What's your definition of "real work"? And does whatever not fall into those very specific use cases considered "fake" work?
Well, clearly most of my work is fake. I have suspected this for many years now and dread the day I am found out. That's why I have a packed suitcase by my front door. When someone rings the door and tells me I've been found out I can just grab it and go.
I'm struggling to identify the use cases for a larger iPad than the current iPad Air, unless of course it is a convertible. With the MB Air and MB Pro getting so close, especially if they slap a retina display on the Air, maybe the next generation Air will be a convertible to drive greater differentiation between the two product lines. Think about a 12" MB Air with retina touch screen that optionally detaches. If they keep the keyboard and trackpad quality as great as it currently is on the Air line I think it will crush the floppy keyboard Surface even further into its dark hole. Being a convertible does not mean the keyboard and trackpad have to suck.
Regarding "real" work, I've yet to find a laptop or notebook that provides a really good experience for doing software development (XCode, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.) without a seriously large external monitor or two and access to big storage. Sure you can use it without external augmentation in a crunch, but it's like living in a one room efficiency apartment with a fold out couch, four kids, and two dogs. You won't die but you'll be half crazy in no time at all.
I'm struggling to identify the use cases for a larger iPad than the current iPad Air
Any kind of drawing and graphics related work (creation). Any kind of audio visual post production work where touch is of benefit and a larger display is required. Architectural and technical drawing work. And I can imagine there are many uses where a larger mainly stationary touch screen would be applicable.
Who knows what kind of peripherals would work with such a device but I'd imagine more than your standard iPad.
This is one overhyped machine. At the end of the day it will still be a vastly underpowered Mac for doing any real work on OS X.
Well if this was a ploy to lure everyone in to comment on it seems to have worked. Not sure what you mean by real work, as I seem to remember doing real work on my first Titanium 500 which contained a CPU that is no where near as powerful as the slowest ARM cpu that Apple sells in their iPads today. Overhyped, by who, you, certainly not anyone here, yeah sure, we all want a 12" MacBook Air Retina, but I mean it's kind of overdue don't you think, pretty much every notebook on sale today in the same price bracket has at least a 1080P display, heck, even 380 dollar ChromeBooks have 1080P displays now, so this is just a logical next step, overhyped no, anticipated, overdue, borderline shameful, absolutely.
Regarding "real" work, I've yet to find a laptop or notebook that provides a really good experience for doing software development (XCode, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.) without a seriously large external monitor or two and access to big storage. Sure you can use it without external augmentation in a crunch, but it's like living in a one room efficiency apartment with a fold out couch, four kids, and two dogs. You won't die but you'll be half crazy in no time at all.
Really, wow, I can write pretty much any program using just VI and a 10" tablet display. I've even written 1200 lines of code using nothing but a Nokia N950 during a 12 hour layover in Tokyo. I hate writing code on huge monitors, though I don't need a visual stunning IDE, I do it in my head, not bragging here as I'm not alone, every single decent programmer I know uses either a MacBook or a Lenovo ThinkPad that is 14" or less, the Air and X series being the favorites.
ARM based notebook running iOS would be awesome! But... 12'' iPad rumor would be meaningless. But.. still... 12'' iPad with iOS and add-on keyboard might be this ARM based notebook. Cant wait for Apple doing awesome things. But wait.. Chromebooks.......
Running iOS apps would be cool but it would need more of an iOS to be useful to me. The problem right now is that I use my iPad and MBP in two different ways. As such an iOS based laptop wouldn't replace my MBP and thus wouldn't have a valid reason to exist. At least for me.
Give me an ARM based laptop though that has the flexibility of Mac OS based machine but can run iOS apps well and I might have a different opinion. The big issue for me is the freedom to use the USB ports as I please and to have easily installed drivers that can support a variety of external software.
I'm struggling to identify the use cases for a larger iPad than the current iPad Air, unless of course it is a convertible. With the MB Air and MB Pro getting so close, especially if they slap a retina display on the Air, maybe the next generation Air will be a convertible to drive greater differentiation between the two product lines.
The problem here is that the machines aren't close in performance and frankly the screen means very little. Remember people purchased the old MBP in droves even if retina wasn't a known quantity. MBP get purchased for their professional qualities, including performance.
Think about a 12" MB Air with retina touch screen that optionally detaches. If they keep the keyboard and trackpad quality as great as it currently is on the Air line I think it will crush the floppy keyboard Surface even further into its dark hole. Being a convertible does not mean the keyboard and trackpad have to suck.
Regarding "real" work, I've yet to find a laptop or notebook that provides a really good experience for doing software development (XCode, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.) without a seriously large external monitor or two and access to big storage.
