10 ms·

The 12” MacBook Air: Back to Basics?

60 points by r0h1n 12y ago

mmphosis 12y ago
√ no fans. √ retina display.
- rcarmo 12y ago
  That's an iPad. :)
  - colinbartlett 12y ago
    I once overheard a Apple Store employee describe an 11" Air as "the same as an iPad just with a keyboard."
- f_ff 12y ago
  Those are square root symbols. Here's a check mark: ✔︎ (In case you didn't notice – perhaps because of your font settings.)
  - arm 12y ago
    At the risk of being pedantic, in addition to U+2714 (HEAVY CHECK MARK), I’d like to point out a few other check marks represented in Unicode that could be used as well: ☑ (U+2611 BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK) ✅ (U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK) ✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK)
    - uptownJimmy 12y ago
      Third option wins. It's perfect. ✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK) <- winner
    - smackfu 12y ago
      First one renders rather illegibly at this font size here on my Windows machine in Chrome.
      - arm 12y ago
        Yeah, I think characters like that (such as the glyphs for the Emoticons Unicode block (U+1F600〜4F) that the font Symbola¹ uses) aren’t as legible on low DPI displays at font sizes like 12pt, which is even worse when you’re using them in plain text where everything has to be the same size. On 'HiDPI' or 'Retina' displays though, even in the situations mentioned above, they look razor sharp. Here’s an example of how it looks on an iPad Air². ―――――― ¹ — http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ ² — http://cl.ly/image/0r2d2x3F1P0F/U%2B2611.PNG http://cl.ly/image/0r2d2x3F1P0F/U%2B2611.PNG
        smackfu 12y ago
        Huh, surprising green checkbox there on the iPad.
        arm 12y ago
        Ah, yeah. It actually shows up like that on my OS X v10.9 computer as well. This webpage’s stylesheet specifies that comments should use either Verdana, Geneva, or a sans-serif font. Since neither Verdana or Geneva have a glyph for U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK, the browser uses font substitution¹ to look for another font on the system that does have a glyph for that codepoint and use it instead. (Font substitution is pretty much necessary since it’s currently impossible for one font to hold Unicode’s repertoire of 110,000+ characters; even the OpenType format is limited to a maximum of 65,536 glyphs). Both iOS 5+ and OS X v10.7+ include the font Apple Color Emoji, and that font does have a glyph for U+2705 (the same glyph you see in my screen shot)², so OS X and iOS text rendering systems use it. On your Windows computer, I’m guessing the font that was substituted for Verdana/Geneva there was Segoe UI Symbol³. As an aside, I’m pretty interested on how OS X and Windows decide on which font to use when there are multiple fonts installed containing the required glyph. For example, I have two other fonts on my OS X system that have a glyph for U+2705 (Everson Mono and Symbola), but OS X always seems to consistently pick Apple Color Emoji’s glyph. Maybe OS X’s text rendering system goes through the fonts in alphabetical order and uses the first one it finds containing the required glyph? It would be great if end users could have a bit more control over the font substitution process. I know it’s possible to do in some text editors like Emacs⁴, but I believe that programs like that use their own text rendering systems instead of that supplied by the OS (could be wrong though). EDIT: Oh, I forgot to add, as for having the glyph be a green box with a white inner check mark, The Unicode Consortium actually mentions how the glyphs should look for characters with BLACK or WHITE in the name⁵: “Q: What about characters whose names include WHITE or BLACK? A: Names of symbols such as BLACK MEDIUM SQUARE or WHITE MEDIUM SQUARE are not meant to indicate that the corresponding character must be presented in black or white, respectively; rather, the use of “black” and “white” in the names is generally just to contrast filled versus outline shapes, or a darker color fill versus a lighter color fill. Similarly, in other symbols such as the hands U+261A BLACK LEFT POINTING INDEX and U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING INDEX, the words “white” and “black” also refer to outlined versus filled, and do not indicate skin color.” ―――――― ¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution ² — http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-dingbats http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-di... ³ — http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsupport.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsuppor... ⁴ — http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-emacs-23-font-substitutions http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-emacs-... ⁵ — http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#6 http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#6
