Best MacBook for scrivener?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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Hi everyone, this is my first time posting (after a long time lurking), and I hope this is the correct sub forum for my question. I discovered scrivener a few months ago and I’ve absolutely fallen in love—it’s easily the best writing software I’ve ever used.

I’ll be attending law school in the fall, which means it’s time to replace my 5 year old 13" MacBook Pro, and I was wondering what some heavy-scrivener users opinions were on how scrivener performs on different screen sizes and Mac models? Do you find that it’s more important to be able to take scrivener on the go and just use it in full screen, or that more screen real estate is substantially more useful? Also, the new MacBook is about as powerful as a two year old Air—how does scrivener hold up on slightly underpowered machines? Thanks so much for any advice or comments.

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Any current model of Mac should run even the largest Scrivener projects with alacrity. In my opinion, ‘power’ is only an issue if you run out of it or have to lug the charging cord around with you, so I’d suggest that battery life is the most important factor to consider, followed closely by weight. And weight is greatly impacted if you don’t have to lug the charging block with you.

Following weight, RAM should be at least 8G. Storage capacity (‘hard drive’ size) is next down on the list. The solid state drives (SSDs) that come in all the Air models are more expensive the larger you go, but they’re wicket fast, allow for longer battery life, and are more durable than standard hard drives. SSDs are well worth the extra cost for a portable machine.

Somewhere up among the above considerations would be physical ports (USB, audio, video, etc…) if that stuff matters to you. I’m not ready to go the route of the new Macbook (non-Air, non-Pro) with only the one USB-c as a connectivity option, so I personally don’t favor the newest machine.

Last on my priority list would be CPU power. Considering that the batteries in laptops rarely hold a decent charge after 3-4 years of constant use, I’m not sure there’s a lot of value to going with the maximum processor power available. In my experience, for writing, CPU only comes into it if Apple decides that your processor/chip set can’t handle the latest OS upgrade, and that OS upgrade is required to upgrade the programs you use. Maximizing the CPU might get you one or two extra OS upgrades before your computer is considered obsolete by Apple. …Maybe.

P.S. As far as screen size goes; machines with larger screens have bigger batteries. That’s why I chose the 13" MB Air two years ago; it had a longer battery life. The extra screen space is a nice bonus, and I do find it useful.

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My computer is a Macbook Pro 15 inch, which I’m equally at ease plugging into a 27-inch Thunderbolt display (at home) or taking on the road and using the 15-inch built-in display. For Scrivener, the only adjustment I make between these two modes is text scale—200 percent for the Thunderbolt display and 150 percent for the built-in display.

The 15-inch is a pretty good size for a display. That said, my wife’s MacBook Air 13-inch is a very fine computer. I would definitely stay away from the 11-inch, but the 13-inch is quite adequate, I would think.

My Macbook Pro’s flash storage is 256 gb, which means I have to carry around an external hard drive to store my music. A small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. Flash storage makes for a speedy machine and long-lasting battery. I would be reluctant to go back to the standard hard drive at this point. Apple still sells a non-Retina model that uses a standard hard drive, but I would imagine that is not going to last for long.

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This may or may not be relevant to this discussion, but I wanted to mention what I would say is easily one of the Mac’s best features these days and one that I’ve only recently started using. That’s the ability to work in multiple spaces. Instead of hiding and reopening a frequently used app, you can relegate a space to that app. You can swipe (using three fingers on the trackpad) to switch between spaces or use Ctrl-arrow key (or hit the Spaces button on the keyboard to see all the spaces at once.) See this article.

cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-u … -your-mac/

I always keep Scriveners all by itself in its own space with its very own desktop picture to remind me that my job is to write. You can even keep Scrivener in full screen mode while switching to, say, to the browser to look up something on the internet.

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Interesting to see what other people prioritise in a laptop purchase.

Here’s my top three priorities (slight overlap with RDG’s):

3: power - how long does the battery last. I’m unlikely to need my laptop for wifi when I’m out and about so any of the current range is likely to be sufficient… For me.

2: screen - 13" minimum, with a crisp clear display. The 11" is just too small for my tastes, but the 13" does nicely. Anything retina is going to be crisp enough.

1: keyboard - by far the most important thing is the keyboard. It has to work well, and feel right. The new MacBook keyboard is… not good enough for me. It’ll feel wonderful to someone who has used an iPad touchscreen keyboard up till now, but it’s no where near as nice to use as a regular Apple laptop keyboard (which in turn isn’t as good as, say, a Lenovo laptop keyboard).

