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Accessory Manufacturer Claims 15-Inch MacBook Air Coming in April

vikpt said:
well this is a good article--with so many things that i ogtta say i agree with--regarding the (possible) this year's macbook pros http://gizmodo.com/5884734/the-next+generation-macbook-pro-2012
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I think the new wifi speed will be what replaces Ethernet and Firewire. However presumably the wifi base station will itself have Ethernet, Firewire, USB and HDMI on it. Sounds like a minor variation on a new Apple TV or Mac Mini to me. It would excite me to get an Air-like Pro that could support three monitors and high speed external local storage with no wires! Or one. That would be a "killer feature" for me.

BTW why couldn't Apple license AMD graphics tech, add some A6 magic, use its own fab and QC resources, and get a low cost, reliable and truly kick-ass graphics capability almost able to keep up with the CPU and I/O for a change? 2x workstation graphics in a lappy. It is now technically practical at Apple's consumer prices.

Rocketman
 
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bawbac said:
So you have the statistics to back up the claims that only a few people need an Ethernet port?

IMO, this is another "Apple knows what's right for the consumer" product move just like Flash is evil for the iPad.
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Agreed. Our company, for one, has contracts that require a hard-wired network because we deal with confidential files.
 
bawbac said:
So you have the statistics to back up the claims that only a few people need an Ethernet port?
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Do you have stats to prove the contrary? If you are going to demand stats, provide some yourself.

Also, the point I'm making is most people who do in fact need ethernet could make do with a hypothetical USB 3/TB adapter, and only few would be unhappy with such a solution if it meant giving them the same performance but a thinner and lighter laptop (unless of course the adapters are prohibitively expensive which I am assuming wouldn't be the case).
 
brentsg said:
The theoretical and likely very expensive TB adapter?

The point is that people aren't going to add further complication to mission critical tasks.

I plug in an ethernet cable. Done. Simple.

I don't want some adapter that adds complexity, might not get along with my virtual machines, etc.

Function > Form
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You haven't used USB Ethernet adapters have you ? It just works (your virtual machines don't know about it, just like they don't know if your Ethernet adapter is a Broadcom, VIA or Realtek chip or if it even is an Ethernet adapter, they just see whatever your virtualization solution shows them).
 
dBeats said:
I move around gigabyte files regularly at work over wireless N, it's not been much of an issue for me. If you have a heavier workload than that, then I think an Air is probably not for you.
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Not the current MBA. But if the plan is to replace the 15" MBP with a 15" MBA, I imagine it would be more powerful than the current 11"/13" MBA and then able to do the work of a "Pro"
 
brentsg said:
The point is that people aren't going to add further complication to mission critical tasks.

I plug in an ethernet cable. Done. Simple.

I don't want some adapter that adds complexity, might not get along with my virtual machines, etc.

Function > Form
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If there are legitimate function impediments, fine scratch the proposed solution. Baring that though, I don't see why the form of a thinner, lighter, same performance laptop with an adapter isn't preferable. I don't see anyone really addressing that either. I do see a lot of rhetoric and red-harrings being flung around though.
 
Need Upgradable RAM

This sounds awesome as long as Apple doesn't continue its backward trend towards proprietary parts again. The systems needs to (at minimum) be user serviceable for a RAM upgrade. Apple prices are so ridiculous as it is, charging $200-$300 to upgrade RAM that should cost $30-$50 is reaffirming Apple critics.
 
I love the MacBook Airs, but for serious development and graphics stuff etc. they are to meek. The SandyBridge OpenGL engine is a joke compared to mobile AMD and NVIDIA chips. Apple needs to provide at least one line of portable machines with good OpenGL support.

Also the MacBook Airs are very limited in respect to RAM and harddisk / SSD. For development you need 8 GB minimum with Xcode 4.3. Anything less and you are swapping non stop. Diskspace is also pretty excessive when developing (binaries, resources, git repos, MacPorts, ...). If they would ditch the 13 and 15 inch MBP, they would be rather stupid to do so. There is still a big market for the MacBook Pro models, I would say. I think the order is as this:

* entry level consumer: iPad
* mid range consumer / light workstation: MacBook Air
* high end consumer / medium workstation: MacBook Pro / iMac
* high end workstation: Mac Pro

The largest markets are the first two, but the latter two produce all the content for the first two.
 
All this hoopla about the lack of an ethernet port... lets get real folks. First off, one big reason there isn't a port is the Air is too thin for the width of an ethernet jack... so its impossible to have a native port. That means it can't be on there. Today you have a USB option which will work for some. If and when a Thunderbolt gigabit ethernet adapter is available this would be moot. You can't do gigabit through USB because its to slow.
 
JohnDoe98 said:
Do you have stats to prove the contrary? If you are going to demand stats, provide some yourself.

Also, the point I'm making is most people who do in fact need ethernet could make do with a hypothetical USB 3/TB adapter, and only few would be unhappy with such a solution if it meant giving them the same performance but a thinner and lighter laptop (unless of course the adapters are prohibitively expensive which I am assuming wouldn't be the case).
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He who makes the claims/facts need to prove themselves, not the other way around.
Nice try.
 
