the use of the integrated GPU is optional. i'm typing this post on a notebook equipped with a Core i5 and nVidia 310M.
And an extra interface chip aside from the discrete nVidia graphics chip that Apple simply doesn't have room for inside of the Air.
Frankly all this consternation over CPU speed is amusing - what are people going to do on an Air class machine that they need all this CPU power for? Encoding video? Final Cut Pro editing?
The CPU hasn't been the bottleneck for 90% of what people do on computers for several years now. It's a fine testament to Intel's marketing prowess that everyone is brainwashed into thinking if they don't have the CPU that was released last week their computing experience will grind to a halt.
Hard drives are the real bottleneck, and have been for some time. Up until SSD's and Flash based devices, hard drives hadn't kept pace with the rest of computing at all. I'm ecstatic that Apple dropped SATA from the new Air. It will be interesting to see these new drives benchmarked without the brain-dead SATA layer in the middle slowing things down with arcane abstractions of heads/cylinders, smaller data paths, etc... It will be interesting to see what Apple has really done here - the opportunities for parallelism are huge!
1) The 16:9 and 5 hour battery is a deal breaker for me. Heck the 7 hours on the 13” is a deal breaker for me.
not me - it's two hours better than my 12" PB G4.
The trade off is for the extreme portability - one I will gladly make.
Quote:
2) Is the storage based on mini-PCIe or SATA or something else?
We don't know. It's definitely NOT SATA - Jobs was pretty clear about that, albeit indirectly. This is the most exciting aspect of these new notebooks for me. Saddling SSD's with SATA has been grinding me for some time now. Thank god Apple is out there pushing the envelope with new honest to goodness engineering.
Quote:
3) What do comparable vendors charge for these machines? I did a quick search for a 11.6” ultra-portable but didn’t find anything really close to this MBA.
Everyone loved to point to the Acer equivalent except it weighed more, larger footprint, thicker (not as important to me as footprint), has a cheaper display (same resolution tho), lamer CPU, lame intel integrated GPU only, no flash drive...
As usual, not an apples to Apple comparison. I doubt you will find a directly comparable machine because there aren't any PC manufacturers bold enough to ignore the bottom trough and kick a solid mid-range machine out the door as their minimum offering.
This is a kick-ass ultra portable, and at it's price for the industrial design, it's going to be hard to beat. That won't stop the unrealistic comparisons and unrealistic complaints - but what else is new
Edit: charly on page 3 gave some pricing perspective. Interesting...
This is a kick-ass ultra portable, and at it's price for the industrial design, it's going to be hard to beat. That won't stop the unrealistic comparisons and unrealistic complaints - but what else is new
Edit: charly on page 3 gave some pricing perspective. Interesting...
I see Charly mentioned the Vaio Z.
Here is the Vaio X. I’ll play devil’s advocate. Sony made a kick ass 11” notebook* that gets 12 hours of battery life or 10 hours of battery on max brightness and it’s only 1.6 pounds** and comes with a 2GHz processor. That’s right, it’s a lot faster than that crappy 11” AirBook Mac.
* I say notebook but it’s really just very expensive netbook due to the use of an Atom processor, which is how it can get that battery life. Of course, if that is enough CPU for you then great. It also comes with a GMA500 GPU so it’s not like it’s great in the display department either.
** It’s common tactic for trolls or the woefully uninformed to pull the best points of a product and pair them together even though that don’t co-exist. The battery life is only 3 hours at defualt settings f you go with the standard battery which keeps it at the 1.6lb weight. Note at that price exceeding it already exceeds the high-end stock 11.6” MBA, and that’s before you add the weight and cost of the extended battery.
And why isn't the 256GB SSD available with the 11.6" model?
Space? Did you pay attention to the pictures of the motherboards? There's not a spare millimeter in there (not that I wouldn't like 256GB in the 11" since that's the machine that most appeals to me).
Here's a question. COULD Apple make a Netbook? Nobody here would doubt it! So why don't they?
Because the rate of return isn't worth it?
Because they don't have to?
Because they are perfectly content letting PC manufacturers kill themselves with the money loosing netbooks and sucky user experience perpetuated by netbooks? For all their millions of sales, where is the reward for the PC manufacturers? It sure isn't reflected in their profit or stock price.
The pundits are right - iPads are displaying computer sales - but it's not Mac sales as this quarters numbers have shown!