For a writing machine, very little else matters. Thickness and weight? Don’t care, it’s going into a rucksack so those metrics aren’t a factor. I’ve really never ubderstood the draw of the MacBook Air, whose form factor strikes me as a gimmick rather than a benefit. RAM and storage? Also not really important. Scrivener is a light and lean program capable of running on all the current Macs with ease.

Of course, I also use my laptop for other things, such as photo editing, music creation and such the like. I suspect you’ll also have other more demanding uses which, while secondary, are more likely to be a factor in setting the minimum usable specification.

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Spaces is, imo, one of the best features of OSX. When combined with the trackpad, or the app-switcher, it ‘unlocks’ screen real estate that would otherwise be missing on a 11" or 13" screen.

I have a multitude of “desktops” set up permanently - and use Moon (there are free options as well) to ‘snap’ my apps to full screen, without going the ‘OSX Full Screen’, on those different desktops - and then fly between them very quickly, as I need to. Works a charm.

One thing I haven’t done - but something I’ll look at, is setting apps to particular Spaces/Desktops. I haven’t really used it, since when I plug in an external monitor (as I often do) - it sometimes throws things out a bit.

My 2 cents.

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Only tried the new MacBook keyboard for about ten minutes, but I liked it: found the keys responded very evenly, irrespective of how they were pressed. Lusted after the keyboard and trackpad.

That said, I am a six-finger typist, so probably my view is somewhat skewed.

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Thanks for all the great answers! Right now I’m torn between the 13 and 15 retina Macbook pros. I do often use spaces on my current 13, but I’m really tempted by being able to just fill a single space with more stuff; and the 15 would probably be more than enough computer for me till it dies. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it to an Apple store soon and compare them in person, try out the new MacBooks keyboard myself, and see how the 15 and 13 compare in portability to my current MBP. Then I’ll probably give my own post-hoc justifications for my purchase, cause I also found it very interesting to hear everyone’s opinions and priorities in their computer.

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I’ve got a 2007 15-inch Macbook Pro that I’m looking to replace this tax year with something smaller and lighter. The 15-inch is portable, and the screen-real estate is nice. But it’s simply too weighty and cumbersome to just grab and head down to the brook, or out to the garden, or down to the beach, and sit for three or four hours of environmentally immersed writing. The result is, if it isn’t going along on a trip in its briefcase, it stays on my desk plugged in to a 22-inch monitor.

When I upgrade, I’m torn between the 13-inch Macbook Pro and the 13-inch Air. Plugged in to the external monitor, the result will be the same, but I’ve played with both in the store (and with my wife’s 13-inch Air), and the Air is definitely the more portable of the two. Tricked out with identical 256gb SSDs and 8gb ram, the price difference is pretty much a wash. Though there’s no denying the screen on the 13-inch Retina Pro is far superior to that of the Air. Still, how good does it need to be for writing? Half my time I’m in Composition mode, configured to look like a 30-year-old IBM, with a black background and green letters.

Another alternative, still under consideration, is replacing the MacBook Pro with a Mac Mini, and doing my portable stuff with an iPad. This on the assumption that Keith et al will finish Scriv iOS sometime in 2015.

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The new 12" rMB wouldn’t suit your needs? The screen is close to 13" and the retina is good for writing.

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It’s not completely off the table. I played around with one for half an hour or so in the store and quite liked the keyboard, after a bit of adjustment; the screen was brilliant–marginally better, side-by-side, than the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and it weighs essentially nothing. The only things that give me pause are the single USB-C port and the great dearth of docking stations available, so far anyway. With the right dock–a one-plug solution, including external monitor, backup drive, and charging–it could be a worthy successor to the late-lamented Powerbook Duo. But so far I’ve seen no announcements of anything truly interesting in the docking realm.

The other thing that bothers me is battery life; in Macworld (or something like it) tests, the 13-inch Air goes nearly 40 percent longer under the same workload. That’s pretty significant for a writer who aspires to go untethered for a full workday.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I thought the rMB was meant to be an all-day-on-battery wunderkind. Maybe a chasm between claim and reality. Think the MBP (and Air, if it survives) will get a major revamp when Skylake is released (some leaks suggest August). Will probably buy a new machine when the updated range is available; making a choice at that time.

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As I remember, the new Macbook managed around 6 - 8 hours under hard use; the Air went 10 - 12. If I overnight somewhere, which I like to do when in Writing Mode (sleep in the canoe, or in the peapod under a boom tent, or in the back of the truck), that extra battery life might come in handy. (Right now my Writing Mode battery life is limited only by the ink in my pen and the number of pages in my notebook.)

I’m basically hanging loose until I see what’s announced in June, and what crops up in the way of third-party docking stations for the new Macbook this summer. No rush, except I need to do it before the end of the year for tax purposes.

