I have the new 13" Air w/ 8GB of RAM. My boss has the new MBP 15" Retina w/ 16G. So I've used both.
Definitely the MBP is a lot snappier, and obviously a much higher res screen. However, the Air is more than capable of everything you could throw at it, compiling things is fine, I have several apps, nginx, node, couchdb, mysqld and many other things running without ever having any problems. Definitely things would happen faster on the MBP, but the convenience of the light weight Air is so great. Caveat: I use a 27" external display, and so I only work with the Air as my primary screen when I'm out or travelling. If I was going to use the built in display as my primary workstation display then I would have gone for the MBP. HTH On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:23 AM, Chris McCann <[email protected]>wrote: > I know several of you have MacBook Air laptops you use for development and > seem to universally love them. I recently got a MacBook Pro Retina at work > and have to say, it's a damn impressive machine. Fast, gorgeous display, > thinner and lighter than my current 15" MB Pro (that's 3 1/2 years old) but > still heavier than an Air. > > I'm debating getting a new MacBook for Rails/Ruby development and can't > decide between a 13" Air or a 15" Retina. Anyone care to chime in with > their own experiences or analyses? > > Thanks, > > Chris > > -- > SD Ruby mailing list > [email protected] > http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
