The 11" doesn't really make any sense at all (for anyone)?

11 inch maxed out Air serves me well as a tertiary machine. I have an I5 2011 mbp that I use from time to time, (mostly as itunes library, but also to work on) in terms being portable and carting it to work and back the Air is great, also good for planes. If I am going somewhere for a long time, the then mbp is great. For major computing loads I use my desktop PC.

The 11 inch air serves many purposes, just probably none of yours. I could say the same of my brother who likes to game on his laptops, but again his uses are different than mine.

By your original argument the 13 inch macbook pro is only 35% heavier, but offers 4gb of ram natively, with capacity for far more, interchangable HD drives or SSD to your liking, Significantly faster CPU, backlit keyboard, increased battery life, add this to firewire, a superdrive (or bay or another HD so you can have a 600gb SSD + 1tB spinning disk) along with much lower cost, and you'd be a madman to consider the 13 inch air. Add this to if you were Adam Engst, you are only saving 7.8% of the weight of his bag if you were to use the 13 inch macbook air. lol

I am waiting for the refreshment of the MBA serie, simply because I have a MBP which works fine till then, but with the current series I would go for a 13 inch because it has a build in SD-card reader.

I do not want to carry arround a USB dongle, so I really hope the next 11 inch will have one.
But that's just my motivation for things.

tezro said:

I am waiting for the refreshment of the MBA serie, simply because I have a MBP which works fine till then, but with the current series I would go for a 13 inch because it has a build in SD-card reader.

I do not want to carry arround a USB dongle, so I really hope the next 11 inch will have one.
But that's just my motivation for things.

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Whats your guess on a refresh date buddy?

I don't guess, I wait till an official source announces.

tezro said:

I don't guess, I wait till an official source announces.

Click to expand...

Ok

i always wondered about the lack of ports on the air's , netbooks which are even smaller in size (8.9" and 10.1" ) but offer most times 3 usb ports , vga or hdmi port , sd card readers are standard in most netbooks today
ok i hate ports on the sides too , i'd prefer them at the back like on the old powerbooks , nicely hidden behind a flap , so it does not look like a spiderweb

so Apple do something about that give me lots of usable ports on the back
as so far i could not imagine any use for that thing called thunderbold

or what about a docking station like on this ultra portable laptop here , thunderbold could be used for that sort of thing i suppose and ideally fit that dock into the stand of a cinema display sorted the perfect all in one computig device , a 11.6 nich "netbook" on the move , but a fully functional desktop when at home with a 1 or 2 gb GPU build inside the cinema display
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/gigabyte-m1305-ultraportable-has-huge-gpu-docking-station-2009116/
as i think thats a great idea
hello time to look around what ideas pc makers have instead of bashing everything that comes from pc world as rubbish and unusable

In a way I agree with you, but ask yourself what you want all those ports for on a netbook you mainly use on your lap or on a small desk-thingy in the train/plain. You wouldn't hook up a gazillion USB devices there?

It has a keyboard, so no need for a USB keyboard.
Mouse can sometimes be handy, so that is one.
Depending on the HDD/SDD size of the netbook maybe add a external hard drive. But on the other hand, when would you need one? At home you could have a NAS which provides much more flexibility imo.

Plus, the monitor connector allows you to plug in a diversity of output connectors. Much better, in my opinion, then adding them directly ie. adding more weight.

i added something to my post above a docking station with a 1 gb GPU inside
and some ideas what apple could do with that

Anyone got any thoughts on the new Air line release date?

cdallen said:

Anyone got any thoughts on the new Air line release date?

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My educated thought would be in the future.

brand said:

My educated thought would be in the future.

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I agree... Anyone here willing to make an educated guess as to what month?

My educated guess would be any of the coming months this year.

Main selling point for me with the bottom of the range 11" MBA is that I did not need all the bells and whistles with the dearer models.

I am also spared the heat and fan noise the 13" model suffers from when under load. That is something I loathe about my white Macbook. Sometimes less is more.

weckart said:

Sometimes less is more.

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That is the perfect description for the MacBook Air. I like it.

vladgur said:

I dont see why FileVault 2 will need extra space(and id like to know if and how they will make it work with TimeMachine), but Versions will definitely require extra space, but I hope they will provide some controls for you to manage the disk space requirements.

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Years ago with FileVault 1, people reported a lot of disk space used up after using FileVault. TimeMachine is covered with Lion so don't worry about that. Versions is a wild card as far as space used and what controls are provided. My theory is that you can copy the files to another drive and remove the original files and then copy them back to shake all version history if stored separately.

tezro said:

My educated guess would be any of the coming months this year.

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Thank you once again for a very helpful answer to my honest question. I hope one day i can be as helpful to you as you have been to me... Anyone here willing to risk it all and take a chance by naming an actual month as an educated guess for the refresh?

for the new one just look when the previous MacBook Airs had been announced , which means january, june or october , and most Airs had been announced in october , so my bet is october,but june isnt over yet so with lots of luck

Even though I'm not really a Mac fan and don't own a Mac, I think the "double-tap to zoom in" is a great Lion feature. I would love the form factor and small footprint of an 11" laptop but the screen is just too small for comfortable reading (for me and my eyes). But being able to zoom in on a paragraph of text like I do on my iPhone and iPad would be very, very nice.

