stuff in the cloud isn't feasible - the download times would be tiresome. I don't mean movies by the way, I mean DVD software images that I use a lot.
I totally agree with an SSD being years ahead in terms of performance. I'd never go back to a physical drive for OS & Apps. Reliability? Well, it's early days on that. See my article here: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2010/4/1SSD_Failures_More_thoughts_on_thetech.html
I use a lot of SSDs in the kit I have. My Mini has one, my MBP has one, my Air has one (obviously) as do my two windows machines. Completely sold on the tech. More reliable? That's not been my experience to date. They should be, I agree, and I expect reliability to get better, that's true, but they're not as infallible as you seem to indicate.
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Optical drive? Are you serious? When is the last time you actually used a CD/DVD. To install Mac OS X? The new MBA comes with a USB stick containing Snow Leopard, iLife '11 (and iWork '09 if you purchase it with your Mac). You can still use a USB CD-ROM drive or even another Mac via Remote Disc. For the few times a year you use one, I am sure you can make due with other means. If not, get the Superdrive, it also is a DVD+DL burner.
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Completely agree. Rarely use a DVD drive. As you can see from my notes, I replaced the DVD in my MBP with another hard disk.
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Now for RAM, unless you do heavy Photoshop editing or the like, 4GB is more than enough. I was running World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 simultaneous in windowed mode and I didn't notice any issue switching between the two. Also, I run Parallels 6 with Win7 using 1280MB of RAM without a hitch. The 4GB amount is perfect for 99% of computing needs.
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You're making a lot of assumptions about people's usage patterns. 4Gb is great for general operation. I survived with my main machine running 4Gb for years, before moving to 6Gb and then 8Gb. For my main work I can not use a machine with only 4Gb. It can't cope. My 8Gb machine can.
How did I cope before? Well, I had my laptop and another machine at home.... I'm not that far from that solution now with the Air & the MBP am I? Difference is the more powerful machine is mobile.
If you're an office type user who wants Office in OSX, maybe Photoshop, and you want to run Win7 & Office in Parallels/Fusion then yes, 4Gb is probably enough. If like me you're a tech architect who has documents that run into 4/500 pages including embedded Excel, Visio etc. then 4Gb just ain't enough. Never mind the stuff I have to do with server virtualisation. I can run about 8 VMs on my MBP, no way can the Air cope with that. I admit this is probably an unusual requirement.
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Now flexible, I DEFINITELY disagree with. Everyone that uses an Air for more than a day wonders why in the world they used to carry such a bulky computer before. The Air does it all and for a fraction of the weight/size. I've owned one for about a month now and I'm still amazed at how capable of a computer it is and how fast it is.
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Me too, I was astonished how well the Air performs considering it's specifications.
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Needless to say, all my doubts quickly disappeared. The initial boot took a whopping 15 seconds into OS X. After that, it now takes about 8 seconds from powered off to get into OS X and it's completely responsive as soon as you see the dock. My friend was floored. How could a machine like that be seemingly faster than his MBP? How did they fit all this power in such a small computer?
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Isn't that different from my SSD equipped MBP.
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On paper, the MBP looks faster but in practice the MBA -feels- faster in every aspect. Windows appear instantly, boot times are amazing (5 second restart?), and it's all around just a dream. I've used computers for over 15 years and this is the fastest computer I've ever owned. It's that good.
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It is a fast unit. It's as no way as fast and capable as my MBP. It just isn't. I can do more and faster on the MBP than I can on the Air. But here's the thing - a lot of it's down to what you're doing isn't it?
The Air for me is very much a second machine. I use it to go to meetings, when I'm travelling to site, I often use it for documentation. I'm off to Aus for a couple of weeks - the Air will be coming with me, not the MBP.
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Don't underestimate the Air. I know the previous revisions have been underdogs, but this one is a real winner. Anyone that owns one will tell you the same story I have.
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I completely agree. The only caveat I'd add is that you need to assess it against your requirements of course. I for one could not replace my day to day machine with one - it's not able to cope with the stuff that my MBP can do with ease.