Apple to begin production of Thunderbolt MacBook Airs next month - Page 3

Get a USB 3G adapter if you need it. I'd rather not have it taking up space or consuming power on the motherboard, so why should I pay for it?


Well, if quite a few professional photographers are currently using an MBA for in the field, then I guess the limitations you cited aren't that big of a problem, right?

The point is that it's not a full featured, desktop replacement machine. It's an ultraportable with certain limitations. If you can live with those limitations, then it's a fine machine. If you can't, you use something else. Expecting an MBA to have as much power as a MBP is just silly. That's like saying "I want a two seater convertible that will go 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, but I want to be able to tow a 10,000 pound trailer with it, as well".

Define your needs and then choose a machine. Expecting one machine to meet everyone's needs is silly.

Looking at the iPhone and iPad boards for this connectivity I think the overall gain compared to the space and cost to add a mini-PCIe slot with optional board would have a minimal impact on those who dont need it.

edit: From top to bottom: WiFi, GSM, CDMA:

As you can see its about 1x1.5 (2.5cmx3.8cm). The 3G boards are only attached to the mainboard by some screws and a surface-mounted ribbon cables, which are permanent.

Everything else on the mainboard the same. There is a glaring difference in the manufacture and number of NAND chips, but thats to be expected.

Changing the surface-mounted ribbon cable to a slotted system would add some size, but were talking a minuscule amount.

15" screens? Have you ever flown on a plane?

I for one have been waiting on this upgrade, I'm sold.

New Imacs in the month of May. Macbook Airs in June or July. OSX Lion in August. Iphone 5 in September. Thats the way i sees it. :-)

What would you do on an ultraportable that would need 8GB of RAM but not be bottlenecked by the ULV processors?

We have a clutch of MacPros, a MacBook Pro 15 with an ExpressCard34 slot, an iPad for manuals and on the road - the MacBook Air with Thunderbolt is perfect for me. Email yes, scripting yes, FileMaker work, real OS X on a machine not much bigger than the pad, and connectivity to future media storage for media management, logging etc - perfect. I'm in!

It would have more than a minimal impact in terms of cost for those who don’t need it. And that doesn't include a second (or third or fourth) monthly 3G data contract, since the wireless companies seem determined to make us pay per-device. With most current smart phones supporting wireless hotspots and wide availability of MiFi devices, I think you're less and less likely to see this built into the next MBA.

I think MacBook pros are still a better deal then airs. Sure they are a bit bigger and heavier, but not by much in my opinion. If apple got rid of the MacBook line and made those into MacBook airs, say 999 for a 13 inch air, and maybe 899 for 11 incher I think they would be flying off the shelves.

Great post (assuming you're being sarcastic).

I wonder if all the posters clamouring for a 15 inch MBA realise that the current 13 inch MBA has the same screen resolution as the current standard 15 inch Macbook Pro?

I myself went from a 15 inch Powerbook g4 with 1280 x 800 screen resolution to a 13 inch Unibody Macbook with the same screen resolution and not noticed any major difference in usability, but maybe my eyes are very good!

What's your rational behind that? It's just a slot and space for a 1"x1.5"x0.1" board. That almost zero in terms of their entire machine.

You've obviously never seen the inside of an MBA. There just isn't much space. Would you rather have them leave out 20% of the battery capacity?

It adds cost and energy usage for something which only a tiny percentage of users need. In addition, every extra port in the side of the machine is extra cutting - and weakens the device somewhat.

Furthermore, it doesn't really save anything even for that tiny percentage. What difference does it make whether you carry a separate 3G PCIe card or a separate 3G USB device? So why should Apple add cost and reduce the battery size simply because some tiny percentage of users want to carry a PCIe device instead of a USB device?



Sure. I've even used my 17" MBA on a plane. What's your point?

I rarely take my computer out of its case on a plane, anyway. It's just too much hassle. I'm more likely to take my iPad out.


Maybe MBPs are better deals FOR YOU, but not everyone sees things the same way.

I'm seriously considering two options: 1. iMac plus MBA or 2. MBP plus iPad. Either choice would probably suit my needs quite well and I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of difference - FOR ME. There is no clear cut "this is a better deal than that". Apple offers a wide range of systems for people with different needs.



I wonder if all the people posting here realize that some posters are over 40 - and the same screen resolution is a lot easier to read on a 15" monitor than on a 13" monitor.


