Morgan

My 2007 Macbook Pro is getting old and starting to feel heavy, so I'm thinking of buying one of the new Macbook Airs. Ordinarily I would never buy a 'consumer' laptop, I always opt for a "pro" machine with a full set of ports and a hot graphics card since I use my computer for a lot of heavy lifting, often graphics, hardware interfacing, sensor data processing and audio at the same time. The new Macbook Air, however, is the first ultralight consumer laptop that rivals more 'serious' machines. Since I carry my machine on my back nearly every day, which impacts my physical freedom severely, it's very tempting to finally buy an ultralight laptop for the instant quality-of-life gain.

The Air _is_ a consumer machine though, so it's missing a few things that I find useful in my life. So far I've identified the following:

- no firewire port, so I can't use any audio interfaces that I have. This could be remedied by trading my Firebox for a USB interface. Or perhaps I could wait for Thunderbolt interfaces to come out.

- comparatively weak graphics card. No OpenCL support.

- small hard drive (I wouldn't be able to afford the 256GB drive)

1. Are there any other gotchas that I've missed?

2. I don't know much about graphics cards – do you think that the Intel HD Graphics 3000 w/ 348MB of shared RAM will be a serious hinderance for running simple video effects (gl.slab stuff) and the occasional particle system or fluid effect (or both together)?

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-HD-Graphics-3000-graphics-solution.43710.0.html

If I weren't to get the Air, I'd probably buy a used 2010 Macbook Pro with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.

(Something to also take into account is that I work with a lab that has a lot of G5's and Mac Pros that I usually use when doing real installations. My laptop is just for making music and developing and I run the real heavy stuff on the big machines when I need to. That said, low frame-rates are ok, but I do need to be able to actually run the code on my laptop when developing.)

- no firewire port, so I can't use any audio interfaces that I have. This could be remedied by trading my Firebox for a USB interface. Or perhaps I could wait for Thunderbolt interfaces to come out.
- comparatively weak graphics card. No OpenCL support.
- small hard drive (I wouldn't be able to afford the 256GB drive)

1. Are there any other gotchas that I've missed?
2. I don't know much about graphics cards – do you think that the Intel HD Graphics 3000 w/ 348MB of shared RAM will be a serious hinderance for running simple video effects (gl.slab stuff) and the occasional particle system or fluid effect (or both together)?

Here's a review of the graphics 'card': http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-HD-Graphics-3000-graphics-solution.43710.0.html

If I weren't to get the Air, I'd probably buy a used 2010 Macbook Pro with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M. 

(Something to also take into account is that I work with a lab that has a lot of G5's and Mac Pros that I usually use when doing real installations. My laptop is just for making music and developing and I run the real heavy stuff on the big machines when I need to. That said, low frame-rates are ok, but I do need to be able to actually run the code on my laptop when developing.)


mid-2011-macbook-air-for-maxmspjitter-usage

you should check the openGL and shader compatibility of the shared video card. that might be a hindrance for slab and jit.gl stuff. no experience with m though. I'd go for a MBP instead.

I returned a 15" macbook pro for an Air. I'm so much happier with the Air. I haven't used it with Max/Jitter yet though. But I think overall, the Air is a far better design than the macbook pros. Other than processor speed and graphics card, I think almost every aspect of the air better than the pro. And supposedly the next gen pro's coming out next year are going to be a lot like the current air.

Small hard drive is irrelevant since you can just get a usb drive for $100. And having a spinning hard drive in a laptop seems like living in the stone age after ssd. And audio interface manufacturers are starting to move away from FW, more towards USB, probably in anticipation of thunderbolt replacing FW.

Personally, I don't think the lesser processors will have too much of an effect on the type of projects I do. At the worst, it will force to work with limitations which I actually like.

I'll try and come back here once I transfer my Jitter projects to the macbook air and let you know the performance results.

I returned a 15" macbook pro for an Air.  I'm so much happier with the Air.   I haven't used it with Max/Jitter yet though.  But I think overall, the Air is a far better design than the macbook pros.  Other than processor speed and graphics card, I think almost every aspect of the air better than the pro.  And supposedly the next gen pro's coming out next year are going to be a lot like the current air.

Small hard drive is irrelevant since you can just get a usb drive for $100.  And having a spinning hard drive in a laptop seems like living in the stone age after ssd.  And audio interface manufacturers are starting to move away from FW, more towards USB, probably in anticipation of thunderbolt replacing FW.  

Personally, I don't think the lesser processors will have too much of an effect on the type of projects I do.  At the worst, it will force to work with limitations which I actually like.  

I'll try and come back here once I transfer my Jitter projects to the macbook air and let you know the performance results.


I'd love to hear an update on this. I'm considering buying a macbook air, but since it doesn't support the graphics capabilities listed on the system requirements for Max 6 (or 5, for that matter), I wasn't sure if there was some kind of clever work-around (of if it just didn't matter if I don't use Jitter).

the mac air does great with jitter and open-gl. can you let me know where you read that it's not supported?

Mid-2011 Macbook Air for Max/MSP/Jitter Usage