Screen size is a factor but remember external screens are well supported in Mac OS.
Sure you can use it without external augmentation in a crunch, but it's like living in a one room efficiency apartment with a fold out couch, four kids, and two dogs. You won't die but you'll be half crazy in no time at all.
The problem here is that software, especially Xcode, has become more demanding of hardware over the years. You will always end up within crowded feeling if your hardware is on the old side.
Running iOS apps would be cool but it would need more of an iOS to be useful to me. The problem right now is that I use my iPad and MBP in two different ways. As such an iOS based laptop wouldn't replace my MBP and thus wouldn't have a valid reason to exist. At least for me.
Give me an ARM based laptop though that has the flexibility of Mac OS based machine but can run iOS apps well and I might have a different opinion. The big issue for me is the freedom to use the USB ports as I please and to have easily installed drivers that can support a variety of external software.
....and have the ability to run more apps in the background, better communication between apps especially music creation, built in file-manager, more memory, etc. There is actually a very big list of things that needs to be done to iOS before I would even consider using it as my default OS, basically it needs to be OSX with a touch friendly interface. Until such time my iPad will always be just a tool amongst the many that I use, a good tool but never my primary.
....and have the ability to run more apps in the background, better communication between apps especially music creation, built in file-manager, more memory, etc.
IOS and the devices it runs on, will advance anyways. At the very least I'd expect to see more RAM and expanding multitasking capabilities with iPad hardware this year.
Things like file manager access is why I'd want a Mac OS derived operating system. It would be a snap for Apple to support tablet apps on an ARM based laptop.
There is actually a very big list of things that needs to be done to iOS before I would even consider using it as my default OS, basically it needs to be OSX with a touch friendly interface.
That is basically what I'm asking for. Touch would be taken care of initially via iOS apps running in a separate environment.
Until such time my iPad will always be just a tool amongst the many that I use, a good tool but never my primary.
I do find iPad a bit frustrating as it could be far more useful. However I do like it far more for things like logging into Appleinsider and other web related activities.
Real work often means having 10-12 Apps open in the background to switch between.
Real work implies Safari and Mail both running smoothly.
Real work implies CREATING a file. Be it a keynote, PDF, video or audio file.
All of the above I find Apple's slower machines (looking at you, MBA) to suck at. If you want a machine that is not constantly handicapped by a small amount of RAM, and very low clock speed, do not get a MacBook Air.
The 13" Retina MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and up is the bare minimum machine for real work.
All of the above I find Apple's slower machines (looking at you, MBA) to suck at. If you want a machine that is not constantly handicapped by a small amount of RAM, and very low clock speed, do not get a MacBook Air.
The 13" Retina MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and up is the bare minimum machine for real work.
The 13" Air with the $100 8GB RAM upgrade is close to the MBP. The clock speed is irrelevant as they dynamically overclock. The raw performance is here:
The MBP is 6620, the Air is 5304, just under 25% faster, the GPU is about the same increase, which you wouldn't notice. The Retina display is better but performance-wise, you wouldn't tell the difference side by side.
Real work often means having 10-12 Apps open in the background to switch between.
Real work implies Safari and Mail both running smoothly.
At the same time too.
Real work implies CREATING a file. Be it a keynote, PDF, video or audio file.
Or processing data which often leads to a new file. It is often surprising to find out how much actual creation happens on people's PC's. Often nothing is created, thus anniPad can be a perfect fit for these people.
All of the above I find Apple's slower machines (looking at you, MBA) to suck at. If you want a machine that is not constantly handicapped by a small amount of RAM, and very low clock speed, do not get a MacBook Air.
The lack of cores is also a significant issue.
The 13" Retina MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and up is the bare minimum machine for real work.
It isn't a bad machine that is for certain. I just don't think a lot of people grasp how big the gap in performance is between the MBA and just about all other Apple products. The Air's get better with each Intel release but the nature of the machine means that they will always trail the other Apple hardware.
Marvin, this is very misleading and I think you missed the point the original poster was trying to make. That is that the Air suffers significantly under any professional usage profiles.
The 13" Air with the $100 8GB RAM upgrade is close to the MBP. The clock speed is irrelevant as they dynamically overclock. The raw performance is here:
The benchmarks don't really mean a lot in this context. What is important is how the machine behaves when heavily loaded. In fact there are situations where even a power user can impact machine performance doing minor things at the same time. For a power suer it is easy to bring these machines to a crawl.
