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Larger display Air sound like a good idea?

D

dpearman2007

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 23, 2009
38
10
Hey All,

Firstly this isn't any sort of a speculative thread, more so I'm curious if I'm alone in my desire for a larger than 13" air like machine? I love the 16" size, but what about those of us that only want a larger display, and don't necessarily have a need for a much higher end CPU or dedicated graphics? I realize displays are a fairly expensive component of a laptop, so I'd gladly pay a premium for a larger than 13" air - does anyone else think that would be a good idea?

I'm wondering if driving a larger display would then require a more robust GPU, even if we're talking just for 'normal' tasks, ie. web usage, as opposed to actually needing the GPU power for rendering/editing media. If that were the case I could then see heat issues potentially being a blocker for a larger display air.
 
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It's called an LG Gram 17.

We have one at home. My dad loves it. I also got him the LG 43UD79 display to go with it. It drives 4K just fine.
 
Apple has never marketed an “inexpensive” large form-factor notebook. The Air has always been a thin and light notebook. I don’t see that changing. Apple sells 4-5 million Macs per quarter, about 50-60% of which are notebooks. It is probably not a big enough volume to justify too many different product lines.
 
Yeah, Apple has never ever made a computer like this. If you want the large screen, you have to pay for all the upgrades.

A used/refurbished 15" is a way to get one. Macs tend to last(well except for those butterfly keyboards), and the 15" have the best hardware... any 15" Mac made in the last 5-7 years should still be plenty fast enough for everyday things.

You can always use an external display with a 13" Mac too.
 
I think it would be great.

13” & 15” MacBook Air
14” & 16” MacBook Pro

The 15” Air would give people who want/need the larger display a way to get it without trading some organs. Probably fit in a slightly larger battery, some better cooling. Leave the high-power quad/six/eight cores, 32GB+ RAM, ultra-fast storage, P3 displays etc to the Pros.

People saying Apple has never marketed an inexpensive large laptop don’t seem to remember the battleship landing deck that was the 14” iBook.
 
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Pugly said:
Yeah, Apple has never ever made a computer like this. If you want the large screen, you have to pay for all the upgrades.

A used/refurbished 15" is a way to get one. Macs tend to last(well except for those butterfly keyboards), and the 15" have the best hardware... any 15" Mac made in the last 5-7 years should still be plenty fast enough for everyday things.

You can always use an external display with a 13" Mac too.
Click to expand...

You're definitely right, I could hook it up to an external display, I'd actually like to hook a 13" air up to two external displays. The reason I'd want a 16" is I can comfortably fit two windows side by side at that size, so two chrome windows. A lot of my work is web based, so testing in one window, then love production in the other would be nice. Seeing as though I have 25 or so chrome tabs open at once now, I might end up needing to go with the 16" anyway, as that might cripple the air.
 
I'm in the same boat, and I see an increasing number of people asking for this machine, but Apple are perplexingly resistant to making it. There were rumours of a 15" Air going back to the first redesign in 2010 that never came to anything, so I can only imagine either Apple's market research suggests there's no demand for this machine (odd as Microsoft (and a lot of Windows OEMs) have seen fit to make the 15" Surface Laptop (or similar devices like the LG gram, entry level XPS (similar in price to Air) etc) which fall very much in the same category, or that they simply want to herd as many people towards the more expensive 16" Pro as possible.
 
I would think they could find a good middle price point, say 1499 starting, and that could easily entice more folks to pull the trigger that ordinarily wouldn't have. The $500 premium could go towards the display, and even a really low end dedicated gpu, if one is needed to power the display.
 
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dpearman2007 said:
I would think they could find a good middle price point, say 1499 starting, and that could easily entice more folks to pull the trigger that ordinarily wouldn't have. The $500 premium could go towards the display, and even a really low end dedicated gpu, if one is needed to power the display.
Click to expand...
Yep something like that would be ideal. It would effectively take the place of the previous iGPU 15" Pro that they stopped making after 2015 with no replacement. Most Windows OEMs offer something in this category so I can't really understand why Apple determinedly ignore it.

I don't think a dGPU would be necessary, certainly not for the sort of tasks an Air would be used for - the 16" Pro runs on integrated graphics much of the time when not being pushed, and Ice Lake (or maybe even AMD 4000 chips?) have much more powerful Iris or Radeon integrated graphics than the HD 630 included in the 16".
 
Maybe you guys can help me in this thread.

The default font looks small on default but if I scale it larger it looks good but does that kill the resolution?

thanks
 
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