I need Apple people for advice please

Laura14 · ‎06-09-2014

I am seriously considering buying my first MacBook. It's a huge investment but I am planning on doing a self publishing business and the gold standard for that is vellum which is a Mac only software product.

I saw the new MacBook Air is out which it sounds like people love over the most recent offerings. The only con I can find is overheating complaints. The best is the keyboard which is most important to me as a writer. I heard on the other models that typing was horrible so I would rather put money in up front towards a better product.

My big objective in taking the plunge is the vellum software which says it needs 40gb and an occasional book cover design which will probably be done in Photoshop. Maybe. Still researching that one but that is gold standard too.

I don't mind stepping up a bit in price since it sounds like entry level i3 and 256 ssd won't get me far but I can't get nuts. Right now, I am thinking the i5 512gb should fit my needs.

Am I thinking correctly here for writing plus occasional picture editing? Or would you have a better suggestion?

Sooner · ‎03-10-2010

@Laura14 I would go with the Pro (the lap top), not the Air. I would get as much memory as you can afford and speed.

Graphics and publishing programs eat a lot of space and speed. Maybe you can offload some storage on the cloud and solve some of those issues.

It is a big investment to do much in the way of publishing. Depends if it is for commercial pubs or just more casual home publishing.

Laura14 · ‎06-09-2014

@Sooner Thank you. It would be for ebooks which would be written and formatted in the vellum software. I've looked at the Pro but it seems to have the bad keyboard still. But if the Air isn't the right fit, I guess I will wait it out until they update the Pro.

ItsME · ‎03-10-2010

@Laura14 I'm not an expert at all. That said, I agree with @Sooner.... get as much memory as you can afford, but you have to get at least a gigabyte.

Sooner · ‎03-10-2010

@Laura14 wrote:
@Sooner Thank you. It would be for ebooks which would be written and formatted in the vellum software. I've looked at the Pro but it seems to have the bad keyboard still. But if the Air isn't the right fit, I guess I will wait it out until they update the Pro.

@Laura14 Well, I'm not your expert. I have never used Vellum software, and am only familiar with PhotoShop and Pagemaker world. So an Air might work fine.

I have a brand new Air and don't care for the keyboard. So be sure to try one out. It is a hair smaller to my hands and I often wind up hitting the track pad, which is larger than the older Air I had. This is my third Air.

Hubby has the Pro laptop and it is heavier, sturdier seemingly. I haven't used it's keyboard a lot. But I'd try before I buy or MAKE SURE you can return whatever if you don't like.

Laura14 · ‎06-09-2014

Thank you @Sooner . When the stores open again, I definitely will.

Icegoddess · ‎03-19-2010

I have the smaller sized MacBook Pro and love it. Not sure what the keyboard problems are that are being mentioned. Mine is an older, late 2013 model. Some of my keys are wearing off, but that's more about my nails I think since it is the N, D, E, & R keys althought I would also expect the K to wear off too and it isn't yet. The only other issue would be that sometimes I'm sure I hit a key and it doesn't type it, but it's not a major problem. I'm a pretty fast typer.

I am changing over to Pages for my word processing from Word since it comes free with the OS and Word no longer works with my version. No reason to pay for the type of word processing I do. I understand it is not what you are looking for but it does have some templates that are designed for EPUB. There are some things I like about it and some I don't.

drizzellla · ‎03-14-2010

I am not an expert BUT I wanted to add - both my brothers have Apple laptops. One brother is VERY tech savvy and the other brother followed his advise. They both are very pleased with their computers and both said they would definitely buy Apple again.

I know when we bought our computers we always bought the most GB. And I remember my husband saying we will never use that much. HA!

Laura14 · ‎06-09-2014

@Icegoddess I have fooled with Pages for a minute or two and it looks great. I actually just got a keyboard for my Ipad so I could really try it out. It supposedly does well in doing EPUB for Amazon according to what I have read.

Supposedly everyone hates the keyboard because there isn't a lot of give to the keys. I think that would drive me nuts too but I'd have to try it like @Sooner said to know for sure.

I really wish the typewriter would come back. Lot less to think about.