Apple releases new MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt, backlit keyboards - Page 3

The new MacBook Airs deliver most of what they should, with two big exceptions:

8GB or even 16GB RAM option
SDXC slot

To include only an SD slot, and then only on the 13" model, is a joke.
An SDXC card could hold easily another 128GB of slow storage, enough to store e.g. the iTunes library or other mostly static content, to bring up storage capacity to a useful 384GB.

8GB RAM would significantly reduce paging, and thus wear on the SSD.

This means more paging and a faster road to hardware failure.

Otherwise, particularly the 11" model, would be just what's needed for a small, ultra-portable machine.

Ignore him. It seems like he brings this up every time Apple intros a new product in the UK....

According to a report from the Apple forums (someone who spoke with an Apple genius), the new i5 and i7 processors for the MBA are blocked from being able to Turbo or hyperthread. You'll notice that none of the promo materials mention the turbo ability, which you will find for the MBP. This is a real disappointment for anyone considering jumping to a MBA for their main workhorse. I assume Apple had heat issues putting the new Sandy Bridge processors into the MBA body.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15659814#15659814

So, what about that whole much faster SSD rumor? There is no indication of its speed on the website. Hopefully reviews will cover that soon, as well as whether or not HT and Turbo Boost are disabled as they are not mentioned.

I was really looking forward to HT and Turbo Boost, with those together this would really become a day to day option for me. I liked the last ones but you could feel it hit the processor wall quickly, without the two features it won't be as dramatic an improvement.

No these are dual-core i7 processors. The processors in the MBA were all announced 6/19 and 6/20/11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_b...ile_processors Quad core i7s can be found in the MBP and iMac

Stronger consumer law in what way? What "other things that make doing business in the UK more expensive"? The 13" Air w/128Gb SSD in the US Store is £803 or £963 with VAT @ 20%. The actual price in the UK Store is £1099.

It's strange everyone keeps saying that it's so hard and expensive to do business in the UK...the reason that so much international business and financial activity happens in the City of London is because it's not difficult or expensive to do business in the UK...

The only turn off of the new air, is that it does not have much of an upgrade from the GPU. the Intel 3000 discrete GPU is only slightly better than the 320m. But at least it now has a nicer screen, backlite keyboard, and second gen i5/i7 processor.

If they had revamped the GPU, this laptop would have changed everything. But the battery life goes to show they did not have room for much else.

Curious, US companies have high cost of doing business because they must (or usually) cover many social costs, most notably health insurance, that are often covered by government (and funded by consumption & income taxes) in other countries. Other social costs that are high for US businesses include a share of retirement costs (Medicare and Social Security), Unemploment costs, Workmen's Compenation (for injured workers), etc. And we have some regulations that are a burden as well (EPA, OSHA, etc).

So is the "cost of doing business" really so much higher in the UK? Note that another European country is doing really well despite high costs of doing business (Germany).

maaaan i'm disappointed about the flash size. the appleinsider article which mentioned the size upgrade for the base model was totally misleading

The two pieces of legislation that come to mind are the Distance Selling Regulations and the Sale of Goods Act.

The Distance Selling Regulations entitle consumers to cancel an order for any reason (including "I changed my mind") and receive a full refund, including 1-way shipping costs (consumer must pay to return items to seller), at any point with seven days after the day they receive the goods. The consumer does not have to return the item in the original packaging or maintain the goods in a state that would enable the seller to sell the item again as new to someone else once the item has been returned. This only applies to hardware items bought online or by mail-order, but I imagine most hardware Apple sells here is via their online store.

The Sale of Goods Act states that items must be of suitable quality and durability, and that consumers have up to 6 years from date of purchase to make claims against the seller under the act. The act is deliberately vague and refers to "reasonableness" - not every product can reasonably be expected to last 6 years, so you can't claim that a toothbrush you bought for 30p should last 6 years. However, I have successfully used the Sale of Goods Act to get Apple to replace a faulty PowerBook G4 battery when the battery was well outside its "official" guarantee/warranty period.



A few things, definitely not an exhaustive list:

1.) The minimum wage here is £5.93 an hour for over 21s. This equates to $9.55 at today's exchange rate. According to the list of U.S. minimum wages on wikipedia, this is considerably higher than any minimum wage in the U.S. Of course, how much this affects Apple depends on how many low-wage employees (e.g. cleaners) Apple employs (directly or indirectly).

2.) Whilst corporation tax is low, we've got other taxes like national insurance. National Insurance is ludicrously complicated but in general an employer has to pay 13.8% tax on any salary above £7,072 ($11,408.83) per annum paid to an employee. So, if you pay someone £30,000 ($48,397.20) per annum, you pay £3164.06 ($5104.39) National Insurance tax. In general our tax system is extremely complex and expensive for large employers to comply with (need to employ lots of accountants to make sure you're getting it right)

3.) Petrol (gasoline) is massively more expensive here. Today's average for standard unleaded was £1.3562 per litre which equates to $8.28 per gallon at today's exchange rate.