See above.

There isnt "much space" in any of their notebooks. All the space is for something. Why you think that excludes making the space for a new component is silly.

If they remove the ODD (which is going to happen, they will not adopt Blu-ray!) which does take up 25% of the 13 MBPs internal space they have plenty of room for a larger battery, a 2.5 HDD with a SSD card and other chips which still being able to make it smaller.

PS: Where do you get that 1x1.5x0.1 is 20% of the volume of the MBA battery?

I really wish you'd get your story straight.

We're talking about putting an additional device into an MBA. What does removing the ODD from the MBP have to do with that? :roll eyes:

You keep ignoring the facts:

1. Even if Apple included that slot, users would still have to carry a PCIe card - which is not significantly smaller than a USB card. There's no advantage.

2. Not everyone wants 3G on their laptop

3. The device you're proposing takes up space. The MBA is very crowded inside - more crowded than most laptops.

4. In addition to the space required for your card, there's also some lost space because of inefficiencies in packing. You also need to cut an extra (large) port in the side of the case. Even if you could make it fit (which isn't clear), it would weaken the case

5. The device (along with installation costs and design costs and costs for cutting another hole in the case) costs money. Since users still need an external card, why should Apple spend the money?

6. Whatever space is required would almost certainly come out of the battery size - which means a shorter run time and greater cost for all users. Why would Apple do that?

7. Apple knows a lot more about designing computers and computer markets than you do. Apple hasn't included it - so obviously Apple agrees that the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages for any significant number of people.

You're proposing a significant change. It is up to you to provide a justification as to why that change makes sense. So far, you haven't done that. All you've provide is "I want" and "I'm going to ignore all the disadvantages because their inconvenient to what I want".

Started off talking about the MBP, which is the machine Id get. A MBA with a 3G card would be nice, too, but its smaller and therefore would need to come at the same time or after due to these factors, just like the need for a CULV processor and no backlit keyboard. So before you say its impossible for all notebooks first tell us why its impossible for the MBPs. Thats a fact.


Carry? You mean a installed card that weighs and ounce and takes up a fraction of the internal space is an issue when they are carrying their notebook? Seriously, Dude!


Nope, which is why I suggested mini-PCIe not something permanently installed, and clearly optional, just like in the iPad 2.. I dont even like the fact the MBAs have RAM installed on the logic board making it impossible to upgrade.


Define that that crap! All laptops are crowded. Apples notebooks higher TDP components have more room for airflow but that doesnt mean its free space.

Its a strawman argument to suggest that there is no way to improve on the design, shrink or combine components or include something simply because they havent before. Just look at the 3G card in the iPad 2 over the 3G card in the original IPad. I think the 3G is first iPad is as big as the whole logical board in the iPad 2. If they incorporate the double-stacked silicon process they are using in their 2010+ iDevices then you gain a significant amount of space.


Extra large part in the side of the case? WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!


Hole in the case? External card? 4/20 was 3 days ago.


You made an assumption based on no evidence then posed a question as if its now fact. WTH?! Try to form a sound argument!


They do, and more than you. I know about what Apple has done and can do because youve ignored the history of their internal design. You dont even know what a mini-PCIe card is. You keep thinking its external. I suggested that Apple, the largest procurer of NAND and designer of their own boards, could lose the casing around SSDs to make their own using mini-PCIe physcial connector. Guess what?! I bet you said, "Apple hasn't included it - so obviously Apple agrees that the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages for any significant number of people."


I dont base technical feasibility on what I desire. I have no emotion invested in science(/technology or my investments. It makes me successful. Ive stated I dont need it, even in this thread I suggested it with Personal Hotpot on app phones now increasing in popularity the need fades.

I doubt that Id even pay the $130 for the factory installation even if it were available, but it is a long sought feature and the size has recently because smaller and with their iPad 2 having a standard design (sans the surface-mounted ribbon) and no fear of 18 SKUS the needles pulls a little more toward that feasibility.

PS: I would like a GPS chip in my MBP for Find My Mac at that core OS level. But I guess youl say that a GPS chip is impossible because its not already included.

That's an interesting spec that few people think about. I know the 13" screen on my MBA carries precisely the same amount of information (pixel wise) as the 15" screen on my (older) Pro. Yet when people look at the size of the 15" screen it looks so much bigger. This might explain why HP sells so many "premium" $700 laptops with 17" screens with a very low resolution of 1366x768.