No backlit keyboard ? Is Apple crazy ? What is the point of emphasize on mobility when you don't allow people to use in dark ?
I agree that a backlit keyboard would be a nice feature, but your suggestion that it?s unusable in the dark, that Apple ?don?t allow" people to use it in the dark, that Apple could have added it but choose to just frak with people, or that the very bright backlit display can?t illuminate the keyboard as a less than ideal but very viable option are all silly.
It's not a netbook, because according to Steve Jobs, Apple doesn't know how to make a netbook that isn't junk.
That said, the Air has specs that are much better than your typical netbook.
i think you (and actually several other people in the thread) are conflating several remarks from Jobs, several years apart.
Two years ago, during an earnings conference call (and near the beginning of the recession), he said this in a response to a question about cutting Mac prices to be more competitive:
Quote:
"What we want to do is deliver an increasing level of value to these customers, but there are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk; our DNA will not let us do that. We've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody, and you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy."
During the same conference call he was asked specifically about netbooks and said that Apple was taking a "wait and see" attitude and that they had "some interesting ideas" about the segment.
And then earlier this year, during the introduction of the iPad he dismissed netbooks as slow, having poor quality screens and being burdened with Windows software.
I think in general most people understand that "netbook" is shorthand for "cheap little laptop that cuts a lot of corners to sell you something for under $300" and it's obvious why Jobs would have no interest in that idea. And then the idea is further muddied by "netbooks" that keep getting bigger and more expensive, until it's unclear why we are obliged to call them netbooks and not cheap laptops.
So any idea that Apple or Jobs have reversed course with regards to "netbooks" is unfounded, IMO.
i think you (and actually several other people in the thread) are conflating several remarks from Jobs, several years apart.
Two years ago, during an earnings conference call (and near the beginning of the recession, he said this in a response to a question about cutting Mac prices to be more competitive:
During the same conference call he was asked specifically about netbooks and said that Apple was taking a "wait and see" attitude and that they had "some interesting ideas" about the segment.
And then earlier this year, during the introduction of the iPad he dismissed netbooks as slow, having poor quality screens and being burdened with Windows software.
I think in general most people understand that "netbook" is shorthand for "cheap little laptop that cuts a lot of corners to sell you something for under $300" and it's obvious why Jobs would have no interest in that idea. And then the idea is further muddied by "netbooks" that keep getting bigger and more expensive, until it's unclear why we are obliged to call the netbooks and not cheap laptop.
So any idea that Apple or Jobs have reversed course with regards to "netbooks" is unfounded, IMO.
Nice recollection or research, either way I had forgotten about most of those statements until you mentioned them. I think it?s clear this is Apple?s ?interesting ideas? about the small notebook market.
i think you (and actually several other people in the thread) are conflating several remarks from Jobs, several years apart.
Yea, he then releases a $500 iPad years later.
He's not against the idea of a cheap client device, so long it's HIS idea.
Move the touch pad to a horizontal plane and replace the ARM with a Via Nano, Atom, or CULV and whaaaa?
No, it's been done, can't do it.
Not that at least 500 people on the planet will be happy with their new MacBook Airs. If I see one of you I'll wink in your direction and give you a thumbs up to represent.
No backlit keyboard ? Is Apple crazy ? What is the point of emphasize on mobility when you don't allow people to use in dark ?
People still have to look at keyboards? Hmph...
Do even half of the PC notebooks out there have backlit keyboards? This is what, one of two Apple models that doesn't? And for it's size and battery capacity, I can easily see them ditching a luxury feature like a backlit keyboard.
It's a machine of trade offs. If you want it all, head over to the MacBook Pro.
I'm impressed. I think these new MacBook Airs demonstrate Apple's ability to think outside the box. The PC manufacturers (HP, Dell, and Acer, Asus) are more like systems integrators rather than product designers. A comparable thin-and-light Sony VAIO X is closest to being designed, but it's no MacBook Air.
Comments
the use of the integrated GPU is optional. i'm typing this post on a notebook equipped with a Core i5 and nVidia 310M.
And an extra interface chip aside from the discrete nVidia graphics chip that Apple simply doesn't have room for inside of the Air.
Frankly all this consternation over CPU speed is amusing - what are people going to do on an Air class machine that they need all this CPU power for? Encoding video? Final Cut Pro editing?