The MBP is 6620, the Air is 5304, just under 25% faster, the GPU is about the same increase, which you wouldn't notice. The Retina display is better but performance-wise, you wouldn't tell the difference side by side.
So? Really it is how the machine runs when you have multiple processes vying for processor time that counts for many pro users.
Marvin, this is very misleading and I think you missed the point the original poster was trying to make. That is that the Air suffers significantly under any professional usage profiles.
That's what some people like to believe but it's not true with newer models.
In fact there are situations where even a power user can impact machine performance doing minor things at the same time. For a power suer it is easy to bring these machines to a crawl.
Not for the Air any more so than the 13" rMBP. The 15" rMBP is significantly more powerful but the Air and 13" rMBP are very close.
It isn't a bad machine that is for certain. I just don't think a lot of people grasp how big the gap in performance is between the MBA and just about all other Apple products. The Air's get better with each Intel release but the nature of the machine means that they will always trail the other Apple hardware.
Sure but that's okay though, for it's intended purpose, price point and most importantly size. When matched with the I7-4650U and 8GB the MacBook Air is no slouch by any means. It's a sub-notebook, not much wiggle room when it comes to CPU's, especially when power concerns and limited space to dissipate heat is such a big factor. Did you have a specific CPU in mind as a possible replacement. Because I have to tell you, after studying Intel's current lineup it looks like Apple is using the fastest possible CPU that they could successfully pull off in such a tiny platform. If you look at the competitions series of sub-notebooks, Asus ZenBook, HP EliteBook, Lenovo ThinkPad X, Samsung Ativ, Dell XPS, their all using the same exact chips. As power users we care about such things but lets get realistic, the majority of people who buy the Air and 13" MacBook aren't looking for the fastest machines possible, most likely they are budget minded individuals or business people who travel. Someone like you would most defiantly be served better with purchasing a MacBook Pro 15". I would like to see the MacBook Air get a higher resolution, now that is defiantly something where the line is falling short.
Comments
This is an underrated post.
Also love the Dvorak quote. What a visionary.
What's your definition of "real work"? And does whatever not fall into those very specific use cases considered "fake" work?
Well, clearly most of my work is fake. I have suspected this for many years now and dread the day I am found out. That's why I have a packed suitcase by my front door. When someone rings the door and tells me I've been found out I can just grab it and go.
I was so hopeful that the Air line would be Retina earlier this year to catch up to their Windows competition.
Just can't bring myself to buy a low-res screen any more....
Regarding "real" work, I've yet to find a laptop or notebook that provides a really good experience for doing software development (XCode, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.) without a seriously large external monitor or two and access to big storage. Sure you can use it without external augmentation in a crunch, but it's like living in a one room efficiency apartment with a fold out couch, four kids, and two dogs. You won't die but you'll be half crazy in no time at all.
I'm struggling to identify the use cases for a larger iPad than the current iPad Air
Any kind of drawing and graphics related work (creation). Any kind of audio visual post production work where touch is of benefit and a larger display is required. Architectural and technical drawing work. And I can imagine there are many uses where a larger mainly stationary touch screen would be applicable.
Who knows what kind of peripherals would work with such a device but I'd imagine more than your standard iPad.
This is one overhyped machine. At the end of the day it will still be a vastly underpowered Mac for doing any real work on OS X.
Well if this was a ploy to lure everyone in to comment on it seems to have worked. Not sure what you mean by real work, as I seem to remember doing real work on my first Titanium 500 which contained a CPU that is no where near as powerful as the slowest ARM cpu that Apple sells in their iPads today. Overhyped, by who, you, certainly not anyone here, yeah sure, we all want a 12" MacBook Air Retina, but I mean it's kind of overdue don't you think, pretty much every notebook on sale today in the same price bracket has at least a 1080P display, heck, even 380 dollar ChromeBooks have 1080P displays now, so this is just a logical next step, overhyped no, anticipated, overdue, borderline shameful, absolutely.
Regarding "real" work, I've yet to find a laptop or notebook that provides a really good experience for doing software development (XCode, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.) without a seriously large external monitor or two and access to big storage. Sure you can use it without external augmentation in a crunch, but it's like living in a one room efficiency apartment with a fold out couch, four kids, and two dogs. You won't die but you'll be half crazy in no time at all.
Really, wow, I can write pretty much any program using just VI and a 10" tablet display. I've even written 1200 lines of code using nothing but a Nokia N950 during a 12 hour layover in Tokyo. I hate writing code on huge monitors, though I don't need a visual stunning IDE, I do it in my head, not bragging here as I'm not alone, every single decent programmer I know uses either a MacBook or a Lenovo ThinkPad that is 14" or less, the Air and X series being the favorites.