4.) Gas and Electricity are much more expensive here.


That's financial services, not businesses running retail operations and selling consumer goods.

You are aware that a 128GB SDXC card is over a grand right? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820171515

128GB USB keys as cheap as $230, 256 for $600. Spend slightly than the SDXC card more for 2 of the 256GB USB keys and triple your storage. This is all well beyond what most people will consider tho, esp since they can grab a 2TB external for WAY cheaper, say $90.

And it sticks out of the slot. Apple don't use a push-to-eject spring-loaded slot (which results in the memory card edge lying flush with the computer's casework edge when the card is fully inserted) unlike most other manufacturers.

I was all worked up but screw it.
One, you can't get the i7 unless you go high end with the 13 inch $1500.00 model.
Two, I read that gamers and serious video folk will be disappointed buy the performance.

It's kotatsu's favourite complaint, it's not the first thread he's made it in and it's not the first time he's received your appropriate explanation.

I'm no tech know it all and I don't own an Air, but I don't fully understand those complaining about no 8gb or no this or that. To ME the MBA is for those on the go, or dont need a ton of processing power or those who want an 'entry-level' Mac, etc. If a person wants more RAM, bigger HDD, etc they should buy a MBP not an Air. That's why they have two classes of laptop just buy a Pro. I know everyone wants what they want and are entitled to their wants, but it can't be that simple as to buy a Pro, so I acquiesce to others who know more.

I think everyone here could be confusing/conflating the issue. Both i5 and i7 chips have this turbo boost feature, but only the i7's have the ability to double the number of cores in a virtual sense. I really doubt Apple somehow blocked the i7's in the MBA from creating virtual cores, this is the only thing that separates it from the i5. If it can't do that, it has no reason for being, no performance benefit whatsoever over an i5. So while it does make sense for them to block the turboboosting for heat reasons, I don't think there's any reason for them to block an i7 from creating virtual cores.

And incidentally there's a real tangible benefit from having those virtual cores, this can be as much as another 50% in speed over the equivalent i5. It's very worth it for threaded processing.

From the literature I've read it would appear the thermal saving measure here is that these are low mhz dual core i7's when your typical i7 runs a full 1ghz higher and will be quad core. That would mean the MBA runs with 4 cores (2 real, 2 virtual) and your typical desktop i7 runs with 8 cores (4 real, 4 virtual). I can live with that compromise, I'm sure they will make up that difference to some extent by being later generation/smaller die.

I agree.... I wanted 8gb of RAM.... More or less needed in 64 bit OS's these days....

I would replace my Macbook with an MBA over an iPad. By the time I got the keyboard, docking station, and cover it would come within $200 to an entry level MBA. That and the MBA has more utility for me that the iPad cannot bring.

Went ahead and ordered the almost top-of-the-line 11.6'' Air. Was impressed with the original models back in October, but didn't like the lack of backlit keyboard. Now that has been added, along with better processors, I figured now was as good a time as any other to get one.

Will now be looking to sell or give away my older MacBook, one of the original unibody models, before it got rebranded as the 13'' Pro.

Doesn't the 11.6'' have a BTO for a i7? I'm sure it does, I believe that's what I ordered...

Firstly, kudos to Apple for not ramping-up the price points.

I honestly thought, given that the previous generation of MacBook Air has been such a runaway success that they wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation to ramp-up the prices again.

Regardless, it does demonstrate just how wrong Apple got the original MacBook Air price points. It turns out that consumers aren't stupid, and that if you ask a reasonable price for a reasonable machine, it'll sell well.

As an owner of an 11" MacBook Air, this looks like a solid (and very tempting) refresh from where I'm sitting. I quite fancy the increased pixel count of the 13" MBA, and an upgrade to 4GB of RAM.

With regards to the RAM ceiling, yes of course 8GB would have been nice, but as I've found out, thanks to the SSD being so bloody fast, memory hungry applications that swap-out really don't take that much of a performance hit. I guess we'll eventually get to a tipping point where the mass storage will become so fast that the amount of RAM installed will become less of an issue.

As a previous poster mentioned, the high end 11.6 inch does have the option for a i7. I think it's $150 more so around $1350 for the 11.6

I was under the impression that the SSD on the MacBook Pro was much faster than the conventional HD, and thus considering the 13" MacBook Pro. Is this not really true?

And isn't the 2.7 i7 noticeably faster than the 2.3 i5 or the 2,4 Core 2 Duo?

Thanks all !

Thank you for saying this. This is what people need to hear. From my experience, the 13" Air runs great with 4GB of RAM. I have no experience with the 11" and its 2GB except at the Apple store, where it too seems just fine.

