Apple poised to build nearly 400K next-gen MacBook Airs this month - Page 3

I'd guess it's to do with price more than size though. If the 13" was offered at that price, it would sell very well too.

Once the MB is discontinued and the MBA gets the Sandy Bridge chips and doubles in performance, it will probably be a very popular item especially with students.

It is important that the features that make the unit a "full Mac" are maintained, both regarding a large enough (and such a good, not cramped) keyboard and a decent screen size. But these features CAN be maintained also in an even smaller footprint. And I agree that the iPad cannot deliver in this repect, but an iPad with a keyboard case (though NOT with for instance Logitec's and most others brands' cramped and bad keyboards) is coming a way close to what I want.

I will suggest a small model Air with a 9-10 inches screen, and perhaps also make one with a 6-7 inches screen. Of course this will challenge the possibilities of having a good and large eniugh keyboard (and this must be somewhat sacrified on the smallest units that I imagine). But the portability, mobility and even pocketability advantages will be great, and there are a lot of us that hope that Apple will use its creativity also in this area, with this formfactor.

Also: Perhaps making a clamshell iPhone with a physical keyboard can be a good idea. In our society now with so few people smoking, this can be designed like an elegant cigar case (with a size that could contain about 5 cigars). Especially in the business market segment this is a type of unit that I think a large number of persons will appreciate and buy. Just look around at different forums, and you will see that this is a need. (Nokia, and Psion before them, once upon a time had an excellent opportunity to develop such a device, but of reasons not understandable this idea was not developed, but cancelled with the S80 platform.

I think Apple can do real good business if they will begin to consider these ideas.

Not a chance at 10 hours or anything remotely close. I use Click to Flash and rarely open flash content, 4 hours. Started at 5, lasted a few months then down to 4.

Are you implying that this guy is some sort of troll? Since this is an Apple biased forum and he is saying what Apple fans like to hear, I don't see what the problem is. I figured you guys would appreciate it.

15" MBA would be awesome. I'd even buy a 17" MBA to match my 17" MBP.

Based on the popularity of the machines I think they could use that marketing for pushing a larger MBA. That doesn't mean it can't also have additional storage from a 2.5" HDD/SSDfor additional storage in that larger chassis. A 7mm HDD with one less platter than the 9.5mm HDDs/SSDs in the current MBPs could still offer additional storage, a 10 second boot time and up to 400GB total storage.

MR is saying the MBA refresh hits Wednesday:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/11/...his-wednesday/

I hope they are right.

I reckon with the ULV Ivy Bridge chips, the Macbook Pros will simply get thinner. They are already very fast, they just need to last longer on battery and run cooler.


There are also rumours about the Mini and Mac Pro:

http://www.9to5mac.com/71495/apple-u...ies-constrain/
http://www.9to5mac.com/63107/prototy...ble-stackable/

and store display arranging:

http://www.9to5mac.com/71691/apple-u...-on-wednesday/

Mr.X is usually quite reliable for info, he normally leaves a post with product codes before an update here on AI.

Given that Lion is due to drop next month, it makes perfect sense to have the entire lineup revamped. If the Mac Pro will indeed be redesigned, I expect it to have the same specs but possibly a lower price.

I wonder if Apple will be using the newer SSDs from Toshiba after all. They said no mass production until July. If they still have 64GB in the entry model, that puts a damper on it replacing the MB this time round.

Hopefully new Airport and Time Capsules, too. Just installed a 1TB HDD into my MBP with my SSD in the OptiBay and need a larger than 1TB external drive for my Time Machine backups. The downside of this setup (which is why I was sticking with my 500GB HDD) is that the SDD now has to sit in the OptiBay drive which has slowed down the speed measurably due to the OptiBay circuitry. However, it's still considerably faster than no SSD and gains me much needed internal storage.


I'm not sure they will replace the MacBook. My local Apple Store has the first table when you walk in the door with 4 MacBooks. The other two tables at the front of the store are all iPads. You don't get to any other Macs until the second and third set of tables. Has Apple ever prominently displayed a HW product it was planning to remove?

There's a limit to how thin they can make the plastic shell. The unibody plastic design is stronger than the previous one but Unibody metal is the way to go as plastic still cracks:

http://i39.tinypic.com/11hzyts.jpg

The base also gets dirty fairly easily. I certainly don't think it can outlast an Ivy Bridge MBA but it depends on how much value they put on internal storage.

Right now, a 500GB MB is $1099 and a 256GB MBA will hopefully be $1199 so a downgrade in capacity and $100 more but vastly improved storage performance and a much lighter and stronger machine.

A big thing for students is being able to shut the lid and dump it in your bag without worrying about knocks affecting the HDD. You can treat the SSD MBA like an iPad.

The OptiBay will take a 1TB HDD, why did you not leave the SSD in the main drive spot…?

Especially once the Thunderbolt drives start showing up and you can add and remove fast storage capacity as needed.

I'll be disappointed if these aren't on sale by this Wednesday...

Because it didn't fit. The fact that MCE doesn't even sell a 1TB drive option for the unibody is a clue.

Throw in a thunderbolt port and I'm sold.