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Doju

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,510
1
Can I have pages, iPhoto, Safari, iTunes (under five) open at once on a MBA Rev A? Will it go crazy and slow? I'd imagine 2 gigs of RAM would be able to handle a couple apps.
 

NC MacGuy

macrumors 603
Feb 9, 2005
6,233
0
The good side of the grass.
Anything over two app.'s open concurrently and it'll blow up and kill you and anyone within 50 meters!!!:eek:
















Seriously - it can open and run 5 apps. at once. All of the programs you listed are not a problem at all.
 

Doju

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,510
1
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

6SSD4 said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld71pJgqjfI

1,8 SSD though, but still.


Just a thought, by the way.. What about putting the five posts, posted within a minute in the same thread?

Is that rev b?
 

RyanG

macrumors 6502a
Sep 18, 2007
502
40
Can I have pages, iPhoto, Safari, iTunes (under five) open at once on a MBA Rev A? Will it go crazy and slow? I'd imagine 2 gigs of RAM would be able to handle a couple apps.

Absolutely not. This situation is equivalent to having 5 IE windows open on a 800 mhz celeron.

Like really? Is this question serious?
 

6SSD4

macrumors member
Nov 30, 2008
73
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)



Is that rev b?


No. Isn't this about the rev a?
..cause I think you said that in another thread.
 

Kan-O-Z

macrumors 6502
Aug 3, 2007
305
2
Absolutely not. This situation is equivalent to having 5 IE windows open on a 800 mhz celeron.

Like really? Is this question serious?

Why don't you guys settle down and give this guy a break. I don't really blame the guy for asking questions like this. Forums are often full of posts with people that have problems or negative comments. Read some of the Rev A reviews. It would really make one think that they're a piece of junk that studders and has overheating and core shutdowns! One might even begin to wonder if regular old apps have issues running properly.

Rather than acting like know-it-alls with sarcastic remarks and treating others like idiots, why don't you just help the guy out and understand where he's coming from.

Kan-O-Z
 

6SSD4

macrumors member
Nov 30, 2008
73
0
Why don't you guys settle down and give this guy a break. I don't really blame the guy for asking questions like this. Forums are often full of posts with people that have problems or negative comments. Read some of the Rev A reviews. It would really make one think that they're a piece of junk that studders and has overheating and core shutdowns! One might even begin to wonder if regular old apps have issues running properly.

Rather than acting like know-it-alls with sarcastic remarks and treating others like idiots, why don't you just help the guy out and understand where he's coming from.

Kan-O-Z


I agree with you, I do.
I've been writing in all kinds of forums asking way stupider questions then these, because as I'm buying, I really want to know what I'm getting into.
Sorry if my replies hav giveing you the feeling I was playing arrogant. I don't know much myself.
Actually some of this guys threads have been about things I wonder about as well, however, I would appreciate having them all in one :)
 

belvdr

macrumors 603
Aug 15, 2005
5,945
1,372
Why don't you guys settle down and give this guy a break. I don't really blame the guy for asking questions like this. Forums are often full of posts with people that have problems or negative comments. Read some of the Rev A reviews. It would really make one think that they're a piece of junk that studders and has overheating and core shutdowns! One might even begin to wonder if regular old apps have issues running properly.

Rather than acting like know-it-alls with sarcastic remarks and treating others like idiots, why don't you just help the guy out and understand where he's coming from.

Kan-O-Z

Yeah, but 5 apps at once? Any computer from 1997 on can do that. That's why nobody is sure if this is a serious question.

Now, rather than come in demanding other people help out, why aren't you providing some feedback to the OP?
 

Doju

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,510
1
On the contrary, I appreciate Kan's post far more than any of yours. He hit the nail on its head when he said the reviews cripple one's image of the laptop. This is indeed a serious question, and I was hoping for serious responses as well. I appear too optimistic.

MacGuy, please take a step away from your computer and take a deep breath. As "hard" on the internet as you may be, it's really not that impressive. Try helping instead of puffing up your chest.

