Exactly what I'm thinking about. Silence over performance for users like me (browsing web, mail, MS Office, messaging, even virtual machine) is a game changer.
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Apple Announces New MacBook Air With 13-Inch Retina Display and Touch ID
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Exactly what I'm thinking about. Silence over performance for users like me (browsing web, mail, MS Office, messaging, even virtual machine) is a game changer.
Definitely think they missed a trick not reinstating the SD card slot for this model - it would have been a much appreciated differentiator between it and the MacBook or the Pro.
Very solid upgrade.
Remember, this is the AIR, so it's not going to have the very top end specs, but it does have the retina display and plenty of power.
Remember, this is the AIR, so it's not going to have the very top end specs, but it does have the retina display and plenty of power.
The 7th Gen processor in the nTB 13'' MacBook is far superior in performance to any Amber Lake processor. Stop comparing apples to oranges.
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Agree 100% with your assessment. She had me until she said "Dual Core", it just went down hill after that. I literally just heard noise like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons.
Honestly, to me, the MacBook Air is an epic fail. Dual-core 5w CPU and I get one CPU option, the i5? No Core i7 BTO option? WTF? 8GB of DRAM and 128GB of SSD for $1199 and they think that is competitive? Brand new and it comes with Bluetooth 4.2, while the 2018 MacBook Pro, the 2018 Mac mini, the 2018 iPad Pro, iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, XR, XS and XS Max all have Bluetooth 5.0. Since the CPU is Amber Lake Y, that makes ZERO sense to me as 802.11ac Wave 2 and BT 5.0 are built-in (still needs an external chip) according to everything I have read about it and Whiskey Lake. I still cannot find technical info on the CPUs themselves that is more detailed than what is on the ARK.
Did you see that they left the old MacBook Air up for sale still?
To add insult to injury, there is no 1TB SSD BTO option...they go to 1.5TB...huh? It's a +$1000 options, which makes no sense for the target market. Any spare area for NAND chips that large or numerous should have been used for a 15w quad-core and cooling. The i5-8265U and i7-8565U would have worked just fine, I believe, although cooling and airflow would have to have had a fan and I think Apple just refused.
The weight is nothing to write home about either....2.75lbs. It's just a completely half-assed product.
I know I probably sound 100% the opposite of what I normally write, but this was a chance for them to get the MacBook Air right and its just a trainwreck from every angle.
*I added a further distinction
Your comparison is very helpful.
It seems Apple thinks that what sold the MBA was the "Air" moniker. Apple fails to realize that what sold the Air was the selection of ports and price point. Now the Air has neither and worse, sports the ever unreliable butterfly keyboard. I would also gander a guess that the performance of the new MBA is at best on par with the previous MBA iteration.
I agree with those who think Apple has lost its way with its portable line. Consumers are going to be confused and I doubt most Apple Store employees know or will discuss the differences in CPUs with potential purchasers.
My concern for anyone buying an Apple laptop is that it seems that Apple is content to continue to use up its existing stock of Gen 2 keyboards on the MB and the MBP nTB. These two lines should be updated to Gen 3 or discontinued, but Apple will continue to knowingly sell people faulty hardware--even the third generation keyboard is having issues! This only leaves the original MBA and the new MBA, the latter of which is too pricey for a 7W CPU and it now sports the unreliable 3rd-gen butterfly keyboard. Consequently, the only one of these which are worth purchasing is still the old MBA (reliable keyboard, lower price, good selection of ports); however, the value proposition is very low considering the age of its chipset. I would never pay MSRP for it.
Leading up to this update, Apple had what amounted to three ultra-book lines.
