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Hunger for 2013 MBA - not as much as in the past?
- Thread starter Jobsian
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The retina display hurts my eyes. I tried to work on that fine screen for an hour, I was seeing double images of lights on the ceiling.
If there is a way to avoid retina, I would.
I really like this year's MBA, but one thing could change: reduce the thickness of the bevel around the 11.6" MBA. It could add another inch approximately to the screen and make it look that much nicer.
Also, can the MBA body even accommodate a retina display and the battery needed to drive it?
Also, can the MBA body even accommodate a retina display and the battery needed to drive it?
LOL, I suppose your going to have to stop using computers in a couple of years when all displays are high resolution. Enjoy it while you can I guess.
Did you try lowering the brightness? I thought the Retinas were overwhelming to look at it too until I lowered the brightness.
Everyone has their own opinion. I am not as wowed by the Retina as others either. Nice thing about that is I saved a bundle
If you look at the profile of the lid... it is clear that the wider than average bezel is used to taper the lid to make it appear razor thin. If they were to use a larger display... they would not have enough room to taper the lid... so the lid would appear thicker... possibly even squared off like most PC lids.
Since "thin" is a major selling point for the MBA... I do not think this will happen.
/Jim
I think battery life will be the main change in the new mba. Due to the new haswell idle state, casual web surfers and office-users will probably see a great increase in battery life.
Retina? Don't count on it..
Retina? Don't count on it..
For me the draw of the new Airs will be hopefully Haswell processors. That alone would be enough for me to upgrade my 2012 MBA due to the increase in battery life Haswell promises. Retina isn't a big deal for me as I usually use an external monitor anyway.
Retina isn't likely to happen.
If battery life increases significantly due to Haswell, I'll probably upgrade. My little 11" only has (realistically) four hours of life. I'd love it if it had six (or better). That'd be enough to upgrade, and I'd probably get the 512 SSD too.
My current one is nice, but I'm not all that happy with the display. I've had the 2010 and 2011 models too, and they both had the Samsung display. This one has the LG. It was a refurb, and it's probably why it was returned. It just doesn't have the "depth" or contrast or whatever you want to call it. My 27" just looks so much nicer. That's even having calibrated it a dozen times and various color profiles. But other than that, I love it.
Rob
If battery life increases significantly due to Haswell, I'll probably upgrade. My little 11" only has (realistically) four hours of life. I'd love it if it had six (or better). That'd be enough to upgrade, and I'd probably get the 512 SSD too.
My current one is nice, but I'm not all that happy with the display. I've had the 2010 and 2011 models too, and they both had the Samsung display. This one has the LG. It was a refurb, and it's probably why it was returned. It just doesn't have the "depth" or contrast or whatever you want to call it. My 27" just looks so much nicer. That's even having calibrated it a dozen times and various color profiles. But other than that, I love it.
Rob
Thing is, I keep hearing about 'battery life upgrades' for every single iteration of the MBA, I remember when it was Sandy Bridge that would cut power, then Ivy Bridge that would also do the same by a huge margin due to the process shrink to 22nm, Haswell is also 22nm and despite some other technical advances, I really don't have high hopes for any significant battery improvement.
Any power consumption upgrade will probably be gobbled up by whatever OS upgrade Apple have in store. I really, really hope I'm wrong as a significant battery bump would also make me instantly upgrade.
Any power consumption upgrade will probably be gobbled up by whatever OS upgrade Apple have in store. I really, really hope I'm wrong as a significant battery bump would also make me instantly upgrade.
For me every little bit matters. I start off my morning carrying my Air to classes and then in the evening I need it at work too. So ideally I'd like it to last the entire time on only battery power. I'm not expecting any major battery life bumps with Haswell, but even a little bit would be good for me.
I'd like more battery life too, but even so you're still going to need to bring and use the charger. Is there really much of a difference between plugging it in an hour later vs now?
I think until they can last 12 or 24 hours, external batteries are what I would look into.
Funny that you mention an hour because generally it's about an hour before I go home that my MBA starts asking for the charger. If it could last that for that final hour then I could just plug it in at home.
I've considered picking up an external battery pack, but I've never looked into it.
Ok let me add a complete U-turn on my initial assertion that my hunger isn't high. I've just had utter grief with this flaming T-shaped magsafe getting dislodged at merely brushing against anything else. I utterly HATE it. Make it stronger and I'm sold on any new MBA, I don't care what the other specs are anymore. Utterly terrible design compared to the L-connector. I don't know if I've just had a bad batch with a weak magnet or whether this is the norm for them. Rubbish.
Disclaimer - This has been an acutely rage-driven rant and my views may revert once my frustration subsides. Bah.
Disclaimer - This has been an acutely rage-driven rant and my views may revert once my frustration subsides. Bah.
Honestly they will have to step up their pricing and specs significantly if they wanted to get my business in the next year or so.
I just bought a 2012 Macbook air when they were released, and while I love it, it seems like the competition has caught up rather quickly. While I think I made the right choice then, the Asus ultrabooks are damn tempting, and even dell has a higher res touchscreen ultrabook for nearly the same price. If I were buying today I would not be purchasing an air.
Like I said, I just bought one and I just use it for casual photoshop and bridge, occasional gaming, some videos, and internet browsing. For those things it's great. The battery life is just fine (I get 8-9hrs depending on usage). I will not be buying the 2013, as nothing they can offer will be enough. However, 3-4 years down the line when I'm looking to upgrade I hope they can regain their edge.
