I just got given a MBA. It is the current model, 11” with the basic set up of 64gb SSD and 2gb of RAM.
I do not intend to use it as a 'main' computer but as a travel computer and method of downloading from CF cards to my portable HDD and so on, as well as email, web etc on the road.
My question is this: I might load Aperture on it to do some on the fly image work, tuition with photo tour clients and so on. Does anyone have any experience running Aperture on this machine, and if so is performance adequate?
I stress than I won't be sitting editing whole shoots for hours on end, just the odd shots here and there etc.
Marcus,
Derrick Story of “The Digital Story” posted an article about the Macbook Air on his site. I know he talked more about it in one of his podcasts and he really likes the combination of the Macbook Air and Aperture, Final Cut Pro X, etc.
Thomas
Marcus
I’ve got the higher spec Air - 13”, 256GB and it screams through work compared to my late 2009 iMac. Fully capable of sorting out projects on the go for final editing when you get home. Can’t believe the 11” is that much slower and the lower screen res means it’s not having to work so hard.
David
d.
Marcus,
I use the 11” previous model (1.6GHz) and it’s an amazingly capable machine. The SSD makes a HUGE difference. If you’re buying new, you’ll be thrilled with it.
The only place it chugs is using brushes. But I rarely use it for that, so I’m OK with it :)
If/when we get tiny portable Thunderbolt drives and even a thunderbolt CF card reader… ahh, the dream! ;-)
@PhotoJoseph
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I use Aperture 2.1.4 and Sigma Photo Pro 5.2.0 with good results. It does fly! I have the best configuration of the 13” MacBook Air that you can get (the biggest hard drive and the fastest processor (256 GB and 1.8 Ghz i7). From my experience with the 11” at the Apple store, I sometimes question whether I should have saved my money and just bought the $999 computer, rather than spending so much. The hard drive seems to be the key, and there is 4 GB of RAM in both computers, right? I don’t believe that the i7 at 1.8 Ghz is that much faster than the i5 at 1.6 Ghz. I am looking for Thunderbolt accessories now. I’d like a fast CF card reader, because my current card reader is only USB 2, and it is slow. I would also like a faster external hard drive, because my USB 2 drive is SO SLOW compared to the internal drive on this MacBook Air!
Just for your info. I am coming from a 24” iMac with 2.1 Ghz processor and 3 GB of RAM, with a 250 GB hard drive and a bunch of external hard drives. I miss my firewire 800 drives! Hopefully there will be a solution to that issue soon. I’m hoping for a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 port adapter. Already there is such a port in the 27” screen, which I looked at today. It is nice, but expensive! I’d like a solution for under $50. I would prefer a 3 TB or 4 TB external Thunderbolt drive, but I absolutely HATE Lacie. I won’t buy one, and the Promise RAID is just SO expensive! There seems to be no other option, except those two. I’m hoping Western Digital will hurry up and replace their Studio drives with a Thunderbolt drive, or better still … come out with a 4 interface Studio drive, with USB 3, Firewire 400/800 and Thunderbolt.
Scott,
We’re definitely in a weird position right now as consumers, as the cost of spinning-disk storage has dropped so low, but the interface we need is still so expensive. Hopefully things will balance out soon.
The SSD makes a huge difference. My 11” MBA that’s over a year old is a screaming machine, as long as I stay away from brushes. My 2+ year old iMac 27” is plenty fast and I know the one thing that slows it down is the spinning hard drive. I’ll probably replace that with a big SSD before I go for a whole new Mac. That little thing makes a massive difference.
Why aren’t you running Aperture 3? You have the horsepower to do it…
@PhotoJoseph
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Mine only has 2Gb of RAM - the 4Gb is an upgrade at factory level and very hard (if not nigh on impossible) to do post-delivery.
Even saying that, it seems plenty capable enough for anything I am likely to do on the road, I must say, and I have installed Aperture on it. I don’t think I would enjoy doing the full edit on a 1000 image shoot on it, but for clearing CF cards to portable drives, editing a few images to email or post on the web etc etc and key wording as you go it is just dandy.
It may not be as sexy as the iPad (although I think the Air is in it’s own way) but I think it is a whole lot more useful, personally.
I agree with you, Joseph - my Mac Pro workstation is running 4 HDD’s at the moment, including an enterprise quality Western Digital Caviar Black as the main drive, which is a whole lot faster than the standard HDD it replaced but not even close to the speed of a SSD replacement.
Another 12 months or so should see the larger SSD’s fall in price and then I will take one of the spinning discs out and bung it in my Drobo and replace the Home drive with a large SSD.