  - uptownJimmy 12y ago
    I do like a good word nerd.
latch 12y ago
As a frequent traveler, I regret replacing my 3-year-old 4GB + 128SSD with a 13" rMBP. I like the rMPB, but I should have kept my Air and gotten a quad-core 15" rMBP. The point? I'll pay a lot, in terms of cash and power, for portability and battery life. I've been eager to move off of OSX for some years [1], but with this rumored laptop, they'll probably sink their teeth in me for another 3 years. [1] If anyone knows of a laptop that is portable, that supports 16GB of RAM and works well with Linux, please let me know. Even the newly announced X1 and XPS13 are limited to 8GB (and I assume they get relatively poor battery life on Linux)
- aurora72 12y ago
  Have a look at Lenovo's X series.
  - latch 12y ago
    Is there a laptop other than these? [1] They are all limited to 8GB. According to [2] the new X250 is, like the new X1, also a single DIMM. [1] - http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/ [2] - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8822/lenovo-thinkpad-x250 http://www.anandtech.com/show/8822/lenovo-thinkpad-x250
    - walterbell 12y ago
      T450S will have 12 GB (1 DIMM + 4GB soldered), http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/01/lenovo-thinkpad-t450s/ http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/01/lenovo-thinkpad-t450s/ X230 (Ivy Bridge, 2 years old) supports 16GB and has the good keyboard/trackpad.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    I was pretty disappointed with the X1, was getting RSI from the trackpoint, while its touchpad was unusable. I got an rMBP and can't be happier. Hopefully the precision touchpad in the new XPS 13 really works.
aurora72 12y ago
It looks like the folks at Apple insist on misinterpreting the "less is more" principle. Apple is becoming more each day a dictatorship company who thinks that whatever product it launches, they will be loved as they were in 2000's.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > Apple is becoming more each day a dictatorship company As the article notes, the original Air was very similar to the purported new Air. It had a micro-DVI, a single USB port and a headphone jack. It didn't quite succeed, but I'd guess more because of its anemic performances (SSD was an expensive option to an already costly machine, the CPU wasn't exactly a performance star, and let's not talk about the GMA X3100) than its I/O limitations. And if anything things have gotten better since (more wireless and "cloud" with less physical connectivity required).
  - gambiting 12y ago
    And a separate power connector. This is the biggest issue with this Air - that if you want to charge this laptop and use anything, even a USB mouse with it, you will need a usb adapter with power pass-through. It's just stupid. They should have left Magsafe 2 on it + USB-C, or at least 2 USB-C ports, so you can use one for charging and another for video/data.
    - masklinn 12y ago
      Not that we know they have removed it, this is a render based on rumours, and it conflicts with other rumours (such as the removal of F-keys)
- mattkevan 12y ago
  Huh? That makes no sense. They barely made it through the late 90s and early 2000s intact and their products have never been better or more loved (if love = ££) than they are today. They've always been an opinionated company producing opinionated products, right back to the launch of the very first Mac which was criticised for only being able to do what Steve Jobs wanted you to do. Or think of the original iMac - no floppy drive and USB-only connectivity before it had really taken off. Or the first iPhone launching with less features and connectivity than its competitors. The times they tried to please everyone are when they did most poorly - remember the dreadful Performa range with loads of meaningless variations?
santacluster 12y ago
It's a recurring pattern that Apple has to re-invent the entry level laptops every once in a while because they've become so powerful and versatile the target audience for the "pro" laptops starts to prefer them over the heavier, more expensive and overly powerful high-end alternatives. Personally I have found myself continuously switching between the "pro" and "regular" offerings ever since the days of Powerbook and iBook, and if a 12" Air would be nothing more than a newer, better Air with a retina screen I would probably pick it over the 13" Pro I currently use. Apple regularly moves the goalposts to avoid cannibalizing the high-end line.
- morsch 12y ago
  This time around it's the opposite, the Pro line has been creeping towards the Air line (from TFA): "The 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro aren’t that different—$300 gets you an extra half a pound, a Retina display, and a processor that’s an awful lot faster."
rdl 12y ago
