I seriously hope this model flops badly. This model is just a fancy tablet. Just one port and very low proceeding power for this much money is just insane. Air is much better. I think apple didn't update the air just to force people to buy this overpriced junk. Hopefully apple will update the air soon with Retina display and by doing so render this model useless.
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Apple Confirms Retina MacBook Build-to-Order Pricing for 1.3 GHz Processor
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IMO, that ship (Apple not being the go to platform for high-end creatives) sailed a long time ago. Like I said, creative pros have been repeatedly making the same point here on MacRumors since before I joined the forums a decade ago.
The fact that ten years later, there are still creative pros using Macs is frankly amazing (based on how horrible pros like you say the Macs are for getting your work done).
The only thing that Apple's going to do with the MBA is discontinue the line. There will never be a retina Air.
.88 mm (MB panel thickness ) and 6.1 mm I think are the thickest point measurements. The MacBook closed at the front ( top of screen) edge is 3.5 mm for both top and bottom.
The iPad has evolved into being a largely flat with only the extreme edges rounded. (originally that was tapered but was removed as went thinner). The MacBook inherited the dramatic MBA taper to a "fine edge" design, but also thrown out the much of bezel so the camera is forced closer to the edge. Between the backlighting along the panel edges and the taper to "fine edge" design, the camera is between a 'rock and hard place' of empty internal volume.
Dell did something about as dramatic with bezel reduction but ended up having to place the camera at the base of the display instead to the top. That leads to better image from a goofy angle.
In the quest to make the iPod Touch thinner than the then current iPhone Apple squeezed the camera MP count backwards in at least one generation of the Touch also. It isn't like they haven't thrown image quality out for "thinness" before.
I personally know 2 avid 11 Inch Macbook Air users,who loved their machine and sworn they will never use any laptop but a Macbook Air,they were anticipating the 12 Inch Retina model,because their 3 years old MBAs were getting old and slow,they are both very disappointed with the new MB and are considering likes of Dell XPS 13 and Surface Pro 3 now which is sad,and just because of limitations of the new MB.
I bet there are hundreds of thousands people with similar story.
the point is,why shouldn't an ultra portable MB with Retina screen and premium price tag have such compromises.
people choose Macs because they want a near perfect machine,reliable and capable,that's why they pay the premium.
the new Macbook seems to be only focused on design ONLY.
while you can argue it doesn't need to have the same specs of a MBP,having specs and performance of a 3 years old MBA and un-necessary compromise on functionality due to lack of necessary ports for a top of the range,expensive,premium machine is not acceptable.
1.3 Ghz CPU and one extra USB port should have been included as standard.
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then they will lose MANY Air users,they will be forced to to windows machines like xps 13 or surface pro 3.there are loads of users out there who don't want the bigger,heavier MBP,they want a 11-12 inch machine that is capable and fully functional,not a fashion toy that lacks power with only a charger port.
This. The days of buying a Mac because it was a superior product are pretty much over. Everyone uses Intel for pretty much everything now and MS, Dell and Asus have started making very nice quality laptops and 2 in 1s and for a lot less money. You are basically just paying a premium for OS X now, and as Windows has become lighter, faster and more useable, paying that premium is looking a lot less attractive to many of us.
The way I see it, it's massively overpriced considering what you're getting, but if people are buying it, oh well. It's their money. Either way, it won't hurt Apple at all.
...at least not until they do something similar to the MBP.
You need to not jump to conclusions. You made a ridiculous statement and I simply corrected you. The iPhone 5c was not a failure! I provided links to support that. Did the 5S outsell it, sure, but definition of "a failure" is something else. Ask Blackberry.
If you care to check my other comments on MR in the past year, you would know that I'm far from "blind faith". I've been quite critical of Apple in the past 2 years to the point I'm looking at alternatives.
You calling the 5c a failure and considering that "constructive criticism" is a laugh. Many here know what that is called, so I won't repeat it and make assumptions on your state of mind.
The days for making blanket statements about either Windows or OS X are over!
Apple has enough (some would say too many) products up and down the price spectrum (Mac Mini -> MBA -> MBP -> 5K iMac -> MP) to say that there's a "premium" for OS X.
I was looking at an Asus Zenbook and with comparable hardware the price was the same and in some instances higher than the equivalent Macbook Air.
Same with Dell's new XPS 13.
Hackintosh has also matured to make it quite easy to run on many PCs, laptops and desktops, so saying "paying for OS X premium" is really based on a false premise.
I think, you meant to compare hardware manufacturing standards and in that respect, Apple's lead in the past has definitely shrunk. I still think OS X has a slight lead on the OS side.
Yeah you're right, I only sold them since they were released up until about a year or so ago... Where do these ignorant accusations come from?
So you are really going to argue that Macs are a value? Please. They have always been overpriced and some people gladly paid it because it was so superior to the competition that was making plastic junk while Windows was a bloated, memory hungry resource hog. Those days are over. Like I said, companies like MS, Asus and Dell are making quality computers and Windows has improved by leaps and bounds. The upcoming Surface 3 can run full blown Windows 8.1 on TWO GBs of RAM. All the reviews I have seen online from tech sites and just people who have played with it at Best Buy say it's plenty zippy enough.hate to say it but Apple has really started going downhill since Jobs died. Meanwhile, MS has really started to step it up. Apple needs to stop working on watches for kids and netbooks for hipsters and start doing some real work on real products.
Hey, I agree with you. I never said Apple is "value". They never were. In the past you paid a premium and you got a premium product and like you said, since Jobs died, things are not as solid as they used to be and in the past 2 years I've been looking at PC alternatives from the companies you mentioned.
However, like many here, I've been dialled into Apple's ecosystem since the 80s ! It's very hard to change, but this new retina Macbook is definitely an example of Apple takin' a puss . Because they can!
