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My Laptop has just died, need a new one, fed up of Windows
Which to buy
Pro or Air
£1000ish budget
Apple refurbed Pro to suit your budget.
Pro
Pro
Personally I think the difference between Air and Pro weight now is fairly marginal, as Pro no longer has a CD drive its thinner too. Go into a shop and have a play. Can you get a student / academic discount or have a friend ? Is the best (only) way to get money off and cheap Apple Care.
MacRumors suggests hold off on Pro at the moment as refresh due. RETINA Pro would be my suggestion and as memory etc no user upgradable now get the max you can afford. IMO 8GB is sufficient for most of us.
[url= http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac ]linky[/url]
Happy shopping
You might get a better spec but there won't be a significant bump till next year when we hopefully get skylake.
Apple refurbed Pro to suit your budget.
This.
Looked at them and they are are £200 off,
I have a JL £50 voucher and you get 2 years warranty so seemed like the refurbs weren't that great a deal
You get 2 years direct from Apple too - ask in store and they'll show you.
1 year on refurbs no?
Air is just such a good machine...I've had about 3 or 4 of them over the years, pro seems so heavy by copmarison (though latest versions may be closer). I'd say the decision mostly hinges on whether you are more bothered by portability or disk space.
Haven't checked refurbs tbh Tiger - just stating that the much lofted JL 2yrs warranty on new stuff that everyone thinks is better than Apple 1yr isn't so.
Apple have 2yrs too they just don't use it as an advertising point in store.
My 13" Pro was as close as dammit to the same size air - the larger memory(ssd), processor and retina made the choice easy.
Especially as they had a "return" in with almost £300 off it!
Hadn't been unboxed.
There's one on the Apple refurb store right now which is the same spec except it has double the SSD storage for £1019. That's where my money would be going.'bout this?
I think you'd have to be mad to go for an Air over a Pro if you could afford it seeing as the Pro has the Retina screen & force touch trackpad and is only fractionally heavier. Probably the only reason to go for the Air now is the increased battery life (due to less powerful processor).
As jambalaya said above, get the best one you can as upgradability is very limited now. Although you haven't actually said want you want to use it for but if you just want to drop a grand on the best Macbook you can get for that money it would be the refurb I mentioned IMO.
You could buy mine? Not being used as do not get on with the OS.
2013 MacBook Air, 13-inch
2.0GHz Intel Dual-Core Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB Flash Storage
Will come with Apple Keyboard, neoprene case and ethernet adaptor
And you would have change to put towards to new bike! 😀
Pro with retina screen, try to get max ram and don't get a tiny 128gb SSD, unless you have an external drive to keep your content on.
Saying that both will do. I have a 2011 air, a 2015 pro. Pro is my main machine, air is the family machine but works well, only struggles with video editing and vm's really, but can do it at a push but storage was main issue when working, so it was retired for a pro.
side by side, pro is smaller, but slightly thicker - both 15". Both form factors need a refresh, but Air particularly has lost it's compelling reason to buy over a pro since the DVD drive and magnetic drive were killed
You don't mention your use-case.
If it's just going to sit on a desk, then Pro.
If you travel a lot, and weight is really important, Air or 12in Macbook (probably out of budget though).
If you want a Retina screen then Pro is the only option.
FWIW within arm's reach I've got a brand new 13in Pro, a pair of Airs 11in and 13in, and a new 12in Macbook. I use the Macbook most because I'm in and out of planes, trains, and taxis every week and don't do much with it beyond office tasks and general internet. The wife uses the 13in Pro all the time as video editing is her thing. The Airs are spares, but until I got the Macbook I lived on the 11in one.
Well I just ordered a Pro 13" with Retina, last years model without the Force touchpad thingy, brand new, Corei5, 128GB Flash, 8GB, 2 year warranty, £759 from John Lewis.
See if it turns up now, seems a decent deal?
A good choice I think, money saved in return for not having the very latest features seems fair enough.
With cloud storage and external devices in particular so cheap now you can add what you may need that way.
Had a 'free' £50 to use at JL so shelled out £709 so fairly happy
It's a lot of laptop for £709!
Still using my 2012 13" Retina MBP for web development - happily running 3 virtual machines at the moment, too.
TBH it is absolutely rock solid - not a single issue with it at all - and looks like the day it was bought even after daily use.
Rachel
DB - Do you still have the Macbook Air for sale. Drop me an email if you do, email in profile