Not having standard ports would be pretty annoying -- at most offices, there are lots of power adapters left in common areas (I think at CloudFlare it's all MagSafe w/ MagSafe2 adapters, or MagSafe 2, and I've tried to make sure they're all 85W; outside of tech, I've seen Lenovo 20V the same way). Having HDMI out built-in on the rMBP15, vs. needing to carry a mdp/tb2 to whatever dongle all the time, is a plus too. USB 3 A ports are probably a minimum for me. If I wanted no ports at all, I'd just use the iPad. I don't think I could deal with OS X 10.10 on less than 16GB, either.
- trymas 12y ago
  Can you imagine, that this laptop, first of all, is a mockup, second, it's not for everybody. If you need HDMI, USB 3 A, Gazillion RAM etc., there is a laptop for you/your company! E.g. rMBP13/15.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    But...why? I use an external display with my Air(through the built in display port), connect external storage through USB 3.0, have 8GB of ram.....and now they want to throw this away for what? To make it marginally thinner? And add the inconvenience of having the same port for charging/data/video? I wouldn't buy rMBP13, purely because it's heavier, and if you walk a lot with your machine,then it adds up.
- krat0sprakhar 12y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what do you do with 16GB of RAM? I'm running OS X 10.10 on 4GB Macbook Air and I have faced no issues whatsoever. My general usage includes Chrome with ~20 tabs open, a Vagrant VM, terminal and text editor.
  - rdl 12y ago
    Chrome with 300 tabs open. Some VMware with several VMs (I'm usually doing simulated network stuff).
    - 12y ago
ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
So, you can't charge this supposed new laptop while you are at a desk with it attached to an external monitor? What will Apple do, make you buy a special Apple monitor that allows you to connect more peripherals?
- WhitneyLand 12y ago
  Probably a new USB hub would do the trick.
- staticshock 12y ago
  That sounds like an unnecessarily expensive way to go--I imagine that a specialized connector is more likely. The article makes a good point about this category of concerns: > But just because it will be inconvenient for some users doesn’t mean that Apple won’t do it. In fact, you can almost hear the stage patter when the feature is unveiled: Most connectivity is wireless these days, we’ve made a great $49 accessory that adds all the ports you’d want, and the included power adapter—the most innovative power adapter ever—features a breakaway magnetic coupler and is itself a USB and Thunderbolt hub. I’m making the details up, but you’ve got to think there would be more to the story than, “Yeah, your power plug is also your USB plug, get used to it.”
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Or you could buy a laptop that works with an external monitor.
- stephenhuey 12y ago
  If the battery lasts for 18 hours, just charge it while you sleep!
- smackfu 12y ago
  One option would be to make the power adapter fancier. Instead of just being a box with a wall cable on one end and a MagSafe cable on the other end, what if it had USB and Thunderbolt ports? You would have the same amount of gear to carry around, but the actual laptop could be thinner.
- cptskippy 12y ago
trynumber9 12y ago
For any of the Apple adverse, Samsung has already been showing off their 12.2" notebook at CES [0,1]. Dell also has an interesting small-bezel XPS 13 starting at $800, but I'm sure that will end up a bit thicker than the MBA 12" [2]. ✓ Fanless. ✓ 700 nit low-glare 2560×1600 display. ✓ Ports (μHDMI and SD reader is better than nothing). ✓ Apple-esque price tag. [0]: http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347 http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ (Brad Linder's hands on) [2]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-edition-announced-at-ces-2015 http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-ed...
- SeanLuke 12y ago
  Does not run OS X.
  - danw3 12y ago
    Which is the reason you buy an Apple product in the first place.
    - xasos 12y ago
      The hardware, albeit expensive, is pretty nice as well.
      - exprL 12y ago
        At times. From cracking plastic to less-than-stellar thermal performance with aluminium, MacBooks are just about as hit-and-miss as are any other laptops.
    - barrkel 12y ago
      I mostly run Windows on my MBA, FWIW. Dealing with yet another *nix variant beyond Linux and Cygwin is not high on my priority list.
- gambiting 12y ago
wyclif 12y ago
As a heavy vim user, I immediately thought "hopefully Apple would never do something so ridiculous as moving the power key to the upper left, right above the ESC key." Right?
- falcolas 12y ago
  I recommend retraining muscle memory to one of two things. Ctrl-[, which works a treat with capslocks mapped to control, and/or mapping kj or jj to escape (can cause problems in a few instances - pasting random text without `:set paste`, and the Dutch language). Apple keyboard escape buttons have always been a bit harder to hit (imo), so I have trained up both of those shortcuts to good effect.
