The con of the new MBA is the Ethernet which is a big concern to people who want a faster and more accurate connection than wifi which is slow many times.
But for the majority of people, just what are they connecting to? If you have an extensive home network, NAS, etc, yes, Ethernet is very beneficial. But the limiting factor for most people is their internet connection speed. And wi-fi is more than capable of keeping up with that for the vast majority of folks. If you look at all the techologies missing from the Air that are on my MBP, Ethernet is the one I use least. I use Firewire and even the optical drive on my MBP more than I use Ethernet. So given Apple's drive to remove old and seldom used technologies, it's really no surprise that there's no Ethernet built in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hudson1
Considering how popular the MacBook Air has become, I think we'll see Thunderbolt-based dock systems appearing before too long.
The biggest "minus" in my opinion is the integrated graphics. It's slow and takes up part of the already limited RAM (especially in the 2 GB RAM, low-end Air). So I wonder if such a docking solution could include a dedicated GPU and if the Air (or any Thunderbolt Mac) could take full advantage of it as far as offloading CPU tasks to the GPU. Would the distance between the CPU and the GPU hinder effective use of the GPU for such purposes?
(Edit: And would such a dock be "plug and play"? It's not like you can reach into a running Mac Pro and yank out a 3rd party video card.)
I think the review needs to be updated to include a graphics performance comparison in addition to the CPU comparison. This is a big negative and should be included in the review.
Recent news states the iPad is cannabilizing mac sales. LMAO. Really Apple. They're creating great products to kill off their...other great products. This is why Apple is gonna eventually fail
Also, I think the Mac App store will be an epic fail. The problem is not the store but Apples other products. See, they've made portable devices so user friendly and efficient, who now-a-days gets on their mac. I haven't been on my Mini since I downloaded Lion(Awesome OS btw). That'll probably be the last time I visit the MAS. What a waste.
Bottome line is If Apple wants a likely successful new product to BE successful, they need to start making other successful products less successful to give other POSSIBLE successful products a chance to succeed. Only then will all their products be successful...or moderately so.
ROTFL. Trust me. Logically, this is sound thinking!
So while Tim Cook indicated in the earnings call that it appeared to be the case that iPads had cannibalized Macs - they were impacting PC sales far worse, and Apple still managed to grow its mac marketshare against the PC base significantly. Far from an epic fail all indications are that MAS is showing remarkable success in terms of consumer/user uptake thus far so your call here is clearly wrong. It is an indication of serious smoking of something when you make a silly statement like you did above:
Quote:
If Apple wants a likely successful new product to BE successful, they need to start making other successful products less successful to give other POSSIBLE successful products a chance to succeed.
After all this time Apple surely has a grip on how to drive successful product in the marketplace. In fact it shows remarkable ignorance to insist that all consumers have the exact same needs driving successful product sell-out in any given category. That being said Apple isn't reducing the number of iPhones they are selling in order to shore up iPod sales, and they aren't afraid to EOL a product when the right times to do so. Success is marked by overall company revenue and profitability across all product lines.
After all this time Apple surely has a grip on how to drive successful product in the marketplace. In fact it shows remarkable ignorance to insist that all consumers have the exact same needs driving successful product sell-out in any given category. That being said Apple isn't reducing the number of iPhones they are selling in order to shore up iPod sales, and they aren't afraid to EOL a product when the right times to do so. Success id marked by overall company revenue and profitability across all product lines.
He was joking. It was pointed out by a lot of people, including the original poster. Seriously, it wasn't serious.
They have them in the store or you are waiting for delivery in 6-8 weeks?
It's on order. The day Apple did that display slip-up on their website was the day I took home their regular display. A week later when they officially announced the specs, and the monitor becoming more of a dock, I returned my "old" monitor and ordered the new one.
I don't think the had them at the store. The two externals they had were connected to Mac pros which do not have TB ports.
Broke my heart to pack up the monitor. Totally made my office work easier. So I'm really itching to get my new one!
The 13in Macbook pro is pretty much the macbook. It is the same size, has a better processor than air, has conventional storage. No GT processor. The only thing is that it is pricier. If the next one is cheaper, it would pretty much would be replacing the macbook.
The full sized model also provides an extra pound and a half of weight, a significantly lower resolution display, and a machine that's nearly twice as thick, but only $100 less than the 13 inch Air (with its somewhat less alluring TN LCD display).
Why single out Air for having TN when 99% of the notebooks out there, including MacBook Pros, have TN?
Recent news states the iPad is cannabilizing mac sales. LMAO. Really Apple. They're creating great products to kill off their...other great products. This is why Apple is gonna eventually fail
Whoever wrote that "news" failed to notice the increase in Mac sales that has continued since the iPad was introduced.
For starters.
You need to either switch to decaf, or get your money back from your recreational pharmaceutical supplier.
Optical, Ethernet, HDMI output all require dongles
Paired with one of the new Thunderbolt Cinema Displays as a home docking station and maybe a MacBook Air SuperDrive for importing disks and you are golden.