MacHamster68 said:

i always wondered about the lack of ports on the air's , netbooks which are even smaller in size (8.9" and 10.1" ) but offer most times 3 usb ports , vga or hdmi port , sd card readers are standard in most netbooks today
ok i hate ports on the sides too , i'd prefer them at the back like on the old powerbooks , nicely hidden behind a flap , so it does not look like a spiderweb

so Apple do something about that give me lots of usable ports on the back
as so far i could not imagine any use for that thing called thunderbold

or what about a docking station like on this ultra portable laptop here , thunderbold could be used for that sort of thing i suppose and ideally fit that dock into the stand of a cinema display sorted the perfect all in one computig device , a 11.6 nich "netbook" on the move , but a fully functional desktop when at home with a 1 or 2 gb GPU build inside the cinema display
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/gigabyte-m1305-ultraportable-has-huge-gpu-docking-station-2009116/
as i think thats a great idea
hello time to look around what ideas pc makers have instead of bashing everything that comes from pc world as rubbish and unusable

Click to expand...

An interesting idea but you need to remember that many of the PC worlds ideas may sound great but they never really pan out. Other than its mobile offerings such as MobileMe and Ping Apple is pretty good about not presenting something as the next great thing that in reality is never released or never delivers on its promised greatness. The idea of a dock based GPU has been around for quite a while but no one has ever really delivered on the promise. LightPeak (I think the Thunderbolt name sucks) may change that situation but I'm not convinced, particularly when it comes to CULV, Atom or Arm based processors. What would be the point of giving a system a 1 or 2 GB GPU if that GPU's potential is going to be CPU limited?

I go back and forth on this very question almost daily as I wait for news of a refresh. I have played with both in store numerous times and while the smaller foot print and weight of the 11" is appealing, it's not enough for me to sacrifice screen real estate and overall usability.

I work predominantly in MS Office, with almost daily work in Word and Excel documents. I also use CS5 and Aperture a decent amount, especially as I've gotten into digital photography more. And every few days I find myself needing to remote in to my work PC, which is multi-monitor, so having those extra 2 inches makes navigating around a bit easier. While the footprint is identical to the 13" MBP, and depending on the specs in the new Airs, I could probably own a more powerful system for a comparable price, I like the thinness and overall look of the Air much more. There is also a much more significant weight difference between a 13" Air and 13" Pro (1.6 lbs) than the two Air models (.6 lbs.)

As for the release date, I was really thinking that we'd see something this month, but I'm not sure it makes sense for Apple to ship the new Airs for a few weeks with Snow Leopard only to then start the process of shipping them with Lion. While I'm sure it's easy enough to make the swap on the production line, they would have to deal with the hassle of handling the upgrade program for all those that bought the new machines during that window of time.

So if I really had to guess a date, we'll see new Airs on July 19th, less than a week after Lion appears in the Mac App Store. I would have possibly said July 12th, but that would mean Apple programmers would be rushing to iron out final bugs during the 4th of July holiday the week before so I'm going to go ahead and stick with my guess of the 19th. Although, I hope I'm wrong because my 2007 Core 2 Duo MBP needs to be replaced. (Not really, but I like buying new toys.)

I've purchased two 11" MBA's. Left my first one on a plane, never got it back. Went and bought another one.

Size, weight, and I don't need the 13" made the decision for me. In fact, I don't think I've ever wished I bought a 13".

The 11" is a great computer. Even for photoshop on the airplane.

I got the 11" for one main reason - it fits in my white coat. Its great because when I'm rounding I can quickly access our hospital's electronic medical record, dictate or write my notes, electronically sign orders and write prescriptions, view X-rays/MRIs/CTs, etc. The 11" does all what I need and does it in a small foot print and profile.

I have more questions:

When is ipad 3 being released?

What about iphone 5?... When can i buy that?

I can do this all day.

cdallen said:

When is ipad 3 being released?

What about iphone 5?

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Those are very good questions. I have a few tips for you. You should always post your questions while putting forth minimal effort researching the product in question and without searching the forums prior to posting. Remember if someone else is willing to do the work for you why should you bother doing it yourself. Also remember to post in the wrong forum so you can ask the people least likely to know how to resolve your issue or fix your problem. And last but not least always, always, always find a way to insult, annoy, and criticize the people you are asking for help. For some reason it just seems to work better that way.

brand said:

Those are very good questions. I have a few tips for you. You should always post your questions while putting forth minimal effort researching the product in question and without searching the forums prior to posting. Remember if someone else is willing to do the work for you why should you bother doing it yourself. Also remember to post in the wrong forum so you can ask the people least likely to know how to resolve your issue or fix your problem.

Click to expand...

Thanks... So August then