- endemic 12y ago
  Personally I do the "remap caps lock to control" trick. That being said, I would hope the power button would be flush with the surface of the laptop, so you'd be more likely to hit the protruding escape key.
robert_tweed 12y ago
Something that hardly ever gets mentioned, yet makes a huge difference to how productive I can be on a given system, is whether it has proper cursor keys or not. Nearly all PC laptops, even many otherwise high-end ones, have had this horrendous cursor key arrangement for a few years now: a compromised design for a lower cost, one-piece, rectangular keyboard. It's one of the reasons I switched. I really hope this isn't the start of a trend for Apple. At the very least, I hope sensible key layout can be a differentiator for the Pro line.
- falcolas 12y ago
  Given the space required for proper cursor keys, I wouldn't expect to see them as much anymore except on external keyboards. Also, given that Apple's wireless keyboard and all current laptops have the tiny "T" version, I wouldn't hold my breath for them to change course anytime soon.
jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
What might be most interesting about the USB3 connector will be the opportunity for compromising such machines. People might be cautious about plugging in unknown or unexpected hardware and flash drives to their machines, etc, but they'll always recognise what looks like a charger and won't think for a minute that it might be doing anything other than supplying power. Could be very interesting, especially in office locations where charger sharing goes on. Or even at home, how do you know that /your/ charger isn't the special version that not only powers the MacBook while also appearing as a bus device that's backdooring your machine and radiating your secrets back over your mains cables to an adversary? Lots and lots of fun to be had there.
- mikhailt 12y ago
  You can say the same thing about any other port, USB 3 is not the exception. There's a big bug with both Firewall and TB that can bypass the security and infect the firmwares and so on.
dottrap 12y ago
As a former 12" Powerbook owner/lover and current 11" Macbook Air owner, I want my 4:3 aspect ratio back. Screen real estate is at a premium on a machine this small, so I want more pixels (more area). And carrying a elongated rectangle around is no easier than carrying a more squarish rectangle. (iPad and Chromebook figured this out.)
BillinghamJ 12y ago
I'm thinking more a Thunderbolt 3 connector - not USB type C. TB3 allows for 100W power transmission. Your Thunderbolt Display can then plug into your laptop with a single cable, including charging needs. Additionally, TB3 comes with a new connector - which is smaller vertically. Perfect for a new thinner MBA.
Corrado 12y ago
I'm actually looking to go the other way; I want a desktop replacement. I dont care about size or weight, I just want a big screen and a huge battery. My current 17" MBP is just about perfect. The only downside is that the screen is not Retina and they aren't making them anymore. As the laptop offerings get smaller and smaller my frustration grows larger and larger. Sure, I can use my big monitor at work, but what about when I travel, or work from "home"? I'm willing to lug around a huge laptop if it means that I can see the screen and get actual work done.
- gambiting 12y ago
  Then may I perhaps interest you in this monstrosity? http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyboard-gt80-titan-laptop-ces http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyb... This is a laptop with a full mechanical keyboard, 2x graphics cards and a 350W power brick. But if that is not insane enough, there is a company called Eurocom, which will build you this monster: http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec It can be configured with a 12-core(24 thread) Xeon CPU + 2 GPUs + 4 hard drives. It needs TWO 300W power bricks to function, and is supposed to be used as a mobile server.
  - Corrado 12y ago
    Wow, I think those are a bit more than I bargained for. :) I would still like to stay in the OS X family; the hardware/software combination is just too good to pass up. Thanks for the alternative view though.
    - arm 12y ago
      Depending on the hardware combination, you may be able to make some of those Eurocom laptops into usable Hackintoshes though.
  - arm 12y ago
    Damn, those Eurocom laptops are nice. I know which company I’m going with for my next laptop now.
rrtulsa 12y ago
I have a 2012 MBA. I find myself taking my iPad on my shorter trips, especially since I can work from Dropbox or Evernote. I do not see this new MBA as replacing my current one. I feel I have already won my chase for "thin and light."

