It'll take us some time to get to Broadwell, so there won't be an issue with early obsolesence with any of these.
SMART NOTEBOOK 11 2013 JUNE UPGRADE
I could go either way on the memory capacity, but at only $100 for the upgrade it might make sense to give the machine a bit more longevity.īoth of the MBA configurations I'm fine with recommending today. You're going to need some form of external storage for photos, videos and music though.
SMART NOTEBOOK 11 2013 JUNE INSTALL
I threw in the larger SSD simply because I believe 256GB is really the minimum for all of the applications I'd typically install as someone who regularly has to produce content (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Lightroom, iWork, Office, Boot Camp partition). The faster CPU would be nice, but I'd only consider the upgrade if you need a mobile workhorse and for whatever reason won't consider the 13-inch rMBP. Once again I'd stick with the base CPU, but mostly to optimize for battery life than anything else. Next up is the writer's aid configuration, an upgraded 13-inch MacBook Air. If you need a larger display, I'd simply opt for the base 13-inch model at $1099. If our goal here is to remain cheap, then we've got to stay committed. I wouldn't upgrade the CPU or SSD either as both can add considerable cost. OS X Mavericks should have some more accommodations for limited amounts of DRAM, which will likely give the 4GB configuration some more legroom. I've been using the 2013 13-inch MBA with only 4GB of RAM for the past couple of weeks and generally don't have any issues with the memory size. The base configuration isn't terrible either. On a budget, the 11-inch MacBook Air is really your best bet to getting into a notebook that ships with OS X. This is by no means comprehensive, but in most cases offers a cost optimized look at the current Mac notebook lineup:Īpple Mac Laptop Recommendations - June 2013 The table below is what I'd recommend today according to usage model. Today's review helps understand and explain what's going on with the new MacBook Air, but I wanted to do a separate post with recommendations depending on usage types. The problem of course is deciding what configuration to buy.
By the end of this year, once Apple has updated (almost) all of its lines to Haswell, it will have one of the strongest Mac lineups in Apple history. In reviewing the 2013 MacBook Air, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I'd recommend the various notebooks in Apple's lineup.