I'm wondering if OWC will build a custom miniStack unit with both an optical disk and room for a 3.5" desktop HDD...
The whole post was sarcasm. No need for the detailed product sale numbers and so forth. And definitely not the "stfu" blurb.
If you really took the time to ANALYZE my post you would see.
1. It's very pro apple. I make claims to great products, they're recently released OS that I purchased on day one and my last paragraph about them coming out with successful products one after another
2. The last paragraph couldn't make sense from a business standpoint if you tried.
I own so many apple products you'd think I owned stock in the company...and judging by your response I'm assuming you must. If not then you should "ctfu"
I thought it was kinda funny (ish), but you have no right to get upset at people taking you to task for writing it.
It's not actually 'sarcasm' at all (look it up), and even in your response here, you seem to have trouble writing legible sentences. You really should *expect* accusations of drug use and idiocy when you write stuff like that.
On the flip side, the bundled iLife apps you get on your new notebook are tied to that hardware and won't show up as available downloads on other Macs you own.
Quoted from the review.
This statement is not true. I bought a new MacBook Air. All of the iLife 11 apps are available on my other MacBooks. I installed them on my two other MacBooks from the App Store. I only had iLife 09 until now.
Agreed, I have the 13" MB aluminum and I rarely if ever use the DVD drive. The gig ethernet wouldn't be a problem if someone out there would make a decent thunderbolt hub/dock so I don't have to pay 900 for a cinema display just to have an external monitor. Don't get me wrong, I would loooove to have a cinema display but it's way out of my budget. I need something like the kinsignton USB docks except for thunderbolt so it has firewire & everything else.
Monoprice.com has a USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter that works great with my 2011 13" Air. There is s driver you need to download, but the website for that is listed in the customer reviews. And it costs less than $25. Hard to beat. I believe the product # is 5345.
Comments
The whole post was sarcasm.
"You missed the funny part, Leo."
Seems they all did.
The con of the new MBA is the Ethernet which is a big concern to people who want a faster and more accurate connection than wifi which is slow many times.
But for the majority of people, just what are they connecting to? If you have an extensive home network, NAS, etc, yes, Ethernet is very beneficial. But the limiting factor for most people is their internet connection speed. And wi-fi is more than capable of keeping up with that for the vast majority of folks. If you look at all the techologies missing from the Air that are on my MBP, Ethernet is the one I use least. I use Firewire and even the optical drive on my MBP more than I use Ethernet. So given Apple's drive to remove old and seldom used technologies, it's really no surprise that there's no Ethernet built in.
Considering how popular the MacBook Air has become, I think we'll see Thunderbolt-based dock systems appearing before too long.
The biggest "minus" in my opinion is the integrated graphics. It's slow and takes up part of the already limited RAM (especially in the 2 GB RAM, low-end Air). So I wonder if such a docking solution could include a dedicated GPU and if the Air (or any Thunderbolt Mac) could take full advantage of it as far as offloading CPU tasks to the GPU. Would the distance between the CPU and the GPU hinder effective use of the GPU for such purposes?
(Edit: And would such a dock be "plug and play"? It's not like you can reach into a running Mac Pro and yank out a 3rd party video card.)
I think the review needs to be updated to include a graphics performance comparison in addition to the CPU comparison. This is a big negative and should be included in the review.
This is about the silliest comment ever posted on the Internet.
Dude, his whole post was quite clearly jesting. Or maybe yours is as well, but just a tad too subtle
Recent news states the iPad is cannabilizing mac sales. LMAO. Really Apple. They're creating great products to kill off their...other great products. This is why Apple is gonna eventually fail
Also, I think the Mac App store will be an epic fail. The problem is not the store but Apples other products. See, they've made portable devices so user friendly and efficient, who now-a-days gets on their mac. I haven't been on my Mini since I downloaded Lion(Awesome OS btw). That'll probably be the last time I visit the MAS. What a waste.
Bottome line is If Apple wants a likely successful new product to BE successful, they need to start making other successful products less successful to give other POSSIBLE successful products a chance to succeed. Only then will all their products be successful...or moderately so.
ROTFL. Trust me. Logically, this is sound thinking!
So while Tim Cook indicated in the earnings call that it appeared to be the case that iPads had cannibalized Macs - they were impacting PC sales far worse, and Apple still managed to grow its mac marketshare against the PC base significantly. Far from an epic fail all indications are that MAS is showing remarkable success in terms of consumer/user uptake thus far so your call here is clearly wrong. It is an indication of serious smoking of something when you make a silly statement like you did above:
If Apple wants a likely successful new product to BE successful, they need to start making other successful products less successful to give other POSSIBLE successful products a chance to succeed.
After all this time Apple surely has a grip on how to drive successful product in the marketplace. In fact it shows remarkable ignorance to insist that all consumers have the exact same needs driving successful product sell-out in any given category. That being said Apple isn't reducing the number of iPhones they are selling in order to shore up iPod sales, and they aren't afraid to EOL a product when the right times to do so. Success is marked by overall company revenue and profitability across all product lines.