60 points by r0h1n 12y ago

mmphosis 12y ago

√ no fans. √ retina display.

rcarmo 12y ago
That's an iPad. :)
- colinbartlett 12y ago
  I once overheard a Apple Store employee describe an 11" Air as "the same as an iPad just with a keyboard."
f_ff 12y ago
Those are square root symbols. Here's a check mark: ✔︎ (In case you didn't notice – perhaps because of your font settings.)
- arm 12y ago
  At the risk of being pedantic, in addition to U+2714 (HEAVY CHECK MARK), I’d like to point out a few other check marks represented in Unicode that could be used as well: ☑ (U+2611 BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK) ✅ (U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK) ✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK)
  - uptownJimmy 12y ago
    Third option wins. It's perfect. ✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK) <- winner
  - smackfu 12y ago
    First one renders rather illegibly at this font size here on my Windows machine in Chrome.
    - arm 12y ago
      Yeah, I think characters like that (such as the glyphs for the Emoticons Unicode block (U+1F600〜4F) that the font Symbola¹ uses) aren’t as legible on low DPI displays at font sizes like 12pt, which is even worse when you’re using them in plain text where everything has to be the same size. On 'HiDPI' or 'Retina' displays though, even in the situations mentioned above, they look razor sharp. Here’s an example of how it looks on an iPad Air². ―――――― ¹ — http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ ² — http://cl.ly/image/0r2d2x3F1P0F/U%2B2611.PNG http://cl.ly/image/0r2d2x3F1P0F/U%2B2611.PNG
      - smackfu 12y ago
        Huh, surprising green checkbox there on the iPad.
        arm 12y ago
        Ah, yeah. It actually shows up like that on my OS X v10.9 computer as well. This webpage’s stylesheet specifies that comments should use either Verdana, Geneva, or a sans-serif font. Since neither Verdana or Geneva have a glyph for U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK, the browser uses font substitution¹ to look for another font on the system that does have a glyph for that codepoint and use it instead. (Font substitution is pretty much necessary since it’s currently impossible for one font to hold Unicode’s repertoire of 110,000+ characters; even the OpenType format is limited to a maximum of 65,536 glyphs). Both iOS 5+ and OS X v10.7+ include the font Apple Color Emoji, and that font does have a glyph for U+2705 (the same glyph you see in my screen shot)², so OS X and iOS text rendering systems use it. On your Windows computer, I’m guessing the font that was substituted for Verdana/Geneva there was Segoe UI Symbol³. As an aside, I’m pretty interested on how OS X and Windows decide on which font to use when there are multiple fonts installed containing the required glyph. For example, I have two other fonts on my OS X system that have a glyph for U+2705 (Everson Mono and Symbola), but OS X always seems to consistently pick Apple Color Emoji’s glyph. Maybe OS X’s text rendering system goes through the fonts in alphabetical order and uses the first one it finds containing the required glyph? It would be great if end users could have a bit more control over the font substitution process. I know it’s possible to do in some text editors like Emacs⁴, but I believe that programs like that use their own text rendering systems instead of that supplied by the OS (could be wrong though). EDIT: Oh, I forgot to add, as for having the glyph be a green box with a white inner check mark, The Unicode Consortium actually mentions how the glyphs should look for characters with BLACK or WHITE in the name⁵: “Q: What about characters whose names include WHITE or BLACK? A: Names of symbols such as BLACK MEDIUM SQUARE or WHITE MEDIUM SQUARE are not meant to indicate that the corresponding character must be presented in black or white, respectively; rather, the use of “black” and “white” in the names is generally just to contrast filled versus outline shapes, or a darker color fill versus a lighter color fill. Similarly, in other symbols such as the hands U+261A BLACK LEFT POINTING INDEX and U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING INDEX, the words “white” and “black” also refer to outlined versus filled, and do not indicate skin color.” ―――――― ¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution ² — http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-dingbats http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-di... ³ — http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsupport.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsuppor... ⁴ — http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-emacs-23-font-substitutions http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-emacs-... ⁵ — http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#6 http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#6
- uptownJimmy 12y ago
  I do like a good word nerd.

