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Comment by commandar | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile the Air continues to put along with what is one of the worst screens in the ultrabook segment. It's frustrating. The Pro is bigger than I want and honestly higher specced than I need, but the MBA's screen would be a huge step back from the PC ultrabook I'm using now (which isn't even anything that special at 1600x900 + IPS).

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Right now, screen resolution and battery life are in direct tension, and Apple is optimizing for the latter at the expense of the former. The MBA has almost 50% more battery life than the ATIV Book 9, the closest Ultrabook in terms of size/weight/cost: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/30/samsung-ativ-book-9-plus-.... Apple can't up the screen resolution without a major regression in battery life, not until Broadwell comes out.

It's not just resolution. The MBA also has a TN panel with relatively terrible viewing angles.

Only if your definition of “relatively terrible” means “better than the majority of desktop and laptop displays sold in the last 5 years”. I never notice this during normal usage and in an office with a range of generally mid-range enterprise PCs the MBA screen is better than all but a handful of displays which some digital imaging specialists use. All of the monitors which look better cost at least 50% of what an MBA costs.

Yes, it's not the best display on the market but calling it terrible is just hyperbole.

Same problem here, but I'll favor portability for screen every time, because when I'm at home I often attach an external screen to it, and when I'm traveling, it's not a big deal to live with a less than perfect display. On the other hand btw the Air is a lot cheaper.

>On the other hand btw the Air is a lot cheaper.

Than the Pro, yes. It's about the same price as other ultrabooks with 1080p or better IPS displays, though, especially if you bump up the e.g., RAM.

Basically, I'm not willing to pay a premium for a 1440x900 TN panel.

>I'll favor portability for screen every time

The 13" MBP is 1.57KG and 18mm thick. The macbook air is 1.35KG and 17mm thick. The battery life is really the only differentiator when it comes to portability.

I have a 13" MBP retina and I think size and weight wise it is just right - the air is 1.35Kg and the pro is 1.57Kg. Size wise it is 18mm compared with the airs 17mm (the air is better at looking thinner - but in reality it isn't).

>The Pro is bigger than I want

Unless you have an 11" (I just can't get my head around using a screen that small) then I seriously suggest looking at the pro again.

Maybe I'm a special case, but I had a 13" MBP Retina and I felt scrolling was jumpy and computer overall could get very slow, while the MBAir I have now is actually much more responsive. I'm not sure, but I think the culprit was Flash (at the time I had a lot of Flash content running).

Was it one of the first retina 13" models? I've tried one of those in the store when they were just released, and I have to admit the scrolling performance was terrible. If you put it next to a much lower-specced, much older, much cheaper MacBook Air, it appeared as if the MBP was the weaker one of the two laptops. Very unlike Apple to release the machine the way it was.

They did improve graphics performance a lot through software updates, and the generations after the first 13" retina MBP are supposedly a lot better still... That said, I'm holding off upgrading my 2010 MBA until Broadwell which will have an even better IGP...

They can increase the resolution as much as they want for whatever price they see fit that I am still not going to buy a glare screen.

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