Apple and Microsoft are two tech giants that continue to duke it out in the professional-level computing market. How will each company's flagship, Apple's MacBook Air and Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, compare against each other?
Display and dimensions
Although the two differ in form factors, Microsoft is not afraid to say that the hybrid Surface Pro 4 can take on the premiere Apple laptop. Design-wise, the two have similar dimensions. While the Surface Pro 4 is 11.5 inches high and 7.93 inches wide, the MacBook Air when worked with offers an 8.94-inch height and 12.8-inch width footprint.
Meanwhile, one of the contending factors for the two are their displays. The Surface Pro 4 has the advantage of being a recent addition to the market, since it employs 2K resolution with Corning Gorilla 4 protection. However, although the MacBook Air has a measly and non-Retina 1440 x 900 resolution, it still offers a crisp and vibrant display, since the Apple laptop has proprietary display features that make up for the above-average resolution.
Under the hood
Specs-wise, the Surface Pro 4 also enjoys the advantage of being more recently released than the Apple flagship. The new Microsoft hybrid is run by the newer Intel Core processors with Skylake architecture, making the hybrid a convenient and fast workhorse performance-wise. In addition, there are variants to choose from, and users may select from m3, m5, and m7 configurations based on their needs. Meanwhile, Apple's laptop workhorse is run by an Intel Core i5, although it is a last-gen chipset.
Both workhorses also run on the latest company platforms, with the MacBook Air supporting OS X El Capitan, and the Surface Pro 4 running on the newly released Windows 10.
One distinct edge, however, that the MacBook Air may have over the Surface Pro 4 is its battery life. Surface Pro 4 offers an above-average tablet life of up to 9 hours of power. Meanwhile, since the MacBook Air is a full-fledged workstation, coupled with the lean performance of its features, the Apple laptop has been tested to work for as long as 17 hours.