latch 12y ago

As a frequent traveler, I regret replacing my 3-year-old 4GB + 128SSD with a 13" rMBP. I like the rMPB, but I should have kept my Air and gotten a quad-core 15" rMBP. The point? I'll pay a lot, in terms of cash and power, for portability and battery life. I've been eager to move off of OSX for some years [1], but with this rumored laptop, they'll probably sink their teeth in me for another 3 years. [1] If anyone knows of a laptop that is portable, that supports 16GB of RAM and works well with Linux, please let me know. Even the newly announced X1 and XPS13 are limited to 8GB (and I assume they get relatively poor battery life on Linux)

aurora72 12y ago
Have a look at Lenovo's X series.
- latch 12y ago
  Is there a laptop other than these? [1] They are all limited to 8GB. According to [2] the new X250 is, like the new X1, also a single DIMM. [1] - http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/ http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/ [2] - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8822/lenovo-thinkpad-x250 http://www.anandtech.com/show/8822/lenovo-thinkpad-x250
  - walterbell 12y ago
    T450S will have 12 GB (1 DIMM + 4GB soldered), http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/01/lenovo-thinkpad-t450s/ http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/01/lenovo-thinkpad-t450s/ X230 (Ivy Bridge, 2 years old) supports 16GB and has the good keyboard/trackpad.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  I was pretty disappointed with the X1, was getting RSI from the trackpoint, while its touchpad was unusable. I got an rMBP and can't be happier. Hopefully the precision touchpad in the new XPS 13 really works.

aurora72 12y ago

It looks like the folks at Apple insist on misinterpreting the "less is more" principle. Apple is becoming more each day a dictatorship company who thinks that whatever product it launches, they will be loved as they were in 2000's.

masklinn 12y ago
> Apple is becoming more each day a dictatorship company As the article notes, the original Air was very similar to the purported new Air. It had a micro-DVI, a single USB port and a headphone jack. It didn't quite succeed, but I'd guess more because of its anemic performances (SSD was an expensive option to an already costly machine, the CPU wasn't exactly a performance star, and let's not talk about the GMA X3100) than its I/O limitations. And if anything things have gotten better since (more wireless and "cloud" with less physical connectivity required).
- gambiting 12y ago
  And a separate power connector. This is the biggest issue with this Air - that if you want to charge this laptop and use anything, even a USB mouse with it, you will need a usb adapter with power pass-through. It's just stupid. They should have left Magsafe 2 on it + USB-C, or at least 2 USB-C ports, so you can use one for charging and another for video/data.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    Not that we know they have removed it, this is a render based on rumours, and it conflicts with other rumours (such as the removal of F-keys)
mattkevan 12y ago
Huh? That makes no sense. They barely made it through the late 90s and early 2000s intact and their products have never been better or more loved (if love = ££) than they are today. They've always been an opinionated company producing opinionated products, right back to the launch of the very first Mac which was criticised for only being able to do what Steve Jobs wanted you to do. Or think of the original iMac - no floppy drive and USB-only connectivity before it had really taken off. Or the first iPhone launching with less features and connectivity than its competitors. The times they tried to please everyone are when they did most poorly - remember the dreadful Performa range with loads of meaningless variations?

santacluster 12y ago

It's a recurring pattern that Apple has to re-invent the entry level laptops every once in a while because they've become so powerful and versatile the target audience for the "pro" laptops starts to prefer them over the heavier, more expensive and overly powerful high-end alternatives. Personally I have found myself continuously switching between the "pro" and "regular" offerings ever since the days of Powerbook and iBook, and if a 12" Air would be nothing more than a newer, better Air with a retina screen I would probably pick it over the 13" Pro I currently use. Apple regularly moves the goalposts to avoid cannibalizing the high-end line.

morsch 12y ago
This time around it's the opposite, the Pro line has been creeping towards the Air line (from TFA): "The 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro aren’t that different—$300 gets you an extra half a pound, a Retina display, and a processor that’s an awful lot faster."

