Does the macbook have the same foot print as the 11" air?

[vanimal]

I doubt the 11" Air could get 9 hours battery if they put a retina display in there and kept everything else the same.

I thought i read in real world use the MBR gets 7-8? I could be wrong.

 

[AdonisSMU]

You don't make much sense in your reasoning.

The 11" air and 12" retina have almost the exact same battery capacity. And the retina display is not more bulky as proven by the new macbook...

Apple redesigned the whole thing to make an air like device work with a retina display. Secondly as I stated before there is the 13" rMBP which is priced like an 11" air with a retina display, 8 gigs of ram and 128GB of storage and its much thicker and heavier.

 

[barefeats]

sleeve for rMB 12"

I have a black leather Decoder thin sleeve with zipper that is designed for the 11" MacBook Air. Though the 12" Retina MacBook is slightly different in shape and size, the sleeve fits it like a glove.

 

[vanimal]

I have a black leather Decoder thin sleeve with zipper that is designed for the 11" MacBook Air. Though the 12" Retina MacBook is slightly different in shape and size, the sleeve fits it like a glove.

Obviously the MBR is much thinner. But don't they have almost the same footprint? Someone posted the dimensions earlier, they were fairly close.

 

[Miat]

He isn't referring to the keyboard. He is talking about the small footprint where you lay your wrists when you are using it. The 11" one is smaller thus making your wrists more cramped and less comfortable. Wrists fits perfectly on the 13" model.

When I got my MBA there were four things that made me choose the 13" model:

- screen ratio (strongly prefer 16:10 on smaller screens, i.e laptops),
- total screen real estate
- pixel size (on the 11" they are just getting too small for my old eyes)
- space to rest my wrists (I have large hands)

Lack of wrist space alone killed the 11" for me. I knew that within a few seconds of putting my hands on one in the store, and have never regretted grabbing the 13".

Still got a soft spot for the 11" though. It is a neat little package.

 

[mortenandersen]

Me too

True, but imagine a 14" 16:10

I hate the 4:3 aspect ratio on the iPads, when i use the Air 9 times out of 10 i just use it in portrait to browse the web etc. Everything to me, looks odd in 4:3 in landscape.

iPad's 4:3 [16:12] ratio in landscape looks just odd to me, too.

For laptops, made to just be used in landscape mode, I think the "movie" ratio of 16:9 looks so much good for my eyes, cannot explain it in another way. The 16:10 ratio (not to say the 16:12 ratio) look just so "square-ish" and "stucked-together" to me.

But.... this only tells me to go and buy a MBA 11" now, for I think Apple will continue with these more "rectangle-ish" formats also in the future.

 

[nrubenstein]

To consider: the 12" screen is actually hardly any bigger than the 11" Air (the screen is actually 11.6"), while the 13" Air has a 13.3" screen, so the jump to 14" is a bit bigger. Below a comparison of 11" Air and 12" MB - not such a big difference as the numbers suggest.

Image

http://www.displaywars.com/11,6-inch-16x9-vs-12-inch-16x10

It's a huge improvement in usability.

The simple reason why I have lived with my ancient ThinkPad X60s (aside from not really needing a laptop that much) is that the 12" 4:3 screen is the (IMHO) ideal size and aspect ratio for getting things done in a small package. Widescreen is great on a big screen where you have the height to work with, but it absolutely sucks when you are size constrained. In a perfect world, I would have loved for this thing to be 4:3.