For 2013, haswell seems like it will offer large graphics improvements. The HD4000 is a HUGE step up from the HD3000. I can play just about any game on low-medium settings with this thing, which is perfect for on the go gaming. Haswell is supposed to be a large increase from that, allowing for higher settings or lower heat production/cpu consumption (saving battery and your lap).
As far as retina, you can expect it will be coming. Maybe it will be delayed a year or two to make early adopters pay through the nose for it, but it will be coming. Apple is already falling behind on this front, as plenty of manufacturers are offering higher resolution displays at lower prices.
I just bought a 2012 Macbook air when they were released, and while I love it, it seems like the competition has caught up rather quickly. While I think I made the right choice then, the Asus ultrabooks are damn tempting, and even dell has a higher res touchscreen ultrabook for nearly the same price. If I were buying today I would not be purchasing an air.
Like I said, I just bought one and I just use it for casual photoshop and bridge, occasional gaming, some videos, and internet browsing. For those things it's great. The battery life is just fine (I get 8-9hrs depending on usage). I will not be buying the 2013, as nothing they can offer will be enough. However, 3-4 years down the line when I'm looking to upgrade I hope they can regain their edge.
For 2013, haswell seems like it will offer large graphics improvements. The HD4000 is a HUGE step up from the HD3000. I can play just about any game on low-medium settings with this thing, which is perfect for on the go gaming. Haswell is supposed to be a large increase from that, allowing for higher settings or lower heat production/cpu consumption (saving battery and your lap).
As far as retina, you can expect it will be coming. Maybe it will be delayed a year or two to make early adopters pay through the nose for it, but it will be coming. Apple is already falling behind on this front, as plenty of manufacturers are offering higher resolution displays at lower prices.
I must say I'm very, very happy with the 2012 Air. The CPU and GPU are perfectly fine for most gaming and professional work you need to do. But there are still lots I'd like, things like:
- Better GPU (= haswell) will be nice. I can for example run World of Warcraft on the built-in display in perfectly fins speed (30 fps:ish), but when I connect it to a monitor (1600x1000 or greater) the performance hit is very noticeable. Decent gaming on external displays would be nice.
- Optical audio out would be nice - had this on my previous Pro's, nice for watching movies and such.
- Not exactly Air specific, but I really hope Apple comes up with a solution for external GPU's through thunderbolt. The speed is enough, and some third party companies have made some half-assed versions of it, but if Apple could make a solid, working solution for this, I'd be very happy.
- 802.11ac, ie high speed WiFi. Will probably be in the next Air, I guess Apple will make it standard in all new computers in 2013.
- Maybe 16Gb memory option. Even though 8 GB is enough in 90% of the case for me, sometimes when working I can get to 10-12 GB used memory. Sure the Air handles it great due to fast SSD, but more memory is better than swapping.
- Screen bezel. It seems a bit too large if you ask me. On the 11" Air you could almost fit a 13" screen if you had a very thin bezel (seen computers with edges of just a few millimeters, so it's possible). Would be awesome.
- Maybe new material - the aluminium has been here since 2008, maybe time to try something new? I'm sure apple could come up with something even better looking.
- Battery time - probably not much room for improvement here. Personally I wouldn't mind a slightly less wedge-shaped computer (maybe more like a smaller rMBP - evenly thin) if that meant a big improvement on battery life.
- Retina I don't want at all. On the 11" content look sharp enough, and with retina the GPU would have at least 4 times the work to do to display the same picture (= 75% performance loss not counting GPU improvements). Not worth it imo.
Still some room for improvement, though the current Air is really fantastic. I don't know if I'll upgrade this year again, but maybe if they come up with something nice Can't wait to find out.
- Better GPU (= haswell) will be nice. I can for example run World of Warcraft on the built-in display in perfectly fins speed (30 fps:ish), but when I connect it to a monitor (1600x1000 or greater) the performance hit is very noticeable. Decent gaming on external displays would be nice.
- Optical audio out would be nice - had this on my previous Pro's, nice for watching movies and such.
- Not exactly Air specific, but I really hope Apple comes up with a solution for external GPU's through thunderbolt. The speed is enough, and some third party companies have made some half-assed versions of it, but if Apple could make a solid, working solution for this, I'd be very happy.
- 802.11ac, ie high speed WiFi. Will probably be in the next Air, I guess Apple will make it standard in all new computers in 2013.
- Maybe 16Gb memory option. Even though 8 GB is enough in 90% of the case for me, sometimes when working I can get to 10-12 GB used memory. Sure the Air handles it great due to fast SSD, but more memory is better than swapping.
- Screen bezel. It seems a bit too large if you ask me. On the 11" Air you could almost fit a 13" screen if you had a very thin bezel (seen computers with edges of just a few millimeters, so it's possible). Would be awesome.
- Maybe new material - the aluminium has been here since 2008, maybe time to try something new? I'm sure apple could come up with something even better looking.
- Battery time - probably not much room for improvement here. Personally I wouldn't mind a slightly less wedge-shaped computer (maybe more like a smaller rMBP - evenly thin) if that meant a big improvement on battery life.
- Retina I don't want at all. On the 11" content look sharp enough, and with retina the GPU would have at least 4 times the work to do to display the same picture (= 75% performance loss not counting GPU improvements). Not worth it imo.
Still some room for improvement, though the current Air is really fantastic. I don't know if I'll upgrade this year again, but maybe if they come up with something nice
Can't wait to find out.