OT, but I hope that any all new Apple notebooks after Lions release will include the double resolution that is found in the OS.

The enthusiasm for Sandy Bridge Airs is incredible. It is going to sell very well whatever spec it offers.

The screen of the existing C2D 13" Air is amazing - much better than the 13" screen on the MBP. Honestly, who needs a 15" unless it offers better resolution.

I would very much like it to have a 500 GB SSD and a back-lit keyboard. With these, I buy it the day it comes out.

Can anyone tell me how the performance of the i7 ULV chipset in a 13" macBook Air would compare to that of (a) a 2009 2.4 Ghz C2D 13" MacBook Pro and (b) to 2011 i7 SB 13" MBP 2.7 Ghz. In particular, will it play Call of Duty?

I have this feeling that the MacBook Air is going to become my next primary machine.

I used to be a heavy gamer but have since stopped gamely completely and now my huge windows desktop tower is just gathering dust until it sells.

I went and replaced it with a MBA13. Absolutely thrilled with it.

I'm fairly certain is was a launch option. My 11" MBA was purchased mid December at an Apple store, so I can't be 100% sure.

I thought it was too obvious to mention that I would expect a 15" MBA to have 1680x1050 resolution. I was evidently wrong. It was not too obvious to mention.

For whatever it's worth, I would be stunned if 1680x1050 did not become standard with the next revision of the 15" MBP.

If you can see the screen fine then the reduced screen size is not a problem. Us old folks aren't that lucky. I wouldn't mind a 13" laptop for travel but would find it difficult to use anymore.

By the way one of the things I love about Safari is the ability to pinch to zoom. Again maybe not a big deal for many. I'm also quickly adapting to "reader" which makes poorly designed web sites much more readable.

Trust me it gets worst with age.

In any event I suspect Apple will need to implement resolution independence rather soon. You really can increase resolution in a reasonable manner without this solution.

It’s been noted since the first beta of Lion that RI is not included. However there is evidence of a "double resolution” elements that either point to denser pixels displays and/or really large displays.

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They would carry nothing as the card would be installed inside the AIR.

No fooling! Really I bet nobody here realized that.

More crowded than an iPad? On top of that the coming machines should be running an entirely new set of silicon. The potential is for much more free space.

Nothing dictates that the card must be accessible via a port in the housing.

You really aren't making any sense here.

Apple wouldn't but that doesn't mean they can't build in WiFi.

Admit it you don't know what Apple is think, what technology they have access too nor do you really know what customer demand is. All you are doing is passing off wild a$$ guesses as fact.

Talk about the kettle calling the pan black. Nothing you have enumerated above is rational nor reflects on the fact that technology moves forward.

3 distinct types and 18 total SKUs.

I thought I made a good argument. I even tracked down roughly measured, and compared the 3G boards in the iPad. I even posted pics. I really couldn’t figure out what he was on about with this carry around a card and cutting into the side of the notebook business.

Yes they will. If the current AIRs are a hit these machines should drive the ball out of the ball park.

Hand raised high here.

Seriously guys without resolution independence stuff becomes too small for us old folks to use comfortably on these very high resolution screens. "I" devices are very nice on the other hand due to the sharper definition in graphics.

I'd be happy if they have a couple of Blade SSD slots so that I can meet my future storage needs. This is another reason to want a 15" AIR, it gives Apple a little more space to work with.

I'm not a big gamer so I can't answer your questions directly but honest web sites are still reporting that the SB graphics still suck at games. This is another good reason for a 15" AIR, a real desecrate GPU would be just the nuts.

Maybe here too. I really don't know for sure as the GPUs lack of OpenCL support is a bit of suckage that I really don't like.

As a side note and in regards to the 3G support in a laptop, I'm using my iPhone right now and the hotspot just went dead a few minutes ago. With 3G support you just keep going. Can't do that currently with any of Apples notebooks.

I'm not convinced that big icons indicate anything at the moment. Apple would need to add a lot of infra structure to make a 2X increase in resolution viable. Text rendering and controls would be too tiny on a Retina like screen to be usable. In other words you need more than icons to make these sorts of screens work.

Hey we can all hope for such screens but evidence is a little thin right now. Besides Apple would need seriously powerful GPUs to get equivalent performance.

In their non-MBA notebooks Id be happy with a SSD card with at least a 7mm 2.5 HDD/SSD behind it.