Any who, responses are greatly appreciated from those of you who tried. Many thanks. :)
 

NC MacGuy

macrumors 603
Feb 9, 2005
6,233
0
The good side of the grass.
On the contrary, I appreciate Kan's post far more than any of yours. He hit the nail on its head when he said the reviews cripple one's image of the laptop. This is indeed a serious question, and I was hoping for serious responses as well. I appear too optimistic.

MacGuy, please take a step away from your computer and take a deep breath. As "hard" on the internet as you may be, it's really not that impressive. Try helping instead of puffing up your chest.

Any who, responses are greatly appreciated from those of you who tried. Many thanks. :)

I find it bad enough you reply to threads with ridiculous posts but you actually open them with equally ridiculous questions. If you do just a wee bit of research all your "questions" have been answered ad nauseam.

Now, is this the 16 year old or the father asking these questions? :rolleyes:
 

Kan-O-Z

macrumors 6502
Aug 3, 2007
305
2
Now, rather than come in demanding other people help out, why aren't you providing some feedback to the OP?

I'm not really demanding anyone to helpout, rather I'm just saying that if you want to reply then why not be a little more constructive about. In his opinion he's asking a legitimate question.

By the way I've got a Windows laptop(for work) that does start to suffer and slows down once I open up about 10 apps. With all the negative posts about the Rev A overheating and being slow, the OP just wants to make sure it can handle simple things with ease.

My response: Yes it can! The MBA is as powerful as the MBPs of 1-2 years ago and the current base model Macbook.

Kan-O-Z
2.2 SR MBP
1.6 Rev B MBA(on oder)
 

jimboutilier

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2008
647
42
Denver
Can I have pages, iPhoto, Safari, iTunes (under five) open at once on a MBA Rev A? Will it go crazy and slow? I'd imagine 2 gigs of RAM would be able to handle a couple apps.

The short answer to your question is the MBA 1.6/80 will run everything you list at once and much much more without any issues whatsoever. The longer answer follows...

The MBA is one if the most controversial Macs to come out in many years. It seems to polarize people and there are a lot of MBA haters out there - even Mac fans. Specs are not everything and like most Mac's the MBA is much more than the sum of its parts. Like any product, its not perfect, and there are some number of defective units as well. Given its price point issues were magnified and while I don't discount the fact that some people had some issues with some machines, I know a lot of MBA owners that are very happy (including myself).

When I first got the MBA I was worried about its limitations and invested in software like Appdelete, iFreemem, iDefrag, Bokeh, SmartSleep, and Xslimmer. While All of these are fine programs, I really did not need any of them but they all do provide some benefits. In order of most to least:
a) Xslimmer saved several GB of space and most apps start up noticeably faster.
b) SmartSleep saved a couple of gigs of disk space and allows faster slwwp/wake cycles
c) iDefrag is not something you have to do often unless you are running your disk > 80% full but it improved boot times by about 20% and some programs and operations are a bit faster.
d) AppDelete saved me several GB of disk space but you could get the same benifit by loading OS X from scratch and choosing options not to install any apps, drivers, etc that you don't need.
e) iFreemem makes you feel better by seeing more free RAM but I'm not sure it actually improves performance over OS X's memory managment other than preplanning garbage collection before starting something big.
f) Bokeh - allows you to dedicate all your CPU to a single app and/or freeze indivisual apps. I never really needed it for the reason I bought it but it has come in handy a couple of times when an app goes wiled and consumes a cpu until you figure out whats going on and stop it.

I routinely run about a dozen OS X apps, plus a Parallels Windows XP VM plus a few Windows apps all at once with great performance. Video causes the fan to max out and temps to rise but not excessively on my unit (and no core shutdowns). The only thing that I've found that renders performance unacceptable is doing large file transfers (like an image backup) while trying to do other things. I imagine trying anything disk AND cpu intensive (like ripping a DVD) would also adversly impact other apps.

But I'm extremely happy with my MBA. I use it 10-12 hours a day for work and think its great.

Good luck with your choices.
 