The CPU hasn't been the bottleneck for 90% of what people do on computers for several years now. It's a fine testament to Intel's marketing prowess that everyone is brainwashed into thinking if they don't have the CPU that was released last week their computing experience will grind to a halt.
Hard drives are the real bottleneck, and have been for some time. Up until SSD's and Flash based devices, hard drives hadn't kept pace with the rest of computing at all. I'm ecstatic that Apple dropped SATA from the new Air. It will be interesting to see these new drives benchmarked without the brain-dead SATA layer in the middle slowing things down with arcane abstractions of heads/cylinders, smaller data paths, etc... It will be interesting to see what Apple has really done here - the opportunities for parallelism are huge!
1) The 16:9 and 5 hour battery is a deal breaker for me. Heck the 7 hours on the 13” is a deal breaker for me.
not me - it's two hours better than my 12" PB G4.
The trade off is for the extreme portability - one I will gladly make.
2) Is the storage based on mini-PCIe or SATA or something else?
We don't know. It's definitely NOT SATA - Jobs was pretty clear about that, albeit indirectly. This is the most exciting aspect of these new notebooks for me. Saddling SSD's with SATA has been grinding me for some time now. Thank god Apple is out there pushing the envelope with new honest to goodness engineering.
3) What do comparable vendors charge for these machines? I did a quick search for a 11.6” ultra-portable but didn’t find anything really close to this MBA.
Everyone loved to point to the Acer equivalent except it weighed more, larger footprint, thicker (not as important to me as footprint), has a cheaper display (same resolution tho), lamer CPU, lame intel integrated GPU only, no flash drive...
As usual, not an apples to Apple comparison. I doubt you will find a directly comparable machine because there aren't any PC manufacturers bold enough to ignore the bottom trough and kick a solid mid-range machine out the door as their minimum offering.
This is a kick-ass ultra portable, and at it's price for the industrial design, it's going to be hard to beat. That won't stop the unrealistic comparisons and unrealistic complaints - but what else is new
Edit: charly on page 3 gave some pricing perspective. Interesting...
That's a lot of presentations, but it's barely enough to hold my iPhoto library.
It's not meant to be the machine to hold your entire iPhoto library...
OK so no optical drive. How do you/I install new programs? I missed the presentation so I guess I have to wait.
Same way as the current drive-less Airs? External drive or over the network by sharing a drive from your existing Mac or PC?
DVD or CD Sharing - look in the sharing system preference if you are on Snow Leopard.
Instructions for Mac and Windows: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1777?viewlocale=en_US
Also, I'm not sure why they made the 11" one at all.
Thank god Apple isn't you - the 11" is finally the much needed successor to my 12" PB G4.
Doesn't anyone read any more?
People can read - they just don't choose to comprehend
This is a kick-ass ultra portable, and at it's price for the industrial design, it's going to be hard to beat. That won't stop the unrealistic comparisons and unrealistic complaints - but what else is new
Edit: charly on page 3 gave some pricing perspective. Interesting...
I see Charly mentioned the Vaio Z.
Here is the Vaio X. I’ll play devil’s advocate. Sony made a kick ass 11” notebook* that gets 12 hours of battery life or 10 hours of battery on max brightness and it’s only 1.6 pounds** and comes with a 2GHz processor. That’s right, it’s a lot faster than that crappy 11” AirBook Mac.
* I say notebook but it’s really just very expensive netbook due to the use of an Atom processor, which is how it can get that battery life. Of course, if that is enough CPU for you then great. It also comes with a GMA500 GPU so it’s not like it’s great in the display department either.
** It’s common tactic for trolls or the woefully uninformed to pull the best points of a product and pair them together even though that don’t co-exist. The battery life is only 3 hours at defualt settings f you go with the standard battery which keeps it at the 1.6lb weight. Note at that price exceeding it already exceeds the high-end stock 11.6” MBA, and that’s before you add the weight and cost of the extended battery.
† Trolls never seem to get the names right.
And why isn't the 256GB SSD available with the 11.6" model?
Space? Did you pay attention to the pictures of the motherboards? There's not a spare millimeter in there (not that I wouldn't like 256GB in the 11" since that's the machine that most appeals to me).
Here's a question. COULD Apple make a Netbook? Nobody here would doubt it! So why don't they?
Because the rate of return isn't worth it?
Because they don't have to?
Because they are perfectly content letting PC manufacturers kill themselves with the money loosing netbooks and sucky user experience perpetuated by netbooks? For all their millions of sales, where is the reward for the PC manufacturers? It sure isn't reflected in their profit or stock price.
