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Apple Announces New MacBook Air With 13-Inch Retina Display and Touch ID

Air 2018 vs Pro 2018:
- non P3 display
- less bright display (300 nits vs 500 nits)
- no true tone display
- less storage
- slower CPU/GPU
- 2 Thunderbolt ports vs 4 on Pro
- Bluetooth 4.2 vs 5.0
- no Touch Bar
+ Touch ID comes as a standard feature and doesn’t require the Touch Bar
+ new gold color
+ supposedly better battery life

I personally don’t care about the storage, true tone, slower CPU, fewer ports and the Touch Bar. But the compromises with the display and older Bluetooth are frustrating.
 
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Nice redesign but specs still lacking. Also price compared to MacBook makes it questionable.

Redesign with new specs in 2019 would be perfect. [LPDDR4 for example]
 
Very disappointed with this release. I was hoping I'd be able to get a normal Intel i7 processor upgrade. Learning that I'm stuck with an i5 (rebranded M-core) is quite lame.

tbMBP quad core here I come!
 
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Rebel Heart said:
Are they seriously skipping the iMac??
Click to expand...

My guess is that the design is 6 years old now so they are waiting a little longer to update it with a complete redesign. Maybe release it in the Spring or at WWDC next year.

Alternatively they could do a little press release and silently update it near Christmas.
 
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Disappointing Apple doesn't seem to think it's worth being at the $1000 price point anymore. I guess they don't care about students? Or they figure since everyone's getting so buried under student debt they don't mind spending $1200 anymore?

Clearly they are walking away from the home market when it comes to laptops, assuming everyone wants an iPad instead. Our home use is pretty light and mostly fairly typical: browsing, watching videos, playing music, homework and gaming on the part of the kids. I suppose an iPad could do most of that. And given that our home computing budget is tight (we have a budget Chromebook and an old white plastic MacBook), iPads would fit better in the budget anyway.

But here's the thing. Unlike most home users, I am unwilling to walk away from my huge collection of optical discs. Most people seem willing to do that, and pay media companies (including Apple) for second copies of movies they already have in their now-inaccessible optical library. And despite the increasing upward convergence of tablets towards real computers, one of many important things that iPads still cannot do is read or play encrypted DVDs. Neither can Android tablets. Nor can Chromebooks. There is no app for it on any of those platforms. You need a full-blown computer, running either MacOS or Windows, to play a DVD.

Which leads me to this: I'd rather have a Mac than Windows as my next home computer - price being equal. But the price just got more unequal than ever. I'm fluent in both OSes, frequently switching at work between a fancy but disturbingly fragile TouchBar MBP and a rock-solid Lenovo T480s. Both are great machines, each with their pluses and minuses. Sorry folks, but Win10 is vastly superior to its predecessors and finally a solid alternative to MacOS. Plus it works flawlessly with touchscreens, something Apple refuses to recognize the enormous value of on a laptop. So I could make Windows work for me at home and not look back.

If Apple is willing to say "screw you" to me as a home user by demanding $1200 for their cheapest laptop, I'm willing to say "screw you" right back by getting a perfectly decent Windows machine for half the price.
 
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I did not see the keynote but I was wondering does the new MacBook Air have the True Tone display? Thanks!!
 
DanGoh said:
The still sell the nTB 2017 MBP 13" with 7th Gen Intel processors for $1300 is the new Air better or nah?
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Yeah totally. In the same way as it’s hard now to see who would buy the MB who is going to buy the 2017 nTB MBP (abs it’s keyboard...) now?

Why is Apple still selling them?
 
bluecoast said:
Yeah totally. In the same way as it’s hard now to see who would buy the MB who is going to buy the 2017 nTB MBP (abs it’s keyboard...) now?

Why is Apple still selling them?
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Because people buy them and apple is in the business of making money.
 
upandown said:
You’re complaining about price and I simply pointed out that perhaps you’d be paying the same amount as your $1000 criteria. Or very close to. [after a little math]
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I was making an observation that didn't call for a snide response, but whatever.

The rumors were we were going to get a "sub $1,000.00" notebook. We get a $1,200.00 notebook with measly storage for 2018. A bump to more reasonable storage is $1,4000.00.

The phones, new, started at like $699 last year (for the little 8, anyway), The phones, new, start at $750.00 this year.

The Mac mini was the cheap "switcher" Mac at like $500.00. The opening bid is now $800.00.