Ahhh... DT.
Running iOS apps would be cool but it would need more of an iOS to be useful to me. The problem right now is that I use my iPad and MBP in two different ways. As such an iOS based laptop wouldn't replace my MBP and thus wouldn't have a valid reason to exist. At least for me.
Give me an ARM based laptop though that has the flexibility of Mac OS based machine but can run iOS apps well and I might have a different opinion. The big issue for me is the freedom to use the USB ports as I please and to have easily installed drivers that can support a variety of external software.
Musicians
Artists
Running iOS apps would be cool but it would need more of an iOS to be useful to me. The problem right now is that I use my iPad and MBP in two different ways. As such an iOS based laptop wouldn't replace my MBP and thus wouldn't have a valid reason to exist. At least for me.
Give me an ARM based laptop though that has the flexibility of Mac OS based machine but can run iOS apps well and I might have a different opinion. The big issue for me is the freedom to use the USB ports as I please and to have easily installed drivers that can support a variety of external software.
....and have the ability to run more apps in the background, better communication between apps especially music creation, built in file-manager, more memory, etc. There is actually a very big list of things that needs to be done to iOS before I would even consider using it as my default OS, basically it needs to be OSX with a touch friendly interface. Until such time my iPad will always be just a tool amongst the many that I use, a good tool but never my primary.
Things like file manager access is why I'd want a Mac OS derived operating system. It would be a snap for Apple to support tablet apps on an ARM based laptop. That is basically what I'm asking for. Touch would be taken care of initially via iOS apps running in a separate environment. I do find iPad a bit frustrating as it could be far more useful. However I do like it far more for things like logging into Appleinsider and other web related activities.
Real work is using more than 1 App at a time.
Real work often means having 10-12 Apps open in the background to switch between.
Real work implies Safari and Mail both running smoothly.
Real work implies CREATING a file. Be it a keynote, PDF, video or audio file.
All of the above I find Apple's slower machines (looking at you, MBA) to suck at. If you want a machine that is not constantly handicapped by a small amount of RAM, and very low clock speed, do not get a MacBook Air.
The 13" Retina MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and up is the bare minimum machine for real work.
The 13" Air with the $100 8GB RAM upgrade is close to the MBP. The clock speed is irrelevant as they dynamically overclock. The raw performance is here:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks
The MBP is 6620, the Air is 5304, just under 25% faster, the GPU is about the same increase, which you wouldn't notice. The Retina display is better but performance-wise, you wouldn't tell the difference side by side.
It isn't a bad machine that is for certain. I just don't think a lot of people grasp how big the gap in performance is between the MBA and just about all other Apple products. The Air's get better with each Intel release but the nature of the machine means that they will always trail the other Apple hardware.
So? Really it is how the machine runs when you have multiple processes vying for processor time that counts for many pro users.
That's what some people like to believe but it's not true with newer models.
Not for the Air any more so than the 13" rMBP. The 15" rMBP is significantly more powerful but the Air and 13" rMBP are very close.
The Air CPU is 2-core / 4-thread, same as the 13" rMBP:
Air CPU (up to 2.7GHz):
http://ark.intel.com/products/75030/Intel-Core-i5-4260U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2_70-GHz
13" rMBP CPU (up to 3.1GHz):
http://ark.intel.com/products/83508/Intel-Core-i5-4278U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz
It isn't a bad machine that is for certain. I just don't think a lot of people grasp how big the gap in performance is between the MBA and just about all other Apple products. The Air's get better with each Intel release but the nature of the machine means that they will always trail the other Apple hardware.
Sure but that's okay though, for it's intended purpose, price point and most importantly size. When matched with the I7-4650U and 8GB the MacBook Air is no slouch by any means. It's a sub-notebook, not much wiggle room when it comes to CPU's, especially when power concerns and limited space to dissipate heat is such a big factor. Did you have a specific CPU in mind as a possible replacement. Because I have to tell you, after studying Intel's current lineup it looks like Apple is using the fastest possible CPU that they could successfully pull off in such a tiny platform. If you look at the competitions series of sub-notebooks, Asus ZenBook, HP EliteBook, Lenovo ThinkPad X, Samsung Ativ, Dell XPS, their all using the same exact chips. As power users we care about such things but lets get realistic, the majority of people who buy the Air and 13" MacBook aren't looking for the fastest machines possible, most likely they are budget minded individuals or business people who travel. Someone like you would most defiantly be served better with purchasing a MacBook Pro 15". I would like to see the MacBook Air get a higher resolution, now that is defiantly something where the line is falling short.