MBA, $999, 15W CPU
MB, $1299, 7W CPU
MBP nTB, $1299, 15W CPU
Apple should have simply combined the MBA/MBP nTB lineup into a new MBA line so that the MB represented 5W/7W CPUs and the MBA/MBP nTB represented 15W CPUs. Updating to quad-core would have been fine because the distinction between the MBA/MBP nTB and the MBP TB lineup would have still maintained key differences:
MBA/MBP nTB: 15W quad-cores, Intel iGPUs, 2xTB3 ports, lower spec screen (22560x1600, no P3, 300 nits)
MBP TB: 28W quad-cores, Iris Plus, 4xTB3 ports, higher spec screen (2560x1600, P3, 500 nits)
But here is the rub--the ONLY reason for the current confusion in the lineup is that this is a temporary measure to bridge the current Macs with the ARM Mac reveal at WWDC 2019. Apple is viewing the current lineup in terms of profit, and so is not viewing its lineup from the consumer's point of view. Thus the new MBA is reusing the MBP nTB case but adds TouchID, the cost of which is offset by using a lower powered processor and chipset. This maximizes the number of parts used between lines to minimize the cost (BOM) of the new MBA. Apple believes this update (especially the screen) will appease the masses until the new ARM Macs are announced this coming June.
*The unsubstantiated claim by Apple at the media event that its A12X performs better than Intel's i7 and that its GPU matches the performance of Microsoft's Xbox was a hint to those who have ears to hear.
I don't understand all the hate on the butterfly keyboard. It's confortable to me, and whenever I use on of the "old" ones they feel wiggly. Having said this, I hate, nay, DESPISE the arrow keys layout... the lack of space over the left/right makes me look at the keyboard each time, even after 1 year of heavy use.
New MBA 13,3 Retina has only or just 2 core CPU Intel Amber Lake Y and not 4 core like in comparison you published.
Is Apple bloody high!!!! The pricing is stupid!!! its only 50 bucks cheaper then the base MBP in Australia. I want to upgrade my 2011 MBA but Apple really want me to keep my money.
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I've not read all the comments but from first look on the Apple website, who is going to buy the Air over a MBP with only a £50 price difference. This should have started at £950 UK pricing. Apple are losing their way, although the share price does say otherwise. Although nothing goes up forever, be a good short one day I think.
That is true.
If one looks at Apple's lineup in terms of how TDP fits into the chassis they offer, Apple should have reduced its consumer lineup to two lines: a 5/7W MB lineup and a 15W MBA lineup. You could further differentiate the two by including TouchID on only the MBA or consolidate the offering by including TouchID on both the MB and the MBA. This consolidation of the consumer line would have allowed Apple to retain the "Pro" moniker for its 28W (13") and 45W (15") lines, both of which sport better graphics and more TB3 ports.
Again, I think the problem is that Apple is aggressively targeting a certain ASP (Average Selling Price) and profit margin on each product and it is this which is guiding their hardware decisions rather than more common sense market segmentation based on product function. For this reason, the new MBA is the b*****d child of the MB and MBP nTB.
AMEN! Love the crisp keys, DESPISE that silly ass layout for the arrows. Having said that, I began noticing that even PC laptops are sporting this layout, I just don't know if it was before the 2015 MacBook or not, and I have better things to do with my time than research it, but I digress.
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Ironically enough, the 1000 unit cost of the Core i5-8200Y is $291.00 and the 1000 unit cost of the Core i5-8265U is $297.00, yet here we are...
Mac mini - Swing, hit and almost out of the park
iPad Pro - Swing, hit and out of the park
MacBook Air - strike out
Yeah. I wonder if Apple will leave a single MBA in its stores like it did during the initial transition to the 2016 15" MBPs, when Apple left one model of the 2015 15" MBP (with Intel iGPU only) in its retail stores on display just to say, "Hey, I'm still here." Still it was lost in the sea of new models.
I should have looked that up. Now it really makes no sense to me.
You can still do a BTO on the 2017 13" MBA and give it a Core i7/512GB SSD and end up at $1549.00. Apple and Best Buy both carry these configurations in stock most of the time at their stores. Watched someone at an Apple Store come right in and they brought it out from the back. I suspect the Apple Store will stop carrying the older MBA now, but Best Buy should as a stop gap and then on those rare occasions that they have $250-$300 off, it's not a horrible deal. Not great, but not horrible.
