Mossberg: Apple's new MacBook Air offers iPad-like experience

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  • Reply 81 of 147
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    But errr... you're incorrect. You're referring to Sleep as well, which is not Instant On as Apple defines it. Instant On is waking up from Deep Sleep/Hibernate, not Sleep. (Though for most intents and purposes people will just take it as opening the lid no matter what and it's instant on, whether it's been asleep for 10 minutes or 10 days). But technically --->



    If your MBA is asleep for less than one hour, then when opening it, yes it is very quick to wake up from Sleep.



    Regular MacBook/Pros go to sleep and then remain asleep but still powered on for as long as the battery lasts.



    Regular MacBook/Pros have Deep Sleep/Hibernate which occurs when the laptop is sleeping and then runs out of battery, it goes to Deep Sleep/Hibernate to preserve contents of memory and essentially shuts down the computer. When starting on again, it takes about a minute for the laptop to read contents of memory from the hard disk and restore the state of the OS back to the point when it first went into normal Sleep.



    However, the true beauty and meaning of Instant On is when your MBA is asleep for MORE than one hour, it goes into Deep Sleep/Hibernate - whereby contents of memory are stored to disk, which does not happen in regular Sleep. It is in this Deep Sleep/Hibernate mode that the MBA can go for 30 days, and from this mode, that it awakes, Instant On.



    Ya. I gathered that?the difference between "sleep" and "standby". I was just focusing more on the user experience. The average user won't care what it's called, or what mode it's in. They'll just be happy to experience the quick activation when they open it. That was the gist of my comment. Whether I communicated that adequately is another issue.
  • Reply 82 of 147
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Futuristic View Post


    Ya. I gathered that?the difference between "sleep" and "standby". I was just focusing more on the user experience. The average user won't care what it's called, or what mode it's in. They'll just be happy to experience the quick activation when they open it. That was the gist of my comment. Whether I communicated that adequately is another issue.



    No worries... I get what you're saying now.
  • Reply 83 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Huby View Post


    I'd choose a normal macbook over a macbook air. (compared 999 dollar macbook vs 999 dollar macbook air). The 11" may be interesting because of being smaller, but buying the 13" would be just dumb (in my humble opinion).



    The 11 inch Mac Mini is fantastic. The 13 is great too, but if you want a Mini, I'd choose the little one. It is so sweet.
  • Reply 84 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kibitzer View Post


    The guys offers one quibble about memory size in an overwhelmingly positive review and you call him a dork? What's the matter with you?







    He's a Mac.
  • Reply 85 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    The columnist with The Wall Street Journal said that the new thin-and-light machines likely won't be able to serve as a primary computer for power users, but should be enough for light-duty users.



    Provided good entrepreneurial souls promise us custom flash storage solutions, the machine is of certain interest for power crowd, too. It sure won't be a primary one and will first find its home in our ladyship; still, we're sold on it.
  • Reply 86 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post


    With that variable out of the way, most people will realize that the CPU is actually a very capable piece of silicon.



    The CPU would have been considered a hot-shit piece of tech just 5 years ago. The CPU is no longer the bottleneck. IMO, the bus structure is just as important in today's world.



    So what bus speed does the Mini use? What RAM speed does it use?
  • Reply 87 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post






    LOL! That is so true. There is much to be said in the above statement that the ranters here just don't seem to get.



    "But the Ferrari is also made of aluminum, glass, plastic and rubber too! It uses pistons and gasoline also!! I can get all that from a Kia, so using my amazing, superior intelligence I have determined that Ferrari is only ripping off the consumer and the Ferrari-fanbois will follow anything with a Stallion logo."







    But the MacBook Minis are more like Mini Coopers or SmartCars than they are like Ferraris. As such, comparing them to a Volkswagen Bug is appropriate.
  • Reply 88 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    This is interesting topic. Trolls - auf wiedersehen...
  • Reply 89 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by paxman View Post


    That sounds like your classic PC laptop with lashings of glossy features - and ultimately useless. A bit like the Homermobil









    Yeah?



    "a multitouch display that can flip and fold back over the keyboard like the convertible PC tablets and give it the capability to run iOS as well as Mac OS apps,"





    I've never seen a classic PC laptop that does that.