Still the best thing is that optical obsolete DVD drives are OUT!! Finally!
If you want play with them, you surely can use external DVD/BR for that and with ThunderBolt/USB3 it will be fast too.

DVD out --> more batteres in. THANK YOU

And we dont need too may expensive ports either, USB3 and TB is enough if there is 1gb WiFi as rumored...

SD card reader? Useless too. USB SD Card reader is about 5 dollars and size of post stamp and my Canon came with an USB SD reader.

Retina? Perhaps, as Samsung showed off year ago 2560x1600 display on tablet.

But 1920x1200 would be enough too for 15" screen.
 
JohnDoe98 said:
No one is proposing to remove the ability to hard-wire your laptops.
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If Apple moves away from ethernet ports on their lower end MBPs, then yes. Adding adapters that can be lost or misplaced will only cost us more in the end.
 
Primejimbo said:
You can get 20-50 CD's for $10-20.00 in come cases. Still a lot cheaper than a flash drive. From a business standpoint, that money adds up a lot and fast.
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I agree - but the point is pricing will keep coming down (on flash drives) and as more computers start dumping optical drives, the end will be set for the cd/dvd.

We've had this same conversation - VHS to dvd, cassette to cd, 8" floppy to 5.25" floppy to cd, mini-cd to sd card. The change is happening so quickly and I'm pretty sure that we'll be moving towards no removable drives within the next couple of years - with everything being downloadable.

There just needs to be enough people with the new technology to force those living with the old tech to move forward.
 
bawbac said:
He who makes the claims/facts need to prove themselves, not the other way around.
Nice try.
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First, that might be fine under normal circumstances. But this entire thread is about a hypothetical future product. Facts will be hard. Second, you are also making a claim whether or not you acknowledge it, so your onus still exists.

In any event, I'm not going to conduct a poll to find out how many people would be unhappy with a cheap USB 3/TB dongle that connects through ethernet versus those who would only be happy with an ethernet port in their machines. I think the point is obvious and common-sensical enough. I'll freely share that opinion. Don't like it? Fine, don't reply to my posts.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

And the ram not being user replaceable. I hate that the air has ram soldered. This means you must BTO from apple and pay a premium for ram. This really my only hang up really.
 
I think Apple sees Thunderbolt as the gateway to making even thinner products. Anything that you only sometimes need can be excluded but added externally via Thunderbolt.
 
s2h2golf said:
If Apple moves away from ethernet ports on their lower end MBPs, then yes. Adding adapters that can be lost or misplaced will only cost us more in the end.
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So now Apple should factor in people's negligence into their design of products? I hope your post was intended humorously.
 
jmgregory1 said:
I agree - but the point is pricing will keep coming down (on flash drives) and as more computers start dumping optical drives, the end will be set for the cd/dvd.

We've had this same conversation - VHS to dvd, cassette to cd, 8" floppy to 5.25" floppy to cd, mini-cd to sd card. The change is happening so quickly and I'm pretty sure that we'll be moving towards no removable drives within the next couple of years - with everything being downloadable.

There just needs to be enough people with the new technology to force those living with the old tech to move forward.
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On the consumer side this is true, but not on the business side. We produce training manuals that have CDs with all of the materials. We have contracts that require us to submit CDs with our reports (government). Almost every bid proposal that we submit requires a CD. We use 100-150 CDs a year, at least. Things do not move as fast as you think, especially when dealing with a government organization. We still have to submit everything so it is compatible with Office 2003.
 
Not really sure how this would be a problem for the pro.. still poor graphics, little memory/no expandability and a much less powerful ULV CPU... this isn't for professionals.
 
osx11 said:
I think Apple sees Thunderbolt as the gateway to making even thinner products. Anything that you only sometimes need can be excluded but added externally via Thunderbolt.
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I agree 100%. TB, given it's direct and fast connection, allows all sorts of things to be done as if they were part of the computer. The question will be whether manufacturers of 3rd party drives, etc, will jump on board or if this will just be a modern day firewire fiasco.
 
Why would they release it in April?

ULV Ivy Bridge processors are only due around June, meaning it would have the current Sandy Bridge models. There are only 3 models which are already found in the current MBAs (1.6 GHz i5, 1.7 GHz i5, 1.8 GHz i7).

Using Sandy Bridge would also mean using the same Intel HD 3000 graphics and still use USB 2.0 instead of 3.0. In other words, it would essentially be the same computer as the current 11" and 13" MBA in terms of specs, perhaps with a little bigger battery an higher res (1680x1050?) screen.

If that was the case, I'm pretty sure they would have released it along with the 11" and 13" in the last MBA refresh in July 2011. Otherwise, it would be stupid to not wait an extra 2 months to get a better CPU, GPU, USB 3.0 and better efficiency.

I don't believe this.
 
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