The Apple Store also carries the 15" MacBook Pro 2.9GHz/32 GB/1TB as a matter of course through several of its store.
Pricing on many of Intel's CPUs has been N/A, so sometimes you get lucky when making a comparison, that's all that happened here. But yes, the mind BOGGLES that Apple did not put a 4-core 15w U-Series in the MacBook Air, along with maxing out the SSD at 512GB (again, target market) and making sure it had Bluetooth 5.0. I think that would have sealed the deal for most people. I cannot really recommend it at this point.
I think you mentioned in an earlier post that the notebook lineup is just messed up and I have to agree. They dropped the Rose Gold 12" MacBook, updated the Gold color on the line, but it's still using 7th Gen CPUs? Who does that? On top of that, it was a perfect time to drop the price to $999, up the display to P3 and the USB-C port to Gen 2.
Anyways...they could have even done this and updated the 13" nTB MacBook Pro to quad-core (i5-8265U) and left it at $1499 (8/256GB) and even though it would not have Iris Plus, I think I would not be as confused and irate as I am now.
Flip side: the Mac mini is the bomb. Desktop (S-Series) CPUs? Never in a million years...10Gbps Ethernet option, up to 64Gb of RAM, 4 or 6 cores? Four Thunderbolt 3 ports, HDMI 2.0 Sign me up now.
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Are you talking about the 12" MacBook?
I'm comparing a laptop released in 2018 to another laptop released in 2018. Current base model of Macbook Pro hasn't been refreshed this year and is packing oudated internals under the same price tag.
If I compared 2018 Air to 2017 Pro, it would be as follows:
- non P3 display
- less bright display (300 nits vs 500 nits)
- slower CPU/GPU
- no Touch Bar
+ 3 microphones
+ third-generation butterfly keyboard
+ Touch ID comes as a standard feature and doesn’t require the Touch Bar
+ new gold color
+ supposedly better battery life
I took the data from the official Apple website, here's the link: https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/r...ir-retina-13&product2=macbook-pro-touchbar-13
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The 13" MBP from 2017 has wide color gamut/P3. This is not mentioned on the Apple website for the 2018 Air
Honestly, as a bit of a retro-grouch when it comes to home use (as I think I've already demonstrated aptly), I'm seeing the $999 "old" MBA as my best choice, assuming I don't make the relatively easy switch to Windows. Sure it has old-fashioned wide bezels and is a couple mm thicker, but to me it is actually worth more than the new model:
- MagSafe! I could care less about this on a work laptop. But around a home laptop, which is often set on the dining or kitchen table, or living room ottoman, we often have dogs and kids running around. Although we take great care to limit the chance of the cords getting tripped on when we're charging them and accidents have been rare for us, it has happened. I'd guess that MagSafe has saved us from having a laptop crash to the floor at least once or twice over the years. So simple risk analysis leads me to be willing to pay an extra $100-200 to have MagSafe vs an otherwise identical laptop without it.
- Ports. I'm not a USB-C hater by any means. I recognize it is the future. With a MBP as my primary work computer, I have dongles and cords to hook up whatever I need and to charge my iPhone off of it. But if I had to choose (and Apple forces me to, unlike my ThinkPad, which gives me both kinds of ports plus HDMI) I'd lean towards USBA, simply because no dongles is better than dongles. The day may come when I hardly ever use dongles with a USBC-only laptop, but it's a few years off.