You'll probably notice a difference when it comes to tasks like compressing video, but day to day browsing and email, you won't se any difference between the i5 and i7. They both drag the c2d out back and take it out Casino style tho

TAKE HEED.

This nonsense is exactly why I'm so pessimistic. People complaining about optimistic crap that was never going to happen in the first place.

They probably could not squeeze an HD camera into this thin, thin, thin bezel. They also could leave it out intentionally to help save battery life (I can say for sure that FaceTime HD camera in my 2011 MBP sucks battery juice like no other).

Unless you're going to be running a web server off that thing, the wear rates of modern SSD's will most likely never come into play for the vast majority of consumers. I'd have liked 4GB to be the absolute baseline though, that said.

Actually, Intel's website says that the ULV i5 processor actually DOES have Hyperthreading.

i5 link

i7 link

So the real difference between the 2 is just clock speed. I find it hard to believe Apple would really block the TurboBoost feature in the MBA's. Then what is the point of the i7 processors? If they're operating at only their base frequency of 1.8Ghz (for the i7) and can never get to the 2.9Ghz TurboBoost speed, then it would've made more sense to keep the Core 2 Duo's and upgrade the graphics to the 330M, or whatever the next iteration of the 320M was.

However, the benchmarks posted on MacRumors for the new MBA's indicate that performance is substantially higher than the previous generation, which makes me think that TurboBoost being turned off is bogus.

Considering the Mini store page, under the Processor Learn More option, it says both hyperthreading and turbo are active....I think that whole issue is dead

"Apple don't use"?

This is very unlike you.\

Come on Melgross, this is a classic case of British vs. American treatment of collective nouns. In British English, "Apple don't" (treating "Apple" as if it were a plural) and "Apple doesn't" (treating "Apple" as if it were a singular) are equally acceptable.

It reads really oddly over here. It may be correct either way there, but not here.

LOL you are both awesome.

I agree with Mr. H though, the way the SD card reader is designed is so un-Apple. It's hard to tell if it's "in" or "out" but worse still, it can't stay in there as a second hard drive, as I think many of us would want to use it as. (a cheap way of adding say 32 or 64 gigs, costing only $30 for 32 gigs for example).

What happens now with the SD card is very dangerous. For example, I have a hard case I put my MBP in and it's just big enough for the computer, not but a millimeter in either direction on each side of extra space. To use it with a card in, I have to prop it up on one side, on the lip, so it's slanted a bit downward to the other side. If it slips, the weight of the MBP is applied onto the card. Also if you were to move the MBP around you might catch on something if the card were hanging out. Very bad design, again I'm surprised it passed the first design review, let alone stuck around. And I take it the reader still won't do SDXC either? Overall I'm glad Apple went with the card reader, it definitely makes sense for the air. Air users want portability and it means not having to lug around the camera's USB cable, and it's faster as well.

Nevertheless, my wife will be getting the new 11" Air. Would I be correct to assume that the Intel HD 3000 graphics uses less battery than a NVIDIA 320M? (The slightly slower speed would be worth the extra battery gain in my opinion).

It's too thin to give it a lip to pull it out and a spring mechanism can break over time so it's probably designed the best way to be durable. Having to remove the card every time is a bit inconvenient but it can be used to keep infrequently accessed files on.

To expand on what Marvin said, I'm sure the design is quite deliberate - no moving parts maximises durability of the port, and not having to accommodate the whole depth of a card or an eject mechanism minimises the space taken up by the port.

It's possible that they experimented with a design where you could fully insert the card, with small indents machined into the casing above and below the card edge to allow you to "pinch" the card to remove it, but rejected it because they couldn't make the indents large enough for adult fingertips.

You make good points and I see what both of you are are saying. However, that does not explain the crappy design in MacBook Pros. And I still think it'd be nice if they somehow created a lip and let it go all the way in on the Air, even without a spring. But perhaps that would be too unreliable, delicate, and costly as you said Mr. H.

Your statement of "crappy design" points to your misunderstanding the purpose of the SD card slot in Macs. It is not designed to be a boot drive or integral to the Mac's operation, but as a way to transfer data, hence it's not designed to fit completely inside the device like it would in a digital camera. You can certainly use it in an atypical way but I don't see why someone would choose to, say, use it as a boot drive over a deive with actual speed and capacity to make it viable.

I've tried to use a 16GB SD card Class 6 as a restore drive and it was too slow, taking minutes to boot. Creating a partition on the internal drive or via a USB drive make a lot more sense. Note that USB drives don't sit inside the machine either.

Personally I say don't waste the space and resort to actual "crappy design" by making my notebook more likely to break down due to having more moving parts. We're finally stepping forward by eliminating the ODD, lets not take a step backwards.

I didn't mean as a boot drive, I meant as a secondary drive to store media or other longterm storage. I think that would be perfect, considering large SSDs are still 400 or 500$.