Selecting the right MacBook
Vidit Bhargava
We’re back to three MacBook’s this year. After a long hiatus, Apple’s finally moved back to it’s three tier series for the MacBook lineup, with the introduction of a 12-inch laptop. But which one’s the right MacBook for ‘your’ use case? Here’s a small guide to help:
MacBook
The 12-inch MacBook is for the non-pro-users. It’s the coffee-table laptop that’s perfect for light-tasks, browsing the web, checking mails, creating and editing documents and watching video.
The new MacBook is for everyone who isn’t into programming or any kind of software or web development. It’s not meant for programming or to be used as a video editor or an audio workstation.
You’ll want to have a good hands-on look at the new MacBook before buying. It’s keyboard is new, they’re using a butterfly structure for the keyboard this time and not everyone seems to be liking it. Then there’s the lack of ports on the MacBook. Apple’s banking on Wireless devices to solve the problems, but if you aren’t heavily invested in wireless technology and usually end up using USB devices way to often or need the ethernet port or an SDCard reader to transfer your pictures. You’d be better off with something else.
I’d recommend this laptop to small business owners who don’t need to do lots of development. It’s ideal for web and productivity apps. Also, People who haven’t used a computer before could hop onto this easily, less ports also means a smaller learning curve.
Note: MacBook (2015) is a first generation product. Over the next few iterations, it’s only going to get faster and cheaper.
At a price point of Rs. 99,900 the MacBook is extremely expensive for the power and functionality that you are getting. If you are going to buy this, It’s definitely going to be a want over need decision and sometimes that pays off but a lot of times you’d be much better off by holding your purchase for the next generation product or buy something else.
MacBook Air
The MacBook Air is an ideal all purpose laptop. It gets most of your work done. With the Air, you can get almost anything done with ease.
It’s the right laptop for programming and software development. It can handle mild photo editing and audio mixing but don’t expect to run creative suite software like After Effects or Lightroom on this. The MacBook Air just isn’t meant for that.
The Air is long overdue for an upgrade. It got the 2015 broadwell processors but is yet to get the Force Touch Trackpad or Retina Display. While the Force Touch Trackpad may arrive in a matter of a month or two, a Retina Display won’t be arriving at least until early next year.
If you are looking for an all purpose entry level MacBook, Go For the Air. It’s great at a lot of tasks, it gets things done for most of the users. If you are a software developer looking for a laptop, don’t look elsewhere.
If you are going for a MacBook. The 13-inch MacBook Air with 128GB of storage should be fine. The 11-inch in my opinion is too cramped up and not what you’d want to use in your everyday work.
MacBook Pro
Last in the series, MacBook Pro is an extremely powerful and fast Retina Display laptop.
It’s the ideal laptop for the pro users. It has all the ports. It’s fast and it can handle just about anything a you’d throw at it. The 15-inch variants also have a dedicated graphic chipset which make it all the more ideal for graphic design work.
The MacBook Pro series, although slightly expensive, starting at Rs. 94,900, is highly recommended to professionals in the field of Audio, Video or Photo Editing, Graphic Designers and animators. Few Things are better than editing photos on a retina display.
MacBook Image Source: The Verge
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