- Repairability. Not that the MBA is the epitome of repairability but it's vastly better than the new crop of glued-together laptops like the more recent Apple designs, in which absolutely nothing is repairable or replaceable even by highly skilled users. I certainly don't single out Apple alone in this: Microsoft's Surface line are just as bad in this regard, and many PC manufacturers have followed suit in their lower-priced lines (above $1k you still find a lot of repairable/upgradeable laptop PCS because corporate buyers demand it). Anyway, prior to my current Lenovo I had a first-gen Surface Book. Shortly after I got it a couple years ago, it developed a crack in the screen, and guess what? When we sent it back for warranty we got a whole new machine back, because that was it for the poor machine. Anything goes wrong on these newer MacBooks, and your machine is toast. On the "old" MBA, at least some components are at least semi-repairable, and the SSD is even upgradeable. At home, where I've managed to keep more than one MacBook running for 9+ (!) years), I'm a lot more confident in the old MBA design hanging in for the long haul than the new gluepacks.
- Keyboard. I'm typing this on my late-model work MBP with the new butterfly keyboard. I've had it for a few months and it's mostly okay ... but still, occasionally characters I *know* I've typed (because I heard the click!) don't show up, especially the space bar which somehow must have gotten a tiny piece of something stuck under one end of it. I could live with either keyboard, but as a veteran touch-typist I am faster and more accurate on the older keyboards, and I don't mind if my laptop is 1mm thicker to accommodate another 1mm of key travel.
And that last point illustrates what I think is the absurdity we've reached in laptops, as they try to chase tablets in thinness (while, at least in Apple's case, steadfastly refusing to recognize the possibility of true downward convergence in the form of touchscreens). I think the UltraBook standard, as exemplified in the MBA over the years and copied by many PC makers after the original MBA was first introduced, was a sweet spot: sub-3 pound laptops (at least in the 13-14" sizes), half the thickness of old machines with optical and spinning hard drives, but still repairable, and with full-travel keyboards. It was an improvement in form and, for the most part, function.
Now in pursuit of beautiful sleek physical design, we're asked to spend more money while simultaneously sacrificing both usability and repairability for barely incremental improvements: an extra mm or two of thickness and less than half a pound of weight. In just the past 3 years we've crossed the line into form trumping function, and that is never worthwhile. The benignly neglected MBA was (and at the $1k level, still is) Apple's last holdout against this trend, and it's ever more clear where the trend currently leads. At least for now: pendulums do what they do, and in a couple years I fully expect a trend towards some makers (possibly excluding Apple) figuring out how to offer repairable/upgradeable versions of laptops with this thin form factor.
- MagSafe! I could care less about this on a work laptop. But around a home laptop, which is often set on the dining or kitchen table, or living room ottoman, we often have dogs and kids running around. Although we take great care to limit the chance of the cords getting tripped on when we're charging them and accidents have been rare for us, it has happened. I'd guess that MagSafe has saved us from having a laptop crash to the floor at least once or twice over the years. So simple risk analysis leads me to be willing to pay an extra $100-200 to have MagSafe vs an otherwise identical laptop without it.
- Ports. I'm not a USB-C hater by any means. I recognize it is the future. With a MBP as my primary work computer, I have dongles and cords to hook up whatever I need and to charge my iPhone off of it. But if I had to choose (and Apple forces me to, unlike my ThinkPad, which gives me both kinds of ports plus HDMI) I'd lean towards USBA, simply because no dongles is better than dongles. The day may come when I hardly ever use dongles with a USBC-only laptop, but it's a few years off.
- Repairability. Not that the MBA is the epitome of repairability but it's vastly better than the new crop of glued-together laptops like the more recent Apple designs, in which absolutely nothing is repairable or replaceable even by highly skilled users. I certainly don't single out Apple alone in this: Microsoft's Surface line are just as bad in this regard, and many PC manufacturers have followed suit in their lower-priced lines (above $1k you still find a lot of repairable/upgradeable laptop PCS because corporate buyers demand it). Anyway, prior to my current Lenovo I had a first-gen Surface Book. Shortly after I got it a couple years ago, it developed a crack in the screen, and guess what? When we sent it back for warranty we got a whole new machine back, because that was it for the poor machine. Anything goes wrong on these newer MacBooks, and your machine is toast. On the "old" MBA, at least some components are at least semi-repairable, and the SSD is even upgradeable. At home, where I've managed to keep more than one MacBook running for 9+ (!) years), I'm a lot more confident in the old MBA design hanging in for the long haul than the new gluepacks.
