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Early Benchmarks Reveal New MacBook Air Rivaling High-End 2010 MacBook Pro
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That seems to be Apple's logic at the moment. The only mac that doesn't make any sense as it stands, is the 13' Macbook Pro.
Uh. We might... MIGHT see hexacore iMacs... MAYBE. But 8? Not going to happen. And I doubt we'll see quad-core MacBook Airs within the next two years either. Maybe by 2014.
Btw, Ivy Bridge is really only supposed to be ~20% speed increase.
I've bought 3 Macs for my own use (of which I still use 2).
G4 Mac Mini just to try it out. Before the Intel announcement. Just to see whether I could handle the whole Mac experience. Since handed off to extended family member.
2008 Mac Pro. Wanted to upgrade my aging desktop, and I had a relatively recent Windows laptop anyway. But had to go the Mac Pro route because the Intel iMacs had a 4GB max Ram limitation.
The MBP when I finally got tired of my then 4 year old Windows laptop. But since I use Windows in VMWare to run mainly Quicken, I needed additional RAM.
Run the software I've already purchased.
20% is a lot, and for most it would be more. Few will upgrade from SB to IB; most will be upgrading older systems. And I certainly think we'll see 6 and 8 core iMacs.
Same here, but the speed improvements are noticeable even in doing mundane things like scrolling web pages. I just played with the new 11" at the Pasadena store. This is such a big jump in performance that I am replacing my 2010 13" MBA. I probably won't replace the 11" that I only use for traveling but it is tempting.
This is impressive, but its the SSD drive that probably tipped the scales heavily in the MBA scores. Now there's SATA3, and SSD drives are much more speedy than they were just a year ago (also slightly cheaper).
While I am impressed by the MBA, and would have happily picked one up right this instant, my MBP13 still has lots of life left in it since it's now got 8GB memory and an SSD + HD drive inside. Core 2 Duo chips are still very good for everyday use, even programming and light to medium photo rendering.
I wonder if anyone has tried running Crysis on the new MBA yet (via Boot Camp).
While I am impressed by the MBA, and would have happily picked one up right this instant, my MBP13 still has lots of life left in it since it's now got 8GB memory and an SSD + HD drive inside. Core 2 Duo chips are still very good for everyday use, even programming and light to medium photo rendering.
I wonder if anyone has tried running Crysis on the new MBA yet (via Boot Camp).
Again, Geekbench does not in any way use or measure hard drive speed. It's only measuring CPU and memory speed.
Not disputing what you are saying, but I don't understand how that would negatively impact a laptop with SSD-based storage.
It doesn't. Original poster claimed that the MBA's SSD would give it an advantage in Geekbench scores. That's the point I was disputing.
I have such a beastie. 13", 2.3 quad core mbp, 128 ssd, 8 gb ram. Boots 25 programs at startup in 18 seconds. Rips DVDs on hand break 3 x faster than my 3 year old iMac. Program start in one bounce.
I hate to tell you this, dude, but there is no 13" quad core mac book pro. If you see 4 CPUs in activity monitor, it's because of Hyperthreading, not because you actually have 4 CPU cores. Or perhaps you meant that you have the 15" or 17" model.
A CNET article seemingly confirming Turbo Boost in the MBA's...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-2...-goes-into-intel-i5-hyperdrive/?tag=cnetRiver
This caught my eye as well which should be some good trolling fodder...
"Intel's HD Graphics 3000 is also built into the chip. Nvidia's graphics chipset is no more. But there is no performance hit to speak of."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-2...-goes-into-intel-i5-hyperdrive/?tag=cnetRiver
This caught my eye as well which should be some good trolling fodder...
"Intel's HD Graphics 3000 is also built into the chip. Nvidia's graphics chipset is no more. But there is no performance hit to speak of."
Yeah, I saw the same thing. You'll notice they have tests for Multimedia Multitasking, Photoshop CS3, and iTunes encoding, but not 3D gaming.
Not that it personally matters to me as we have gaming consoles for that sort of thing, but clearly CNET has chosen to overlook the big weak point of the HD 3000.
I'm still trying to find reliable benchmarks comparing the 13" MBA 1.7GHz i5 to the 1.8GHz i7...
Then you should stick with what you have. I have tons of old DOS software laying around that is about worthless nowadays on modern OSes.
There is never a guarantee moving forward that purchasing a new computer won't involve replacing software. Heck, any Mac software pre-dating 2005 is worthless on a newly purchased Macs as of... 2 days ago.
Again guys : an OS is not what you're buying. A computer to execute tasks is what it is. That you're "vendor locked-in" to a particular OS is a fault of the software vendor you're using for not providing multi-platform versions of their software. Ideally, when purchasing software, you want to steer clear of vendor lock-in as much as possible, to make migrating your computer/OS platform easiest as possible if an opportunity arises to save costs.
But that's just the IT person in me speaking, what the heck do I know about these gadgets and thingies ?
My late-2010 MBA 13 is all of a sudden feeling quite sluggish. And the keyboard is decidedly unlit. Oh, what to do...
I will sell my late 2010 13" MBA today and I will get the new version. The speed is not as much important to me as Thunderbolt. I would love to hook up one of these new cinema screens to my MBA at home...
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To me, it's not just the new cinema display, but that the cinema display has a FireWire hub (via the Thunderbolt port) built into it.
I just waiting for Macworld to do one of their signature Lab Reports on the different processors in the new MBAs to help me decide between the i5 and i7 processors.