rdl 12y ago

Not having standard ports would be pretty annoying -- at most offices, there are lots of power adapters left in common areas (I think at CloudFlare it's all MagSafe w/ MagSafe2 adapters, or MagSafe 2, and I've tried to make sure they're all 85W; outside of tech, I've seen Lenovo 20V the same way). Having HDMI out built-in on the rMBP15, vs. needing to carry a mdp/tb2 to whatever dongle all the time, is a plus too. USB 3 A ports are probably a minimum for me. If I wanted no ports at all, I'd just use the iPad. I don't think I could deal with OS X 10.10 on less than 16GB, either.

trymas 12y ago
Can you imagine, that this laptop, first of all, is a mockup, second, it's not for everybody. If you need HDMI, USB 3 A, Gazillion RAM etc., there is a laptop for you/your company! E.g. rMBP13/15.
- gambiting 12y ago
  But...why? I use an external display with my Air(through the built in display port), connect external storage through USB 3.0, have 8GB of ram.....and now they want to throw this away for what? To make it marginally thinner? And add the inconvenience of having the same port for charging/data/video? I wouldn't buy rMBP13, purely because it's heavier, and if you walk a lot with your machine,then it adds up.
krat0sprakhar 12y ago
Just out of curiosity, what do you do with 16GB of RAM? I'm running OS X 10.10 on 4GB Macbook Air and I have faced no issues whatsoever. My general usage includes Chrome with ~20 tabs open, a Vagrant VM, terminal and text editor.
- rdl 12y ago
  Chrome with 300 tabs open. Some VMware with several VMs (I'm usually doing simulated network stuff).
  - 12y ago

ZanyProgrammer 12y ago

So, you can't charge this supposed new laptop while you are at a desk with it attached to an external monitor? What will Apple do, make you buy a special Apple monitor that allows you to connect more peripherals?

WhitneyLand 12y ago
Probably a new USB hub would do the trick.
staticshock 12y ago
That sounds like an unnecessarily expensive way to go--I imagine that a specialized connector is more likely. The article makes a good point about this category of concerns: > But just because it will be inconvenient for some users doesn’t mean that Apple won’t do it. In fact, you can almost hear the stage patter when the feature is unveiled: Most connectivity is wireless these days, we’ve made a great $49 accessory that adds all the ports you’d want, and the included power adapter—the most innovative power adapter ever—features a breakaway magnetic coupler and is itself a USB and Thunderbolt hub. I’m making the details up, but you’ve got to think there would be more to the story than, “Yeah, your power plug is also your USB plug, get used to it.”
k-mcgrady 12y ago
Or you could buy a laptop that works with an external monitor.
stephenhuey 12y ago
If the battery lasts for 18 hours, just charge it while you sleep!
smackfu 12y ago
One option would be to make the power adapter fancier. Instead of just being a box with a wall cable on one end and a MagSafe cable on the other end, what if it had USB and Thunderbolt ports? You would have the same amount of gear to carry around, but the actual laptop could be thinner.
cptskippy 12y ago

trynumber9 12y ago

For any of the Apple adverse, Samsung has already been showing off their 12.2" notebook at CES [0,1]. Dell also has an interesting small-bezel XPS 13 starting at $800, but I'm sure that will end up a bit thicker than the MBA 12" [2]. ✓ Fanless. ✓ 700 nit low-glare 2560×1600 display. ✓ Ports (μHDMI and SD reader is better than nothing). ✓ Apple-esque price tag. [0]: http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347 http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ (Brad Linder's hands on) [2]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-edition-announced-at-ces-2015 http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-ed...

SeanLuke 12y ago
Does not run OS X.
- danw3 12y ago
  Which is the reason you buy an Apple product in the first place.
  - xasos 12y ago
    The hardware, albeit expensive, is pretty nice as well.
    - exprL 12y ago
      At times. From cracking plastic to less-than-stellar thermal performance with aluminium, MacBooks are just about as hit-and-miss as are any other laptops.
  - barrkel 12y ago
    I mostly run Windows on my MBA, FWIW. Dealing with yet another *nix variant beyond Linux and Cygwin is not high on my priority list.
gambiting 12y ago

wyclif 12y ago

As a heavy vim user, I immediately thought "hopefully Apple would never do something so ridiculous as moving the power key to the upper left, right above the ESC key." Right?