    OH! Wait! You just wanted to say anything bad about Windows. now I get it! Very funny!
  • Reply 90 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Linuxoid is not really getting...
  • Reply 91 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    I think you're all wrong on this. the new plastic MacBook is junky looking in person and a dirt magnet with the rubberised bottom. It has "stop gap product" written all over it. The baseline plastic MacBook is aimed squarely at the student market, but the Airs are a much better value proposition and much more desirable than that piece of plastic junk.



    Wait. Did you just call an Apple product a piece of junk?
  • Reply 92 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    That's normal to stay such a bonehead when you're with ubuntu...
  • Reply 93 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    I have to be a movie star to criticise a review?








    Nope. He said you need to write reviews and star in video reviews in order to criticize video reviews.



    It is a riff on Steve's patented put downs.



    The last time I saw him use it, he told someone in an email that they had no right to criticize one of his decisions because they had not accomplished anything at all in their miserable (compared to Steve's) life. (It had something to do with capricious AppStore decision, IIRC). It was not the first time I saw Steve insult somebody in that manner. It has become a popular putdown in some circles of Apple users, despite the fact that it makes no real sense at all.
  • Reply 94 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Still, the storage is not a problem on new MBA.
  • Reply 95 of 147
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,953member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    YES. Everyone including technology journalists, bloggers, etc. please get Instant On correct. It is not "Boot" nor "Wake From Sleep".



    "And when you put MacBook Air to sleep for more than an hour, it enters what’s called STANDBY MODE. So you can come back to MacBook Air a day, a week — even up to an entire month later — and it wakes in an instant."



    http://www.apple.com/macbookair/design.html



    I'm pretty sure it's a stage of sleep, maybe its a definition problem or a communication problem. Apple likes to give its own term to things, and that throws people off. Last I recall, Intel has something like five or more stages of sleep. It seems to me that "Instant On" might be a bit of a misnomer because the machine is never really off.
  • Reply 96 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Instant on was called so for journalists. Otherwise, we'd have lost them in the middle of the sentence.
  • Reply 97 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post




    I guess I would "expect to pay" $400 less if the notebook in question were simply a low specced Dell that weighed 4 or 5 pounds with shoddy build quality that got 3 hours of battery life, but WTF? What is this insistence on comparing the price of Apple gear according to an ever changing set of limited criteria seemingly tuned to put the result in the worst possible light?





    I think it is fair to compare bang for buck. That way, for example, if one were buying a car, one might opt for the small econobox if one were looking at a tiny cars, instead of opting for the tiny sports car.



    Why you'd be looking at a sports car when one wants an economy car is unknown. If somebody wants a cheap laptop, they won't even consider the MacBook Minis. The Minis are luxury items, and not comparable in any manner to similarly-speced lower-priced laptops.



    Bang for buck with these machines is as irrelevant as looking at the gas mileage spec on tiny sports cars.
  • Reply 98 of 147
    steve-jsteve-j Posts: 320member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Futuristic View Post


    I remember back when I had the original 128k Mac?the 512k Mac seemed like too much for my needs.



    Back in the bad old days, Bill Gates was famous for claiming that nobody needed more than 64 Megs. I bought my //c in part because it had a huge amount of RAM - 128k.
  • Reply 99 of 147
    ivan.rnn01ivan.rnn01 Posts: 1,822member
    Still it's hardly an iPad experience. The weight feels absolutely natural in the case of MBA.
  • Reply 100 of 147
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    I'm pretty sure it's a stage of sleep, maybe its a definition problem or a communication problem. Apple likes to give its own term to things, and that throws people off. Last I recall, Intel has something like five or more stages of sleep. It seems to me that "Instant On" might be a bit of a misnomer because the machine is never really off.



    Ah, for me, I think it's fine. We don't question "Instant On" on the iPad, it simply is, Instant On. Obviously it is never truly off until you shut it down.



    It's marketing... Whether it is appropriately termed or not, I just wanted to point out that people keep mistaking that particular mode for Boot or normal Sleep. It's quite different. It seems at this stage to be a communication issue from Apple's side, I think a lot of journalists are simply glossing over it, and saying, oh well, it just wakes up from sleep real fast, no biggie...



    It's a huge jump for Macs. Most Macs cannot go more than 8 hours in sleep mode without being connected to a power source. MacBook Air supposedly can go up to 30 days. This is big, really big.
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