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Updated MacBook Air Line with New 15-Inch Model Coming in 1Q 2012?

1goodidea said:
Bring it on :apple:
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Pretty much this.

If ivy bridge is supposed to be out in the 2nd quarter for the refresh of new macbook pros and iMacs, this upcoming 15" air wont contain ivy bridge.

They might as well wait until the 2nd quarter to make them.
 
Hasn't this same story been posted 3 or 4 different times before today? Until there's confirmation, I think we've had enough stories ending in a question mark.
 
Q1 seems early for Ivy Bridge, are they just going to spec bump the 11" and 13"?

Maybe they will make 4GB standard in the $999 model?
 
The hidden story here is what happens to the 13" Pro. Right no2 it's a bit of an odd product in the lineup. It's got a faster processor than the 13" Air but not by a huge factor. It has a slower (but larger capacity) hard drive, and a lower res (but higher color quality) display.

If the new 15" slim laptop replaces the 15" Pro, then I think it's pretty clear that the 13" MBP would go away and be replaced by the updated 13" Air with Ivy Bridge.

If the new 15" is branded as a 15" Air and the 15" Pro sticks around, then the 13" Pro has a chance but needs some serious upgrades to differentiate itself from the Air.

Maybe once Apple has an 11", 13", and 15" Air line from ~$1000 to ~$1500 respective starting prices, maybe they'll push the 13" and 15" Pro models to a higher price bracket?

A $1500-$1999 13" Macbook Pro with an Air-style SSD plus traditional hard drive, a discrete GPU made possible by dropping the optical drive, and a 1440x900 IPS display would probably sell pretty well.

Basically the 13" Pro either needs to become a serious high-end compact powerhouse or go away.
 
this would be great if

the battery life is longer
and if the RAM choices are at least 8GB and/or if RAM is upgradable after purchase (probably won't happen given the thin obsession). Like others have said if it's still 4GB RAM max, I won't jump.
 
jouster said:
Yes indeed. Many people have already decided that the Air specs and form factor are ideal. Many more will.
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Of course they will. Many people don't need more than 4GB of RAM. And to be honest, I'm not sure I need it either so I'd probably go with a 4GB model.

Then comes the day when I actually do need it. With the MBP I have 2 options, either buy a new MBP(or an Air) which is, needless to say, quite expensive. Or I can buy 3rd party RAM-sticks and upgrade my MBP to 8GB which will be far less expensive(almost free with todays price of RAM).

With the Air, the RAM is soldered so it's just not possible to upgrade it which leaves you with 2 options aswell. Either you buy the Air with max RAM from the start which you have to pay 4 times as much for compared to the price of 3rd party RAM. Or you have to buy a new Air when you need to upgrade the RAM.

I understand that most people don't need more than 4GB and like I said, I'm not sure I need more either. I still want to be able to upgrade it whenever I feel like I need to. Upgradability isn't a bad thing people!
 
My boss had a terrible experience with a brand new 13" MacBook Air. I convinced him to get one to take to China because it's so light and fast. Well, the battery barely lasted 3 hours and that's not even doing anything except checking email and browsing the web with no other open applications. He was stuck most of his trip without a computer. I took it to the Apple store when he came back so they could test it. Sure enough we watched the battery drop 1% every 2 minutes with no explanation so they gave us our money back.
 
Good thing I checked back on the site. Got my MBA 13" 3 weeks ago assuming that the refresh won't be happening until at least Q2 next year - I guess with Ivy Bridge coming out in Q2, I'm assuming that would be the case after all. Phew 🙂
 
It would be a joke to update with 15" model without using IVY bridge which is just around the corner in early 2012...and it is possible that Apple can get it early....

Also, I'm seriously holding out for an IVY bridge for my next laptop 13" AIR. Why would I want a sandy bridge AIR that is limited in memory and USB capacity.

This is what I want to see on the IVY bridge AIRS:

- upgradeable to 8 gb RAM
- USB 3.0 port or ports.
- cooler temps.
 
liquimatic said:
at what point will we see edge-to-edge displays? The current borders around lcd screens look so 1980's to me.
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Exactly right. Faintly ridiculous at seeing such disproportionally-thick ugly bezels on the current MBA, the 11" especially looks awful.

Seem to recall some bright spark with calipers and spec sheet showed that a 15" display could be incorporated in the current 13" MBA unibody form factor, and likewise a 13" (12.8" to be exact) in the 11" MBA.

You only have to look at Samsung's series 8 LED TVs to see what an almost bezel-free display can add to the user experience.