Isn't it only 9 for the current production model? I guess it doesn't matter as the point remains it isn't a huge negative for Apple nor the buyers to choose.

Maybe he has been living in a jungle for a few years and hasn't seen an iPad? It is about the only reasonable excuse I can think of.

18 SKUs.

2 (white & black) x 3 (16GB, 32GB, 64GB) x 3 (WiFi, GSM, CDMA) = 18

That would work too. Currently I have a lot of bulk storage in an external USB drive. That leaves a lot to be desired! The problem is my main drive is really stuffed with apps and documents.

Speaking of stuffed to the brim I was catching up on software updates and pruning unused apps today. Spring cleaning for the harddrive if you will. Installed the latest version of Adobe Reader - do you realize that takes 415MB of disk space. All I can say is wow, that is a good chunk of disk space for a document reader.

The trimming of apps really becomes a requirement if your disk doesn't also grow.

The 13-inch MacBook Air does have the same native screen resolution as a 15-inch MacBook Pro (1440x900).

OK. The white units don't even register with me. I find them very distracting for video.

The native resolution of my 15" MacBook Pro is 1680x1050, which is the minimum I want and exactly what I would expect for a 15" MacBook Air.

Well "I have issues with it" might be the better statement.

For one I got a matte screen on it - a big mistake. Especially if you want to read or work with a lot of text. Matte means blurred text and looks rather bad up against my iPhone or iPad.

Second I'd like to see higher resolution. Even for us old folks the higher resolution makes for sharper screens. The smudged out text on relatively low resolution screens means you are starting out with poor character definition before your eye sight comes into play.

Third higher resolution makes for better video and picture viewing.

However those three items combined aren't what makes the possibility of a 15" AIR interesting to me. It is more about an AIR with a more complete feature set. Hopefully one with a discrete OpenCL supporting GPU and the potential for a lot more internal secondary storage. Of course a faster CPU would be a given also. An extra USB port wouldn't hurt either.

I really like my 15 incher and would stay with that platform if Apple would port over some of AIRs features but I don't think that will happen. I don't want a step back in performance either, in fact after three years I'd expect a significant gain over my old machine even in an AIR replacement. All of this can happen I'm just not sure it will happen with Sandy Bridge.

eh? got any statistics for that? bloody big niche. talk about sweeping generalisation.

lol yeah I used to lug around the 15" MBP. madness...

Concerning the SSD, one thing that always interested me was Apple's use of Toshiba branded NAND memory and controller. This is a rival of Intel/Micron/Crucial who have moved to 25nm, which seemed to be better than Toshiba/SanDisk who reportedly would only do this in the second half of the year.

Thing is, they aren't moving to 25nm but 19nm instead:

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/4/21/san...nd-flash-19nm/

This technology is due to ship in the second half of 2011 just in time for a Macbook Air refresh around September/October - in line with its refresh cycle and enough to allow Apple to drop the white Macbook.

Naturally they will want to push out Thunderbolt as soon as possible so the MBA could get an update soon and a storage bump later but it seems like there's to be updates to the Mac Pro, iMac, Mini, Macbook and Air all at once and Apple just don't do that sort of thing because it means no updates at all for months afterwards.

I still think the update cycle will be iMac and Mini first due in April/May. Then we have WWDC in June with the launch of Final Cut X and Lion. I don't think there are Xeon chips suitable for a Mac Pro update but they can do a redesign with TB support but signs point to Q4 for new Westmere-EP CPUs.

Then the iPhone 5 (possibly 4S) could arrive in September/October (possibly earlier) with new NAND memory at double capacities (maybe not from Samsung any more) similarly in the MBA meaning the entry model will have 128GB or maybe 160GB. While this is about half the current Macbook offering, it will allow Apple to drop the plastic Macbook and people who need the 256GB can get the $1199 11" model or $1299 13" model.

I respectfully disagree.
I have two Tablet-PC with 12.1" screens (1400x1050) to do solids modeling and write on the screen with a pen to make sketches and take notes. Perfetly confortable with that sise. And i am looking at the 11" MBA. i like the battery life and instant on-off.

If they give me Wi-Fi + 3G (or 4G) like the iPad, keyboard backlighting and bump up the flash drive size, my credit card will be out in a heartbeat. But cellular connectivity is absolutely critical to my purchase decision...I want something light and small more like an iPad but with more computing smack and a keyboard.