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Let's talk 2012 MacBook Air - what would you like to see?

Jobsian

Jobsian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 30, 2009
853
98
What a notebook this has been. Utterly mesmerising. Functionality beyond expectation. Steve Jobs, the MBA being one of his labor of loves, totally knocked it out of the park with this.

Now we've had this design a while, what, if any, bottlenecks are you coming up against that might be lifted with a new model? What else do you want to see, within 'reason' (you define that).


CPU
I'm not pushing the CPU much. A drop in the time it takes to convert movie or music files would be a bonus. As would elimination of the odd skip on youtube 1080p. Heat and noise? Genuinely, having one of the lower voltage CPUs, I have none. Any CPU upgrade, presumably Ivy Bridge, will be more than sufficient for me.

RAM
Even with Win XP on VM, I'm not pushing the RAM on mine at all (4GB). I'd be happy with the same, but if 8GB were there, I'd go for it to run beefier programs/games.

SSD
I'm regularly hitting the SSD limit leaving me to juggle constantly with Time Capsule, so a bigger SSD if available would be great. I'd love 512GB.

GPU
Not gaming much (except some emulator action), this isn't get pushed. I'll be happy with whatever Ivy Bridge gives me.

Screen
No concerns, would be happy with the same. OLED or IPS? If implemented well, it'd be nice.

Battery
Probably the upgrade I want to see. I'm constantly zeroing the current one as I take it around the house/work/travel. Hoping Ivy Bridge helps with this. Not aware of any new advances in battery technology. Toshiba promised something along these lines last year, including super fast recharge, claiming zero to 90% battery in 10 minutes! link

Integrated LTE/3G
I'd be all over this in principle, but can't imagine it not significantly impacting battery and slightly adding weight with inefficient Sim-bays.

TB/USB3
The former's a given, I imagine almost certainly for the latter too given Ivy Bridge support. This would also be great to have and is another bottleneck for me, mainly because I'm transferring to and from Time Capsule and flash disks to free up my SSD.

Design
Even though I'd still be very happy with the same design and upgraded internals, wouldn't it be great to see this thing in black? There was some rumor of Apple looking into this a year or two ago.

Siri
:)

_
 
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T

Thunder82

macrumors 6502
Jul 16, 2008
442
3
Chicago, IL
Only improvement i'd really care about would be a better and/or dedicated GPU. This will boost overall system performance because of OpenCL & also hopefully bring us back to a respectable gaming system on the go.

A 15" air would be cool too :)
 
Jobsian

Jobsian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 30, 2009
853
98
True, forgot about OpenCL, I believe Ivy Bridge will sort that out.
 
K

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,027
7,868
Ivy Bridge will sort out the power/battery life situation quite a bit, though Intel is promising even bigger improvements with Haswell when it is released in 2013 or 2014. Ivy Bridge also will bring USB 3.0 support and better graphics (including OpenCL). Beyond that, there isn't much that needs fixing on the 2011 MacBook Air, as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps they will add an 8GB RAM option, but I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't occur until the 2013 revision.
 
onthecouchagain

onthecouchagain

macrumors 604
Mar 29, 2011
7,382
2
I think the number one thing on my list is better battery. I'm talking about... approaching the 10 hour mark. That would be phenomenal.

More storage would be nice, and if I'm dreaming, lower price point. heh.
 
plumosa

plumosa

macrumors regular
Mar 17, 2007
178
9
Australia
Battery life is the only thing that's absolutely necessary. Ideally, I 'd want to be unplugged all day long, but if it would last 8+ hours I'd still be happy. None of this 4 hour BS!
 
B

bill-p

macrumors 68030
Jul 23, 2011
2,889
1,550
More battery life (10 hours?)
Higher resolution (1080p)
Smaller body/less screen bezel (around .5" is good)
Bigger trackpad
Glass screen (current plastic layer seems flimsy)
Less weight
Less heat + less fan noise at same power level as 2010 model

I'm willing to pay $2000 or more for that kind of device...
 
57004

57004

Cancelled
Aug 18, 2005
1,022
341
I'd love integrated 3G. I don't think a SIM bay has to add much weight, have you ever seen how small the Micro-SIM holder is on the iPad and iPhone? It would take less space even with the radio module than the SD card reader does now. And it would be a lot more useful to me personally.

The only thing I would expect would be a fairly unsightly plastic cover in the lid, just like the iPad 3G currently has. I don't think the plastic gap at the back (where the WiFi antenna is located) would be big enough for a WiFi antenna and a 3G one as well (remember 3G can emit up to 20x more power! And the better view of the outside world the antenna has, the lower the transmit power can be and thus the battery drain). I think this is the real reason why it isn't available yet.
 
KylePowers

KylePowers

macrumors 68000
Mar 5, 2011
1,688
197
I wish they'd bump up the screen size while keeping the same footprint (especially with the 11in).

Of course, increased battery life is also another situation I run into. Don't really run into CPU/RAM issues with what I use it for. I could use more space, but that's because I was too cheap to go 256GB lol
 
Abazigal

Abazigal

Contributor
Jul 18, 2011
19,561
22,022
Singapore
No distinction between MBP or MBA. In the future, there shall be only one....

Macbook. That combines the most desirable traits of both laptops. :D
 
ThunderSkunk

ThunderSkunk

macrumors 68040
Dec 31, 2007
3,819
4,043
Milwaukee Area
An iPad built in to the horizontal portion, with iOS running a configurable on-screen keyboard & control surface, access to iOS apps as a vertical overlay to OS X running on the main chipset... accessing shared ram & drivespace...

It'd be the first of it's kind to hit the mass market.

"I dream dream dream dream..."
 
H

hkim1983

macrumors 6502
Feb 5, 2009
354
9
Give me more ram and superior battery life and it'll be my next computer purchase, otherwise, I'll stick with my MBP.
 
Jobsian

Jobsian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 30, 2009
853
98
I've thought about having a horizontal touchscreen too, it's an interesting idea, only it seems it might needlessly take attention from the main screen, plus would limit typing speed, unless they found some form of tactile feedback on future iPads to improve this.

BadaBing!! said:
Would be even more awesome with

  1. Smaller screen bezel
Click to expand...
This I'd also definitely add.
 
Jobsian

Jobsian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 30, 2009
853
98
Out of interest, why do quite a few people seem to really want 8GB RAM?

I do realise the infinitive was split. There's nothing that can be done about that now though. :(
 
O

orfeas0

macrumors 6502a
Aug 21, 2010
971
1
Athens, Greece
The sure things that are coming with ivy bridge are:
Less heat/noise.
Faster cpus.
Better gpus(integrated, but better than now).
More battery (thanks to low-voltage ivy bridge).
Ram probably upgradable to 8gb, and 4gb standard on all models.
SSD capacity=probably doubled (128gb min, 256gb other models, 512gb as BTO or high-end MBA).

I really can't think of something better to come. Resolution is fine, 1080p will be TOO much, unless they improve the fonts etc.

What I believe we will soon see is a trackpad which is also a screen (something like a mini-ipad). Thing is, it won't work alone. It will use apple's airplay to mirror your iphone/ipads/macbook's/imac's screen into it's small screen.
That needs a really good programming and ideas though.
 
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