- Keyboard. I'm typing this on my late-model work MBP with the new butterfly keyboard. I've had it for a few months and it's mostly okay ... but still, occasionally characters I *know* I've typed (because I heard the click!) don't show up, especially the space bar which somehow must have gotten a tiny piece of something stuck under one end of it. I could live with either keyboard, but as a veteran touch-typist I am faster and more accurate on the older keyboards, and I don't mind if my laptop is 1mm thicker to accommodate another 1mm of key travel.
And that last point illustrates what I think is the absurdity we've reached in laptops, as they try to chase tablets in thinness (while, at least in Apple's case, steadfastly refusing to recognize the possibility of true downward convergence in the form of touchscreens). I think the UltraBook standard, as exemplified in the MBA over the years and copied by many PC makers after the original MBA was first introduced, was a sweet spot: sub-3 pound laptops (at least in the 13-14" sizes), half the thickness of old machines with optical and spinning hard drives, but still repairable, and with full-travel keyboards. It was an improvement in form and, for the most part, function.
Now in pursuit of beautiful sleek physical design, we're asked to spend more money while simultaneously sacrificing both usability and repairability for barely incremental improvements: an extra mm or two of thickness and less than half a pound of weight. In just the past 3 years we've crossed the line into form trumping function, and that is never worthwhile. The benignly neglected MBA was (and at the $1k level, still is) Apple's last holdout against this trend, and it's ever more clear where the trend currently leads. At least for now: pendulums do what they do, and in a couple years I fully expect a trend towards some makers (possibly excluding Apple) figuring out how to offer repairable/upgradeable versions of laptops with this thin form factor.
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$1499 CAN for an only 128GB laptop? Seriously?
I don’t think so. The Retina display and upgraded chips don’t warrant the price hike.
Some will still buy this laptop, but Apple really blew it.
And the MacBook Pro STILL starts with only 128GB. More stupid.
And no apparent upgrades to the iMac. I’m glad I’m keeping my mid 2011 with upgraded SSD, 32GB RAM and i7 processor even if I can’t run Mojave.
I don’t think so. The Retina display and upgraded chips don’t warrant the price hike.
Some will still buy this laptop, but Apple really blew it.
And the MacBook Pro STILL starts with only 128GB. More stupid.
And no apparent upgrades to the iMac. I’m glad I’m keeping my mid 2011 with upgraded SSD, 32GB RAM and i7 processor even if I can’t run Mojave.
Couple points: you're right that I don't own the movies on my DVDs; the owners have granted me licenses of them for private use. Well aware of the legal fine point. But it also doesn't nullify my point: I don't know the situation for you in the UK, but at least here in the US according to Fair Use Doctrine that license that came with the DVD gives me the right to make copies (the unconstitutional DMCA provisions notwithstanding) for personal use in perpetuity. Media companies don't want me to exercise that right, but if we're exploring legal nuances that is the one that matters.
As for the VHS comparison, I addressed it above but will reiterate that it is not analogous. I was happy to buy DVDs to replace my VHS tapes, because of the horrible audio and video quality of VHS. But unless I'm prevented from using or copying my DVDs there is no benefit to me of buying additional licenses to the same movies: DVD quality is just fine. (I guess the VHS analogy would hold up for those who desire to upgrade their video library to 4k - yes, of course, that would require a new license, and you should pay for it - but to me, having 4k home video is a situation of rapidly diminishing returns, much like laptops that shave a mm or two off the thickness of their predecessors).
I'll just add that it's not like I'm dead set on depriving media providers of revenue: they can still make plenty of money off me from new movies and TV shoes, not to mention that unlike apparently everyone else I still see movies in the theater because I enjoy that experience. I just don't want to lose what I've already paid for.
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It's in a semi-permanent device and is in all the time, acting as a second hard drive.