falcolas 12y ago
I recommend retraining muscle memory to one of two things. Ctrl-[, which works a treat with capslocks mapped to control, and/or mapping kj or jj to escape (can cause problems in a few instances - pasting random text without `:set paste`, and the Dutch language). Apple keyboard escape buttons have always been a bit harder to hit (imo), so I have trained up both of those shortcuts to good effect.
endemic 12y ago
Personally I do the "remap caps lock to control" trick. That being said, I would hope the power button would be flush with the surface of the laptop, so you'd be more likely to hit the protruding escape key.

robert_tweed 12y ago

Something that hardly ever gets mentioned, yet makes a huge difference to how productive I can be on a given system, is whether it has proper cursor keys or not. Nearly all PC laptops, even many otherwise high-end ones, have had this horrendous cursor key arrangement for a few years now: a compromised design for a lower cost, one-piece, rectangular keyboard. It's one of the reasons I switched. I really hope this isn't the start of a trend for Apple. At the very least, I hope sensible key layout can be a differentiator for the Pro line.

falcolas 12y ago
Given the space required for proper cursor keys, I wouldn't expect to see them as much anymore except on external keyboards. Also, given that Apple's wireless keyboard and all current laptops have the tiny "T" version, I wouldn't hold my breath for them to change course anytime soon.

jamesbrownuhh 12y ago

What might be most interesting about the USB3 connector will be the opportunity for compromising such machines. People might be cautious about plugging in unknown or unexpected hardware and flash drives to their machines, etc, but they'll always recognise what looks like a charger and won't think for a minute that it might be doing anything other than supplying power. Could be very interesting, especially in office locations where charger sharing goes on. Or even at home, how do you know that /your/ charger isn't the special version that not only powers the MacBook while also appearing as a bus device that's backdooring your machine and radiating your secrets back over your mains cables to an adversary? Lots and lots of fun to be had there.

mikhailt 12y ago
You can say the same thing about any other port, USB 3 is not the exception. There's a big bug with both Firewall and TB that can bypass the security and infect the firmwares and so on.

dottrap 12y ago

As a former 12" Powerbook owner/lover and current 11" Macbook Air owner, I want my 4:3 aspect ratio back. Screen real estate is at a premium on a machine this small, so I want more pixels (more area). And carrying a elongated rectangle around is no easier than carrying a more squarish rectangle. (iPad and Chromebook figured this out.)

BillinghamJ 12y ago

I'm thinking more a Thunderbolt 3 connector - not USB type C. TB3 allows for 100W power transmission. Your Thunderbolt Display can then plug into your laptop with a single cable, including charging needs. Additionally, TB3 comes with a new connector - which is smaller vertically. Perfect for a new thinner MBA.

Corrado 12y ago

I'm actually looking to go the other way; I want a desktop replacement. I dont care about size or weight, I just want a big screen and a huge battery. My current 17" MBP is just about perfect. The only downside is that the screen is not Retina and they aren't making them anymore. As the laptop offerings get smaller and smaller my frustration grows larger and larger. Sure, I can use my big monitor at work, but what about when I travel, or work from "home"? I'm willing to lug around a huge laptop if it means that I can see the screen and get actual work done.

gambiting 12y ago
Then may I perhaps interest you in this monstrosity? http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyboard-gt80-titan-laptop-ces http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyb... This is a laptop with a full mechanical keyboard, 2x graphics cards and a 350W power brick. But if that is not insane enough, there is a company called Eurocom, which will build you this monster: http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec It can be configured with a 12-core(24 thread) Xeon CPU + 2 GPUs + 4 hard drives. It needs TWO 300W power bricks to function, and is supposed to be used as a mobile server.
- Corrado 12y ago
  Wow, I think those are a bit more than I bargained for. :) I would still like to stay in the OS X family; the hardware/software combination is just too good to pass up. Thanks for the alternative view though.
  - arm 12y ago
    Depending on the hardware combination, you may be able to make some of those Eurocom laptops into usable Hackintoshes though.
- arm 12y ago
  Damn, those Eurocom laptops are nice. I know which company I’m going with for my next laptop now.

rrtulsa 12y ago

I have a 2012 MBA. I find myself taking my iPad on my shorter trips, especially since I can work from Dropbox or Evernote. I do not see this new MBA as replacing my current one. I feel I have already won my chase for "thin and light."