Jesus, that article was ridiculous. I grew suspicious when he talked about speed being partly due to the processor, when we've all known since we got SSDs that the processor has nothing to do with UI latency (when was the last time you saw CPU usage spiking to 100% just by launching programs)?
The disk has always been the bottleneck, Apple was smart enough to put a fast disk in the Air, and now this guy praises it.
This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy. Format the MacBook Pro and it will be just as fast... Sure, the Air might be a great little computer, but for a $999 pricetag, I could get 3 netbooks instead.
Add to the fact that no one is actually buying the $999 version. Every positive review I have read goes like this:
"The new MacBook Air is amazing. It starts at $999 and I have been using the top-of-the-line 13" for a week! (of course not mentioning that it costs $1,599)"
I would love to see a tech person use the $999 version and see their review. The price-point, when actually comparing the usable one, is ridiculous!
The vast majority of the hands-on actual-usage reviews I've read (nearly all of which have been extremely positive) have been of the 11" with more people running the 2GB than the 4GB.
That is good to know. All I read was MacBook Air and never a discosure as to what type. It felt like they were talking about a great Android phone and never told me if it was the Droid or the G1. Oh well...
> This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy.
Is this some sort of specific SSD fragmentation issue you're referring to? There are SSD issues of that type but I'd be surprised to see them in six months unless you're absolutely caning the drive.
General fragmentation wouldn't cause that sort of problem inside six months though. I've spent four years loading my MacBook with stuff (and uninstalling stuff, reinstalling stuff and so on) with no significant performance degradation. In that time I've never reinstalled the OS, never defragged or done any sort of significant maintenance other than keeping it patched and it's still basically as fast as it was on day one.
I ask because in four years with my MacBook using it for a whole range of stuff (including development, multimedia, general admin,, and installing whole loads of software I've bought in bundle sales) I've honestly never seen this problem.
I'm not saying it can't happen but from my experience you'd really have to be going for it to build up that sort of accumulation of stuff in just six months.
Not now, but I used OS X for a few months. Various programs installed some daemons, including VMWare (I see no reason why) Little Snitch (okay, that one's justified) and various other things I can't remember right now...
I'd say this is a characteristic that's fairly common among Windows applications (especially less-reputable software) but uncommon among Mac applications.
My anecdotal evidence from helping friends and family is that Macs don't suffer from "Windows rot" [1] the same way that PCs do. My hypothesis: due to differences in the developer communities for each platform.
The Air has a faster SSD than his older Macbook Pro. It isn't magically faster just because it's different. We aren't in fantasy land.
If you have a faster CPU, more (of the same speed) RAM and a faster SSD then it doesn't make any sense for it to be slower. Given that both are in a 64bit environment.
There is nothing magical happening! Get a new 900MB/s SSD and it'll be faster again, then I guess you'll move back.
The disk has always been the bottleneck, Apple was smart enough to put a fast disk in the Air, and now this guy praises it.
This computer loads faster than the MBP because you've spent the past 6 months loading it with programs, guy. Format the MacBook Pro and it will be just as fast... Sure, the Air might be a great little computer, but for a $999 pricetag, I could get 3 netbooks instead.