Gadgetory

what's up guys Lew here and welcome to my casual opinionated review of the 13-inch MacBook Air that was just released and just announced at WWDC this of course is the Ivy Bridge model and it's got some new features and functions not too many but what I really want to do in this video is talk about the difference between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro the one that was also just announced with the retina display because I've been getting a ton of questions from people about whether or not they should pick up the latest generation MacBook Air or if they should spend some extra cash and get themselves the MacBook Pro so I'm going to get straight to the point here this computer is $1200 that's the base model 13-inch you're going to get a 1.8 gigahertz processor dual core of course when you step up to the MacBook Pro you can get a quad core you're going to get the Retina display so on and so forth but more importantly than any of that stuff any of those specs are you know that number driven stuff that we could talk about I think we need to talk about money this right here is $1200 the MacBook Pro is if you're looking at the one with the Retina display which is obviously the most compelling model starts at 2200 dollars is that computer twice the computer that this one is is the cost justified well I'd say for a select a number of people it is I mean if you really know how to stress out a quad-core CPU and you really want 16 gigs of ram and you need you know larger SSD storage so on and so forth you know who you are and I'm talking to you and you probably don't even need to watch a video like this because you know how to use you know those improved specifications but for somebody who's on the fence and sort of thinking hey could I get by with a MacBook Air and half the investment I think you can and in some ways I think the MacBook Air is actually a better purchase for casual users students people who travel a lot etc then the MacBook Pro would be now I'm going to tell you why it's got the 13 inch form factor and it's only three pounds now that's obviously the same as the previous gen MacBook Air so this would apply if you're going to pick up an older model as well now this particular size and form factor is significantly better for airplanes backpacks it's a lot more friendly in that sense you're not giving up a ton in terms of screen real estate of course the new Retina display packs this incredible figure 28 80 by 1800 but currently there are a few things that can take advantage of a resolution like that while remaining legible people have been reporting that websites don't look that great and you actually spend a lot of time down rezzing the screen meaning that you're not actually going to get the the represented workspace that's advertised you're not literally going to get 28 80 by 1800 in terms of work space of course pictures image based things and of course as application to begin to become optimized for that Retina display things are going to get better and look more beautiful but again that sort of a niche the niche end of things when you start to worry about that I say the other the other things that I mentioned earlier are far more practical considerations when you're talking about size weight and cost now from a performance standpoint 9 out of 10 or maybe even 99 out of 100 users are going to be completely happy with the performance that this particular base model 13-inch MacBook Pro can deliver at $1200 the vast majority of computer users are doing very basic tasks you know the number of people who are doing intensive video editing on 1080p files is growing but it still doesn't represent the substantial amount of computer users in general now this particular MacBook Air has been improved over the previous generation not a ton you now have Ivy Bridge so you've got better processing power you've got USB 3.0 on here now you've also got an improved webcam which I think the previous generation should have had in it you've got a 720p webcam that's the same as the other MacBook models which is a good thing and maybe one of the most important factors is now the latest model can be specked out to 8 gigabytes of RAM whereas the previous generation maxed out at 4 gigabytes now the reason that's important is because if you are the kind of user that does want to do some video editing from time to time you can really bridge that gap between this model and the pro model by throwing in a little bit of extra RAM one downside of trying to add extra RAM is the fact that you can't do it at a later date this thing is not users serviceable in any manner but then again neither is the retina model MacBook Pro people have been reporting that everything is soldered on the board in that particular model as well so you're not gonna be able to upgrade Ram on that one either whatever you buy from the factory is going to be with what you're stuck with so if you do pick up one of these MacBook Airs and you think you might get into multimedia eventually then you might want to consider specking it out with eight gigs of ram from the factory I'd probably leave the processor where it is again you're going to start spending more money than you should on a cost of performance ratio if you start upgrading that I'd go with the base stock model with the smaller SSD of course unless you know that you're going to need more storage but with the stock model SSD and then spec it out with eight gigs of RAM that's my recommendation this is a great machine this is I mean I would recommend this to almost anybody like I said the only people that I would suggest step up to the latest gen MacBook Pro which of course I don't have yet but I can't wait to get my hands on are those that know exactly how they're going to utilize that extra power because otherwise this thing is going to be sufficient for nine out of ten computer users as I said before and in some cases it's going to be a major upgrade over what you already have that's something that's amazing to say when you're talking about a computer that is as a 13 inch form factor it's three pounds this is still a marvelous design and it's still amazing to me that they were able to pack what they packed into a form factor like this I mean the thing is solid - it doesn't feel flimsy in any way you get lots of battery life as you guys can tell I'm a big fan of this particular machine and and other than that I don't think I've got anything else to mention I hope you enjoyed this casual style review hopefully once I get my hands all right I'm definitely going to get my hands on the latest generation MacBook Pro with the Retina display and at that point I might be able to put them side-by-side and do some actual speed comparisons and things like that but as I mentioned before most of that information only is only really represented in those tests in real world scenarios for most people the performance difference between a MacBook Air like this and the top-of-the-line Retina Display MacBook Pro is not going to be significant enough to warrant double the cost that's my opinion take or leave it I hope you appreciated this particular review if you did make sure to hit that like and favorite button down below leave your own comments I do appreciate it and other than that I'll catch you guys on the next video if you haven't subscribed yet please go ahead and do that too and yeah catch you guys later bye