After all this time Apple surely has a grip on how to drive successful product in the marketplace. In fact it shows remarkable ignorance to insist that all consumers have the exact same needs driving successful product sell-out in any given category. That being said Apple isn't reducing the number of iPhones they are selling in order to shore up iPod sales, and they aren't afraid to EOL a product when the right times to do so. Success id marked by overall company revenue and profitability across all product lines.
He was joking. It was pointed out by a lot of people, including the original poster. Seriously, it wasn't serious.
They have them in the store or you are waiting for delivery in 6-8 weeks?
It's on order. The day Apple did that display slip-up on their website was the day I took home their regular display. A week later when they officially announced the specs, and the monitor becoming more of a dock, I returned my "old" monitor and ordered the new one.
I don't think the had them at the store. The two externals they had were connected to Mac pros which do not have TB ports.
Broke my heart to pack up the monitor. Totally made my office work easier. So I'm really itching to get my new one!
The full sized model also provides an extra pound and a half of weight, a significantly lower resolution display, and a machine that's nearly twice as thick, but only $100 less than the 13 inch Air (with its somewhat less alluring TN LCD display).
Why single out Air for having TN when 99% of the notebooks out there, including MacBook Pros, have TN?
Recent news states the iPad is cannabilizing mac sales. LMAO. Really Apple. They're creating great products to kill off their...other great products. This is why Apple is gonna eventually fail
Whoever wrote that "news" failed to notice the increase in Mac sales that has continued since the iPad was introduced.
For starters.
You need to either switch to decaf, or get your money back from your recreational pharmaceutical supplier.
Cons:
Optical, Ethernet, HDMI output all require dongles
Paired with one of the new Thunderbolt Cinema Displays as a home docking station and maybe a MacBook Air SuperDrive for importing disks and you are golden.
I'm wondering if OWC will build a custom miniStack unit with both an optical disk and room for a 3.5" desktop HDD...
Whoever wrote that "news" failed to notice the increase in Mac sales that has continued since the iPad was introduced.
For starters.
You need to either switch to decaf, or get your money back from your recreational pharmaceutical supplier.
There's been about a dozen posts mentioning/discussing the non-serious nature of the comment.
FedEx says Friday.....
Nice review, and I'm glad I went with the Core i7 on my 11"...
Otherwise, nice review and thanks for putting up the specs.
Core i7 on a 2 lb device, but then again it's around $2,000.
Good review but needs some editing IMHO; too many "Jump to section" parts
... too many "Jump to section" parts
More space for eyeballs to view ads...
The whole post was sarcasm. No need for the detailed product sale numbers and so forth. And definitely not the "stfu" blurb.
If you really took the time to ANALYZE my post you would see.
1. It's very pro apple. I make claims to great products, they're recently released OS that I purchased on day one and my last paragraph about them coming out with successful products one after another
2. The last paragraph couldn't make sense from a business standpoint if you tried.
I own so many apple products you'd think I owned stock in the company...and judging by your response I'm assuming you must. If not then you should "ctfu"
I thought it was kinda funny (ish), but you have no right to get upset at people taking you to task for writing it.
It's not actually 'sarcasm' at all (look it up), and even in your response here, you seem to have trouble writing legible sentences. You really should *expect* accusations of drug use and idiocy when you write stuff like that.
On the flip side, the bundled iLife apps you get on your new notebook are tied to that hardware and won't show up as available downloads on other Macs you own.
Quoted from the review.
This statement is not true. I bought a new MacBook Air. All of the iLife 11 apps are available on my other MacBooks. I installed them on my two other MacBooks from the App Store. I only had iLife 09 until now.
More space for eyeballs to view ads...
Using Safari and its Reader function not only hides the ads, but combines all pages of the article into one continuous "page".
I immediately hit shift-command-r on every webpage that shows the Reader icon in the address bar.
Agreed, I have the 13" MB aluminum and I rarely if ever use the DVD drive. The gig ethernet wouldn't be a problem if someone out there would make a decent thunderbolt hub/dock so I don't have to pay 900 for a cinema display just to have an external monitor. Don't get me wrong, I would loooove to have a cinema display but it's way out of my budget. I need something like the kinsignton USB docks except for thunderbolt so it has firewire & everything else.
Monoprice.com has a USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter that works great with my 2011 13" Air. There is s driver you need to download, but the website for that is listed in the customer reviews. And it costs less than $25. Hard to beat. I believe the product # is 5345.
Using Safari and its Reader function not only hides the ads, but combines all pages of the article into one continuous "page".
I immediately hit shift-command-r on every webpage that shows the Reader icon in the address bar.
I looked for an extension but couldn't find anything other than readability
there are USB-ethernet adapters for this, or the thunderbolt display. (eventually thunderbolt-ethernet adapters will pop up too).
Thunderbolt will be expensive not cheap.