the company i work at gives us all this exact choice, and these days most of us go for the Air. personally, i prefer the portability and the extra battery life

the company i work at gives us all this exact choice, and these days most of us go for the Air. personally, i prefer the portability and the extra battery life. for me the retina display is a bit of a gimmick, and to be honest i think almost everybody's whose had a retina MBP here has experienced catastrophic hardware failure at one point or another. apple always take pretty good care of you when this happens, but it's better if it doesn't happen at all. who knows though, maybe they're issues that have been sorted out now. but yeah, i find my air is more than adequate for all the stuff i do on it (basically the same as what you're asking about).