Originally Posted by
LIH Prem
MBA 13" with core i7 (max), 8GB (max), 256G SSD - $1449
MBP 13" Retina with core i7 (max), 16 GB (max), 256G SSD - $1999
Not all i7s are created equal.
Here are the processors on the current 13" Apply models:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/83506,8...08,75114,75030
First 3 are the 28W models in the Pro, latter 2 are the 15W models in the Air.
Having a non-Apple machine with a closely related ULV i7, I can confirm that the i7 in the 13" Air will NOT spend a lot of time at the max turbo frequency, especially if there's much of anything running on the second core.
The base i5 in the MBP 13" is going to be faster than either CPU in Air for virtually all realistic use cases, although you an find some synthetic benchmarks where the i7 in the Air
might show faster. In many use cases, the difference will be dramatic in favor of the higher-wattage processors.
Of course, for CPU-heavy uses like video editing or (local) software development, people will want the quad core which is only available in the 15" Pro.