Prices are increasing. That was what I was pointing out. You snidely lectured me about "inflation," which was really irrelevant to what I was referring to (rumors, prices from last year, etc.).

And you knew you were being snide.

Again, nasty comments expected here.
 
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wriconsult said:
Disappointing Apple doesn't seem to think it's worth being at the $1000 price point anymore. I guess they don't care about students? Or they figure since everyone's getting so buried under student debt they don't mind spending $1200 anymore?
.....
If Apple is willing to say "screw you" to me as a home user by demanding $1200 for their cheapest laptop, I'm willing to say "screw you" right back by getting a perfectly decent Windows machine for half the price.
Click to expand...

Apple has done the math and realizes there's enough richy rich folks willing to buy their Apple products year after year with ever increasing prices to offset losing the ones who used to buy their products at a lower price point. Apple's version of "They can eat cake" = "They can buy iPads!"
 
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Glockworkorange said:
I was making an observation that didn't call for a snide response, but whatever.

The rumors were we were going to get a "sub $1,000.00" notebook. We get a $1,200.00 notebook with measly storage for 2018. A bump to more reasonable storage is $1,4000.00.

The phones, new, started at like $699 last year (for the little 8, anyway), The phones, new, start at $750.00 this year.

The Mac mini was the cheap "switcher" Mac at like $500.00. The opening bid is now $800.00.

Prices are increasing. That was what I was pointing out. You snidely lectured me about "inflation," which was really irrelevant to what I was referring to (rumors, prices from last year, etc.).

And you knew you were being snide.

Again, nasty comments expected here.
Click to expand...
I apologize.

I’ll just say one more thing, a rumor is a rumor.
 
nelsonammo said:
Why does the Macbook exist now? The Macbook Air Retina is cheaper, bigger screen, more ports, more power. Seems like they messed up when they released the Macbook and it was supposed to replace the Macbook Air but I guess sales were poor so they had to come up with this. How long until the Macbook is discontinued?
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I wonder if the MacBook will eventually become Apple’s ARM Mac? I noticed Intel was not mentioned once on stage.
 
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Oh wait, check out the Apple Store. They just tore a page out of their iPhone playbook, and are still offering the old version of the MacBook Air for $999. How about that.
 
Ok so Ive just checked the Geekbench scores for my 5 year old i7-4558U vs last years Kaby-Lake i5-7Y54, which is as close as you can get to the new Apple specific Amber lake processor, although the new generation will have a slightly increased performance.

The new processor performs just as good as my 5 year old 22nm processor....

After the disappointment with the new MBP wich is literally unusable due to it's overheating issues, this MacBook Air update was highly anticipated but seems like a disappointment again.

Next hope would be the update of the 13inch MBP non-touchbar with Whiskey-Lake.
 
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wriconsult said:
But here's the thing. Unlike most home users, I am unwilling to walk away from my huge collection of optical discs. Most people seem willing to do that, and pay media companies (including Apple) for second copies of movies they already have in their now-inaccessible optical library. And despite the increasing upward convergence of tablets towards real computers, one of many important things that iPads still cannot do is read or play encrypted DVDs. Neither can Android tablets. Nor can Chromebooks. There is no app for it on any of those platforms. You need a full-blown computer, running either MacOS or Windows, to play a DVD.
Click to expand...

It's nearly 2019 and you are still going on about optical discs? It's tech from yesteryear. You can still play them on your DVD player at home but no one wants to carry DVD's around with them anymore! Get with the times.
 
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I don't know why people keep hating on the MacBook, if you ever tried using word professionally, you'd see iOS deficiencies and make you run for a laptop any day.

yes that gap is closing with every iteration but not quite there yet.

Value for money however places MBA and MB very close to one another.

The base MacBook comes with more storage...
 
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nelsonammo said:
Why does the Macbook exist now? The Macbook Air Retina is cheaper, bigger screen, more ports, more power. Seems like they messed up when they released the Macbook and it was supposed to replace the Macbook Air but I guess sales were poor so they had to come up with this. How long until the Macbook is discontinued?
Click to expand...

To follow along with your theory, shouldn't they just have released this latest laptop as a new "MacBook" and just killed off the Air? Or they could've actually updated the air and still released this new laptop as an all new "MacBook"?

Either way, you point out the head scratching decisions that Cupertino has been making for at least the past five years.
 
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