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You can boost the MacBook’s life with an external battery such as a back-up battery for an iPhone, since it has a USB-C port — for a MacBook Air, you need a power outlet to recharge it — so a 2400 mAh battery or so with a MacBook in your canoe, your tent, wherever … ?

:slight_smile:

Mr X

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That’s a big difference between the Macbook and the Air. Can understand waiting till June and WWDC. Intel might also make a formal announcement about Skylake.

No idea what a peapod or boom tent are. Will have to use my imagination. :open_mouth:

You clearly like the great outdoors. Romantic image of the committed artist.

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A peapod is a double-ended rowboat/sailboat used by commercial lobsterfishermen from the 19th century down through the 1940s, when outboards became ubiquitous for small inshore boats. Today they’re popular in the Northeast US with folks who, like Mole and Ratty, think there’s nothing half so much worth doing as messing around in boats. A boom tent is a piece of canvas draped over the sail’s lowered boom, or in the boomless sail of the peapod, the whole mast, removed from its step and chocked up fore-and-aft, forming a ridge pole for a tent.

artisanboatworks.com/classic … ast-peapod

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Only a Maine backwoodsman would think of going to sea in a friggin pea pod! tch! tch! No wonder we gave the colony over to them.

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A close reading of history, from both sides of the Atlantic (and, for that matter, both sides of the Channel), doesn’t reveal the word Gave, in relation to British Operations in America, unless followed immediately by the word Up.

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Well I suppose y’ could say we gave up on ‘em, if y’ like, wot with the sea full of pea pods and tea chests, an all. It was probably seen as a case of diminishing returns. :frowning:

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It sounds like portability and battery life top the OP’s list of priorities. For me, when I was looking to upgrade my 2010 MB Air a few weeks ago, it was battery life (mine was down to a couple of hours, and I sometimes work untethered) and eye-friendliness, as mine are aging and increasingly tired out by hours and hours staring at a screen all day. For that reason, after playing with a Retina screen Mac at the Apple Store, another Air was right out. That left the two Retina options: the new MacBook (whose appearance I’d been awaiting before deciding) and the MB Pro.

After checking it out at the Apple store, I leaned initially toward the new MB because I have to tote it to campus thrice a week, but two factors weighed against it. First, Apple informed me that the MB would NOT support my 2008 24" Apple Cinema Display. I use that for most of my Scrivening because I need to be able to display the binder, two docs, and often the info panel all at once, and that gets pretty cramped on a laptop screen. Since the ACD’s max resolution is higher than my old Air’s, but lower than Retina, either Retina MacBook would ease my eyestrain when it’s plugged into the ACD. And it’s likely that Monoprice or Amazon will someday make an adapter that would allow the MB to work with my display. But that option doesn’t exist now, and for various reasons, I can’t wait any longer to upgrade. The MBP, by contrast, allows me to plug the ACD directly into it with no adapter needed, saving me up to $50 even assuming an adapter is someday available.

The other factor was cost. Right when I was making up my mind, Best Buy offered $200 off the brand new 2015 MBPs for a couple days. (They also discounted the Airs by a similar amount, but I expect no such discounts on the MB for a year or so because it’s new and sexy and doesn’t need to be discounted to sell out.) BB also let me subtract my academic discount from the sale price. So that meant I’d be paying at least $200 and probably more like $250 more (counting as-yet-nonexistent adapter) for a MB over a MBP. A pound and a half of weight wasn’t worth that much money. And of course, there’s still no guarantee that I will ever be able to use the current MB with my seven year old display, which I did not want to give up.

So I grabbed the MBP for $1049, which I consider a terrific bargain. So far, the added weight hasn’t disturbed me; I can’t tell the difference between the MBP and my old Air. when I carry it, and it’s actually smidgen smaller in footprint. I’ve never yet used the MBP long enough for the battery to expire, but I’m regularly getting six hours of writing/browsing/email on it, with not even half the battery life gone. The ForceTouch trackpad is fine but not all that useful yet, and the keyboard is great, not that I noticed much difference on the MB’s new shallow keyboard in a few minutes of typing at the store. But some writers have complained mightily about it so you might want to field test typing on it as much as possible.

What made the biggest difference, especially in Scrivener and iAWriter, is that retina screen, and that’s what I’d urge you to consider, although your eyes are probably younger than mine. Working with text is even better on the Retina MacBook Pro screen itself, which is higher res than my my monitor.

The new MB is a thing of beauty and I fully expect to have one, or rather its successor, in a few years. If it had worked with my display, I might have gone for one. But for now, I’m just amazed at how much value, portability and eye ease the 13" Retina MB Pro offers. It’s a great Scrivening machine.