The pundits are right - iPads are displaying computer sales - but it's not Mac sales as this quarters numbers have shown!
I hope you aren't implying the iPad has outsold netbooks combined
This time next year it's going to be "netbook what?"
No backlit keyboard ? Is Apple crazy ? What is the point of emphasize on mobility when you don't allow people to use in dark ?
I agree that a backlit keyboard would be a nice feature, but your suggestion that it?s unusable in the dark, that Apple ?don?t allow" people to use it in the dark, that Apple could have added it but choose to just frak with people, or that the very bright backlit display can?t illuminate the keyboard as a less than ideal but very viable option are all silly.
It's not a netbook, because according to Steve Jobs, Apple doesn't know how to make a netbook that isn't junk.
That said, the Air has specs that are much better than your typical netbook.
i think you (and actually several other people in the thread) are conflating several remarks from Jobs, several years apart.
Two years ago, during an earnings conference call (and near the beginning of the recession), he said this in a response to a question about cutting Mac prices to be more competitive:
"What we want to do is deliver an increasing level of value to these customers, but there are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk; our DNA will not let us do that. We've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody, and you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy."
During the same conference call he was asked specifically about netbooks and said that Apple was taking a "wait and see" attitude and that they had "some interesting ideas" about the segment.
And then earlier this year, during the introduction of the iPad he dismissed netbooks as slow, having poor quality screens and being burdened with Windows software.
I think in general most people understand that "netbook" is shorthand for "cheap little laptop that cuts a lot of corners to sell you something for under $300" and it's obvious why Jobs would have no interest in that idea. And then the idea is further muddied by "netbooks" that keep getting bigger and more expensive, until it's unclear why we are obliged to call them netbooks and not cheap laptops.
So any idea that Apple or Jobs have reversed course with regards to "netbooks" is unfounded, IMO.
i think you (and actually several other people in the thread) are conflating several remarks from Jobs, several years apart.
Two years ago, during an earnings conference call (and near the beginning of the recession, he said this in a response to a question about cutting Mac prices to be more competitive:
During the same conference call he was asked specifically about netbooks and said that Apple was taking a "wait and see" attitude and that they had "some interesting ideas" about the segment.
And then earlier this year, during the introduction of the iPad he dismissed netbooks as slow, having poor quality screens and being burdened with Windows software.
I think in general most people understand that "netbook" is shorthand for "cheap little laptop that cuts a lot of corners to sell you something for under $300" and it's obvious why Jobs would have no interest in that idea. And then the idea is further muddied by "netbooks" that keep getting bigger and more expensive, until it's unclear why we are obliged to call the netbooks and not cheap laptop.
So any idea that Apple or Jobs have reversed course with regards to "netbooks" is unfounded, IMO.
Nice recollection or research, either way I had forgotten about most of those statements until you mentioned them. I think it?s clear this is Apple?s ?interesting ideas? about the small notebook market.
i think you (and actually several other people in the thread) are conflating several remarks from Jobs, several years apart.
Yea, he then releases a $500 iPad years later.
He's not against the idea of a cheap client device, so long it's HIS idea.
Move the touch pad to a horizontal plane and replace the ARM with a Via Nano, Atom, or CULV and whaaaa?
No, it's been done, can't do it.
Not that at least 500 people on the planet will be happy with their new MacBook Airs. If I see one of you I'll wink in your direction and give you a thumbs up to represent.
No backlit keyboard ? Is Apple crazy ? What is the point of emphasize on mobility when you don't allow people to use in dark ?
People still have to look at keyboards? Hmph...
Do even half of the PC notebooks out there have backlit keyboards? This is what, one of two Apple models that doesn't? And for it's size and battery capacity, I can easily see them ditching a luxury feature like a backlit keyboard.
It's a machine of trade offs. If you want it all, head over to the MacBook Pro.
Yea, he then releases a $500 iPad years later.
He's not against the idea of a cheap client device, so long it's HIS idea.
The iPad is not a cheap client device. The inability of their competitors to follow in their footsteps kind of puts that to bed.
Yet, I agree MBA's target audience has a lot of much more practical stuff to cope with. The difference between ``on' ' and ``up' ' for one.
But flash chips seem indeed sitting on a mezzanine...
P.S. Then ``Can't wait & blah-blah-blah...' '