They were/are a great marketing company, but now it's becoming a fashion house like Gucci & Tiffany's.
To use the analogy elsewhere in this thread, at $999, this Macbook would sell like an iPhone 5S, at $1299, more like a 5c
Even though the price premiums are reversed.
Give it a year or two and hopefully they'll up the CPU and lower the price, then it will replace the entry-level MBA.
I hear you on the ecosystem thing. I have an iMac, iPad Air 2, iPhone 6 Plus, MBA and an Apple TV. However, Im at the point where I refuse to pay a premium price just to have OS X or settle for a laptop with outdated and/or inferior specs. If Apple makes me mad enough, I'll ditch my iPhone for a Windows phone, my MBA for something like a Surface Pro 3 that will also replace my iPad (kill two birds with one stone there) my iMac for a Windows desktop and my Apple TV for a Roku and be done with it.
my thoughts exactly! I'm waiting for Windows 10 release, once the bugs are out and re-evaluate then. If Nadella plays his cards right, he can pick up a lot disgruntled Mac users.
I'm sure Apple has a better read on that than you do. If you think you're right, send a resume to the chairman of Apple's board.
I made a second post a page before with the iFixit Teardown of the Air 2, which shows the Facetime HD Camera. It's not directly attached to the laminated screen and not blocked by the battery. It was a bad example, because it wouldn't fit into the 12'' MB. Maybe Apple could go the Dell route.
I can totally understand this. But i think the specs aren't the main problem for everyone. In my opinion pricing and ports are more problematic. My girlfriend would like the 12'' MB and it could replace her aging 13'' 2009 Macbook Pro. She does mainly writing and webbrowsing on it. So the 12'' MB specs would be fine for the next years. And the retina display would be a nice upgrade. But the lack of ports make it very impractical. Maybe USB-C is the future, but why not include an extra USB 3.0 and a HDMI Port for the next two - three years until this standard is fully established? I can't hook up the TV/monitor, old mouse, printer, drive, stick whatever without a dongle (89€ !!!). And no, getting everything wireless is not an option without throwing away a lot of stuff, which isn't broken.
The pricing of apple products starts to get a real problem, especially in Europe. I know about currency changes, taxes and so on. But i think they reached a point, where i am not sure if i am willing to invest more in this ecosystem. iPhones are higher priced than ever, macmini got a weird update, macbook air is probably on its way out and gets replaced with a high priced, low spec, one port machine. And Apple ruined my rMini experience with iOS8. So maybe i should try a Surface 3 after the Windows 10 release. This could eventually satisfy all tablet and light mobile notebook needs for 600-700€ while Apple wants about 2000€ (12'' MB, Dongle, rMini 3) for the same scenario. I probably get a better experience with Apple, but i don't it think it is worth the extra money (anymore).
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I see your point. Since it is new technology, they feel entitled to recoup the R&D costs to maintain profitability. Also, no one else on the market has a laptop like this. I get their reasoning now, I think. From a consumer point of view, I still don't have justification for investing in such a limited device, but if others want it, more power to them and more money to Apple to help them incorporate the new tech to the next MBPr
Thanks.
There's a reason why the iPad Mini is at a cheaper price.
-Last year hardware.
-Industrial processes already mature, so economics of scale kick in and it's cheaper to manufacture.
I built my own gaming PC, which I put Windows on as well.
I think I would be more interested in a 14" retina MB which theoretically could be the size of the 13" MBA. I definitely will wait for better performance, a 720p webcam and a second USB-C port which would then make a great replacement for the current MBA.
Or this model flops and Apple realizes that people are not that stupid to fall for this fashion thing. I would be interested in a new Air but this new model is just silly.
I was reading Mossberg's review of the 2008 Air yesterday. The specifics are a little different, obviously, but it's really interesting that a lot of the themes are the same. The other thing about that, of course, is that depending on your point of view it took either the 2010 or 2012 versions (third or fifth generation) to really make the product hum.
The launch is looking like a complete ****-up, which may have other consequences.
Sometimes you don't have a choice. My previous company supplied me with a hand-me-down MacBook Air and said, "Here's your development machine". It was a Fortune 500 company, but the secondhand MacBook Air was what fit into the team's budget -- it wasn't a matter of "figuring it out".
I wouldn't have minded, except it had 4 GB of RAM and was constantly swapping memory to disk. Other than that, its performance was fine for iPhone app development.
Theoretically, for iPhone development a new MacBook would be all you'd need, assuming you could get enough RAM in it. Creating iPhone apps are generally tiny so you don't need a super buff CPU or video card. They compile in a jiffy even on a slow CPU.
But you DO need plenty of RAM to handle running Xcode, Simulator, Safari, Mail, Terminal, iTunes, SourceTree, Preview, Calendar, etc. etc. etc. IMHO, even 8 GB is barely enough for development.
EDIT: Someone above helpfully pointed out that 8GB is an Intel chipset limitation for this particular chipset, so Apple doesn't have any choice.
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The price will come down i the next 18 month, so no worries on that front. They will bring the price much closer in line with curr air pricing by the timr mba is discontinued.
There is not much reason to hold onto fairly stale models like the MBAs that should be phased out soon. Legacy tech like USB2 really need to gradually disappear from current systems, very few people really use them any more. I havent really needed to use a usb drive since dropbox became usable.
Something like TB is a specialist connector that should be used to connect things like SASS arrays for Mac pros, consumer peripherals dont really need anything like that. the lastest wifi and BT standards will do fine for all consumer peripherals. External displays are not generally used with ultra portables anyways, display ports might be useful for mbp, but the vast majority of them on Consumer systems are never touched.
Portable Laptops with legacy USB and external display connections should be rapidly EOLed given their dependence on tech from an era that has already passed us by.