Doju

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
1,510
1
Jim, greatly appreciated. :)

So, you're obviously very impressed with the performance of your Rev A 1.6? Its speeds are fine for normal circumstances like web-browsing? What's the most intensive thing you've done with your MBA without it going loud and hot?

How long are turning it on, does it take for Safari/Firefox to open? What about iTunes?

Cheers! Any additionally information would be terrific, but I thank you so much for what you've done already.
 

jimboutilier

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2008
647
42
Denver
Jim, greatly appreciated. :)

So, you're obviously very impressed with the performance of your Rev A 1.6? Its speeds are fine for normal circumstances like web-browsing? What's the most intensive thing you've done with your MBA without it going loud and hot?

How long are turning it on, does it take for Safari/Firefox to open? What about iTunes?

Cheers! Any additionally information would be terrific, but I thank you so much for what you've done already.

I'm impressed with the overall MBA package - size, weight, screen, keyboard, form factor, quality etc. The MBA's performance is definitely better than I expected but I'd say I'm more pleased than impressed by its performance. I've owned a number of ultra portable or slim and light notebooks and they are never quite up to the performance of their larger counterparts but can still be quite acceptable.

On my MBA I've seen boot times of up to 1.5 minutes. My current boot times are under a minute, but thats still slow compared to my other MACs. But I pretty much only boot when I fly so thats on average a couple of times a week. Sleep/wake is a couple of seconds.

Program start times stock were in the 5-10 second range but are now (Xslimer) less than 5 seconds on average. Can be a bit faster or slower depending on whats been cached. The apps you mention are in the under 5 second category except for iTunes which is sometimes in the 5 second range but sometimes in the 10 second for no apparent reason. Again these are slower than my other MACs and while I notice 2 seconds vs 5 seconds, I don't find the difference big enough to be annoying given how many apps I can leave running.

I use about 50 applications on my MBA (not all at once) but most are not particularly taxing: MS Office, UML Modeling, Diagraming, Project Planning, Light development, Browsing, Mail, terminal emulation, Virtual machines, photo editing, scanning/OCR - not much that I do taxes the MBA except when video is involved (Skype, Quicktime, Flash etc). I use higher CPU percentages on the MBA than I do on my other MACs but they seldom max out. I guess the closes non video thing I do that I occasionally notice temps or fan speed increasing is doing VM updates (Ubuntu or XP).
 

dmw007

macrumors G4
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
My 1.6GHz MacBook Air (Rev "A") was plenty of fast for my multitasking needs which normally amounted to iTunes, Safari (several windows/tabs), Keynote, MS Word/Excel, and a rogue Finder window or two. :)


While the MacBook Air does have some faults, I believe it to be a great Mac that far too many people seem to love to hate. :cool:
 

savar

macrumors 68000
Jun 6, 2003
1,950
0
District of Columbia
Can I have pages, iPhoto, Safari, iTunes (under five) open at once on a MBA Rev A? Will it go crazy and slow? I'd imagine 2 gigs of RAM would be able to handle a couple apps.

You can have 50 apps open. What really matters is which ones are active. The OS will page out any memory which isn't active. If you're constantly switching between a lot of applications, then yeah you'll see slowdown as it reads those pages back in. But if you have 48 apps in the background and you're switching between Safari and iCal in the foreground, you'll be good to go.
 

h1d

macrumors regular
Nov 30, 2008
237
0
It took the thread 20 replies to make me click on it, but yeah, MBA is cool doing that... Sorry if my response is duped but do note, look at Activity Monitor, if the 'free' seems gone and 'inactive' seems choked, you are running out of memory and slowing things down, otherwise, unless any of CPU/disk (Check for max read/write performance)/network are choked, things are cool.
 

macuser5555

macrumors newbie
Dec 9, 2008
4
0
It took the thread 20 replies to make me click on it

Too bad it didn't stay at reply #19....

To the OP, the MBA runs multiple apps beautifully. You should have any issues, just monitor the amount of ram available. Oh, and one more thing, if you are a new MBA user, don't pay any attention to the negative posters in regards to the MBA, it's best for you to see things for yourself and make your own assessments.
 
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