Priority nr.1 2013: Noise.

You're right, but then if you're going to do heavy work on an Air it's going to get hot

I have the retina and it is completely silent most of time, but it has an awesome cooling system.

IMO if you opt for a retina display with decent battery life - there is not much more you can do then a retina at this moment!
It's already incredible thin and light, and hardware cramped as much as physically possible at this moment.

I don't think air can go retina in another two years, until the dieshrink of haswell.

as far as 16GB ram goes i don't see the problem, 16GB doesn't dissipate more heat than 8GB, and if the chips are capable of giving the capacity there is no problem. However apple didn't even want to put 16GB in the rMBP 13", i can't see it happening in Air anytime soon.

I understand your complaint but if you want to do heavy work get a MBP. The air can handle it but it is obivously meant for consumers who travel,students and people who just want to listen to music,browse the web etc. With the small form factor you are going to have a lot of noise regardless, ALL MACS ARE NOISY.

deezayy said:

ALL MACS ARE NOISY.

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True enough. I have just upgraded my Alu MacBook to a 13" Air and playing Diablo 3 on the MB was also a noisy experience

Something gotta give. Can't fight the law of physics. You run the engine hard, is gonna make noise.

Macs noisy? They're the most silent laptops built, period,
if anything they're smoking hot

If you're consistently pushing your air where the fans are roaring (outside of technical issues), you should probably consider getting a different macbook, or even a desktop solution. Although the Air can be used by just about everyone except those who demand superior power for their jobs/hobbies, I see it primarily as a device for the "casual" user who doesn't push their system too hard, but needs something light and portable to tote around.

Although it's a Pro, and although I'm not the most demanding user, my laptop is extremely quiet and cool, and I'm pretty happy with that.

deezayy said:

With the small form factor you are going to have a lot of noise regardless, ALL MACS ARE NOISY.

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Not really. Even with a virtual machine in the background, a bunch of open tabs in Safari, and Outlook 2011 running, my 13" rMBP is whisper quiet. My MBA would go into "jet plane mode" with so much running. It seems Apple went back to the drawing board on the cooling system for the Retina models, so hopefully that makes it back to the Air line in 2013.

Well there is talk of Apple considering ARM based MacBooks. That would certainly alleviate your issue.

The only time I have ever heard the fans is when I fired up Team Fortress 2 to see if it would run worth a damn on the MBA. It did. I deleted the game not too long after and never heard the fans again.

Raggsokk said:

I think you missed my point, although I agree with yours.

This is why I think that the air should remain a casual computer, and the upgrades should be in making the casual experience better, not improving specs for improvements sake.

I believe that anyone who needs 16gb ram on an air.. really don't need or use an air. The other specs aren't nowhere on par. And a retina screen resolution would push the computer more, resulting in less time before the fans kick in.

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You're right, I did, my mistake.

I agree entirely with what you're saying too, although you can (potentially) make a case for someone needing that much ram if they use multiple OS's in virtualization simultaneously, but they don't necessarily need the additional cpu power and still value a highly portable solution. This would be an extreme exception to the rule though.

KPOM said:

Not really. Even with a virtual machine in the background, a bunch of open tabs in Safari, and Outlook 2011 running, my 13" rMBP is whisper quiet. My MBA would go into "jet plane mode" with so much running. It seems Apple went back to the drawing board on the cooling system for the Retina models, so hopefully that makes it back to the Air line in 2013.

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Simply having those applications and solutions open and running will not do what you describe. I just tried it, fans silent. Flash added into the mix will kick them on, but the minute its closed its back to silent...

KPOM said:

Not really. Even with a virtual machine in the background, a bunch of open tabs in Safari, and Outlook 2011 running, my 13" rMBP is whisper quiet. My MBA would go into "jet plane mode" with so much running. It seems Apple went back to the drawing board on the cooling system for the Retina models, so hopefully that makes it back to the Air line in 2013.

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Dude that is not even close to taxing a rMBP CPU. Fire up a game or watch some flash movies and tell me how quiet it is

KPOM said:

Not really. Even with a virtual machine in the background, a bunch of open tabs in Safari, and Outlook 2011 running, my 13" rMBP is whisper quiet. My MBA would go into "jet plane mode" with so much running. It seems Apple went back to the drawing board on the cooling system for the Retina models, so hopefully that makes it back to the Air line in 2013.

Click to expand...

My MBA 2012 is also whisper quiet with 3 and even 4 vm's running alongside with things like macports compiling something, Firefox with several tabs, Mail and mostly also iTunes running. The only thing making my MBA noisy (it definitely wasn't jet plane mode) was doing all this with a 30" display hooked up to it. If you listen to some music it quickly drowns out the noise so it really isn't that bad. I think with the more powerful gpu in Haswell this should be solved so noise really isn't an issue.

As for the cooling system: the 13" MBP Retina uses the same system as the 15" MBP Retina. The MBA 2012 does so too. I believe all of the models released in 2012 do (asymmetrical fan blade).

@deezayy: Flash tends to be fine but games are not. It seems that whenever I tax the gpu the machine will rev up the fan making it noisy.