Personally I'm not so worked up about IvyBridge - sort the display/bezel, improve the battery life into double digit hours for the 15", allow 8GB RAM as BTO, and bingo, Apple has my €€€€ in a heartbeat.

----------

Oh and before anyone mentions strength and engineering issues with having a very thin bezel around a laptop display, I give you the Titanium Powerbook G4...
 
Wow, that would be totally awesome! It's strange that Apple never really offered a "normal performance" 15-inch notebook. I wonder what the specifications might be, but especially with an SSD, that could be quite a serious machine!
 
How would we install Windowa XP or 7? Windows will not install via usb or even from an external usb dvd drive. I need dual boot for certain web developer tools as well as the occasional gaming.

that said, if it also lacks the ability to have two hard drives, I'm out (I need one ssd for boot, and a second large internal for storage). I took out optical drive after I had windows installed.

Also, this;

Intel's Ivy Bridge platform, .. will bring a significant upgrade to the line's performance, particularly with regard to graphics improvements and new OpenCL support.
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Highly unlikely. Better performance than my ATI 6750M? I really doubt it.
 
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Stetrain said:
The hidden story here is what happens to the 13" Pro.…

A $1500-$1999 13" Macbook Pro with an Air-style SSD plus traditional hard drive, a discrete GPU made possible by dropping the optical drive, and a 1440x900 IPS display would probably sell pretty well.

Basically the 13" Pro either needs to become a serious high-end compact powerhouse or go away.
Click to expand...

I agree with you very much, except to point out that it has always been this way.

Back in the PPC days, the 12" iBook was an arbitrarily crippled 12" PowerBook. They had the same motherboard, just running a 1.33 GHz chip instead of a 1.5. And it had a 4200 RPM drive and ComboDrive instead of the faster alternative, which could barely have been more expensive by that point in time. The iBook even lacked an audio in jack, even though the port was sitting right there on the logic board.

But in order to get those extra little goodies on the PowerBook, the price went from $1000 to $1500.

And when the unibody MacBook was introduced, it was better in most respects than the 13" MBP of the time.

So really, going "Air" on the consumer line, while retaining the GPU, full-power CPU, and spinning HDs on the Pro Line, is the first chance in, well, ever, to have a meaningful difference between the consumer and pro Apple notebooks.
 
gerbil said:
Hmm wonder if I should cancel my MBA order and wait it out a bit more...😕
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I ordered mine during the black friday sale and I had a feeling there would be a 15" early next year due to previous rumors.

I'm still 100% satisfied with my purchase and if you was always waiting to see if these rumours were true you would never purchase anything.
 
wikus said:
How would we install Windowa XP or 7? Windows will not install via usb or even from an external usb dvd drive. I need dual boot for certain web developer tools as well as the occasional gaming.
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Air's have a bootcamp utility to gen up a bootable USB drive from a Winders© ISO. People do it all the time.

Personally, I'd just run a VM solution for doing Windows development. I've got a VM with a Server 2K8 (with SQL 2008, Oracle 10g/11g) and a "client" VM with VS 2005/08/10, EMS Manager for Oracle, several other smaller dev tools, and they run nicely next to the OSX native apps.
 
wikus said:
Will this work for a Macbook Pro without an optical drive to install Windows 7?
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Do you have a MBP with a busted CD drive? A buddy of mine does (3-year old CD drive assault!), so he's always talking about his Air-like no optical experience 😀

Anyway, I believe I did read that if you gen up this bootable USB drive from an Air, it can be used on non-Air machines (but I'd have to cross check that).

It's my understanding the bootable USB option (from a Windows 7 ISO) is available specifically in the Air version of Bootcamp 4.0. A friend of mine setup a Win 7 Bootcamp on his 11" Air, and then created a VM instance in Parallels from that install as well. So he can go native Windows, or Windows in OSX as he prefers. I think last time I spoke he was seriously thinking of removing his Bootcamp to recover the space.
 
Tanax said:
15" Air with the inability to upgrade the RAM? No thank you.
It's probably awesome for those that don't need to upgrade - I prefer to have upgradability however 🙂 To each his own I guess.
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Upgradeability make electronics greener. But this aspect is rarely mentioned by companies because upgradeability make computers usable for a longer time.

I have a White 2010 Macbook and my next upgrade (after adding 8GB RAM) will be a 256GB SSD. I'm just finishing some professional work so I'll order one probably at OWC. I'm planning to keep the SSD and the original HD, removing the DVD drive. I'm sure it will be a good piece of hardware for more 3 years.
 
The real question for me is will it have a 15.6" 16:9 display or keep the current MacBook Pro's 15.4" 16:10 display proportions.
 
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