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"20% lighter and thinner MacBook Air with 13-hour battery life"

I doubt that the Air will get much thinner, it's already about as thin as is practical to fit the USB and Thunderbolt ports.

What I could see however is a Macbook Air with those processors at the same thickness with a retina display and 7-10 hours of battery life.
 
The Air will probably be ARMed this year. At least do the transitional model like the retina MBP and still offer the Intel version to test the waters.
 
BornAgainMac said:
The Air will probably be ARMed this year. At least do the transitional model like the retina MBP and still offer the Intel version to test the waters.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I have strong doubts about any ARM-based Macs coming any time soon. They're pretty powerful devices, but once you ramp up the processing power to comparable levels, most of the benefits as far as heat and power consumption disappear.
 
I honestly wouldn't mind a new desktop computer in the shape of the Air, basically the Air without a screen or keyboard and more ports. Basically a Mac Mini Air.
 
In the history of portable devices there has never, NEVER been a 100% improvement in battery life. Apple will manage to make the battery smaller, thereby improving overall batt by perhaps 25%.
 
BornAgainMac said:
The Air will probably be ARMed this year. At least do the transitional model like the retina MBP and still offer the Intel version to test the waters.
Click to expand...

I hope not.

Imagine a computer where none of the programs you currently have work...
 
BornAgainMac said:
The Air will probably be ARMed this year. At least do the transitional model like the retina MBP and still offer the Intel version to test the waters.
Click to expand...

ybz90 said:
Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I have strong doubts about any ARM-based Macs coming any time soon. They're pretty powerful devices, but once you ramp up the processing power to comparable levels, most of the benefits as far as heat and power consumption disappear.
Click to expand...

I doubt we'll see ARM-based Macs anytime soon. Windows RT isn't exactly setting the world on fire, and Intel is getting their act together on power consumption. Although yesterdays "7W" Ivy Bridge processors turned out to really be 13W (7W is the average, not peak consumption), it's a start, and Haswell should make true 10W processors a reality.

That said, I do think that a future MacBook Air will be thinner and lighter, though probably not in 2013. Similar Ultrabooks have gotten under 2.5lbs now. The rMBP is probably set for now, but I also believe it is a target to get that under 3lbs eventually (maybe the first major redesign, which isn't likely before 2015).
 
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BornAgainMac said:
The Air will probably be ARMed this year. At least do the transitional model like the retina MBP and still offer the Intel version to test the waters.
Click to expand...


What is all the hoopla about ARM chips? Are they really better than Intel's offerings?
 
53x12 said:
What is all the hoopla about ARM chips? Are they really better than Intel's offerings?
Click to expand...

They're more battery efficient, but they're nowhere near as powerful. So we could see a 10 hr battery life, I would say, from a laptop. Of course, you wouldn't be able to do much with it.
 
Michael Goff said:
They're more battery efficient, but they're nowhere near as powerful. So we could see a 10 hr battery life, I would say, from a laptop. Of course, you wouldn't be able to do much with it.
Click to expand...

Sounds like an iPad. :)
 
53x12 said:
Sounds like an iPad. :)
Click to expand...

Ding ding ding.

Except it'd be a bit worse if we're expecting to run full OS X on it. Why do I say this? Apple created iOS to be OS X (lite). Now imagine running these things that sometimes bump up to 100% on an i7 (notification center for example, sometimes spikes up) on something that is nowhere near as strong.
 
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