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MacBook Air Refresh With Broadwell Processors and Intel HD 6000 Graphics Appears Imminent

Arcady

Why upgrade?

My wife has a 2010 MBP and an iPad3.

When I finished the video I attempted to "Air Drop" it to both devices. Well the BT in these will not support "Air Drop" so we had to do it the old fashioned way, transfer the file and then plug in the iPad to her MBP and sync it.

The new tech is so much better!
 
bjet767 said:
Ok I have to write from experience;

I have the MBA 2014 11" with 256 and 4 gig memory. My desktop is a 2012 Mini i7 Quad core (the fast one), 1 t HD, 256 SSD drives and 16 gig memory.

I use the 11" air on the road almost every day. This past week I made a 3 min video using iMovie for the web, running Photoshop elements, Firefox, a FTP down loader and text editor all at once on the 11." With 4 gigs it ran really good and only bogged down when I tried to access a network drive via wireless connection.

For those nay-Sayers who say "8 gigs," I would bet they do very little "power" computing on their machines. The biggest bottle necks on all computers these days are the storage access, not the normal memory. This means if your program needs to do a lot of drive read and writing, like a video program, the faster the better!

BTW I rendered the video both on the Mini and the 11" MBA, there's a significant difference in CPU speed between the two, and noticed very little difference in processing speed of the video. Where I did notice a huge difference is when I imported the movie to Final Cut Pro X and then exported it to a file.

FCPX renders videos on the fly rather than at the end, as is the case with iMovie, therefore exporting to a file was a lot faster in FCPX than in iMovie on the same machine.

I will be in line to get the 12" MBA when it comes out.

Enjoy!
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I run VMs on my Macs. Sometimes more than one at a time. I need a minimum of 8GB of RAM to make them run well. I have 16GB in my iMac, and it is sometimes needed. And the fact that the RAM is soldered makes me want to max it out at time of purchase.

But I will agree that most (most, not all) functionality on OS X runs very well on the MBA with 4GB of RAM (I have a 2011).
 
My first laptop (PC) ran for about 45 mins on a reasonably sized battery. My first MBA (2010 11") ran for about 4 hours on its battery, I now get about 7 hours of hard use with the radios on with my current 11" MBA (2014) and I'm looking forward to even more.

My Compact IPaq PDA ran for about 8 hours on a charge, my iPad 1 ran for about 6 hours on a charge, now my iPhone 6 runs for over 24 hours and my iPad mini over 10 when working hard and a whole lot longer in idle.

It keeps getting better!

Why upgrade?

Because you can and want to!
 
rdlink

Please don't let me give any of you the idea I am advocating less memory. Over the years I have always, if able, ran at least 8 - 16 gigs of memory in my computers (Windows and OSX).

My point is most people really could run an OSX computer with 2 gigs of memory and never know any difference.

It's like running more than one monitor, my MBA 11" can do it, but it doesn't do it well. I didn't buy the MBA to be a power house desktop it travels very well and does most tasks also very well. If I had one thing I wish it had was more "height" in its screen. Of course it does and that is know as a MBA 13," but I really need the slightly smaller form for the amount of travel I do.

BTW I was very surprised to see how well FCPX ran on it. Over the years my experience with full featured video editors was they needed huge amounts of hardware to really work. Not so with this Apple product!

If you like iMovie you will love FCPX.
 
Nevermind all the 'only 8 GB' protests (at least this means the next OSX should run very well on 4 GB again), what about the 'only 128 GB' cry?
In 2015, only offering 128 GB on a premium laptop is really miserly. Especially if it's the same outrageous cost increase to upgrade to 256 GB.

Perhaps if they skipped 256 GB and went with a 128 GB entry level and 512 GB upper level (a la 16/64 points on the iDevices) it wouldn't be such as bad offer.

What I do notice from the Broadwell specs is that the new i7 option (if it really is 2.2 GHz) turbos to >3 GHz so not that far off MBP performance.
 
jclo said:
I wouldn't count on it. It's very possible the Retina MacBook Air will be priced significantly higher than the existing MacBook Air, just like the Retina MacBook Pro. Apple kept the standard MacBook Pro around for awhile after introducing the Retina MacBook Pro because of the price difference. Then phased it out as Retina prices came down. Same may happen for the MacBook Air.
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I can't see them pricing it too much higher than it is now, otherwise it would have trouble competing with the rMBP.

Cuban Missles said:
can we get the ipad pro please?
Click to expand...

+1.
 
I have a 2013 air and love it, but I really do wish they would bump the ram up to 6gb standard. 4gb is fine but it can get exhausted pretty quickly. The upgrade to 8gb is overkill for most people, and most stores around don't carry anything other than the stock configs so its hard to get more ram without ordering it directly which I prefer to go into a local store to buy (no apple stores around me)
 
kiranmk2 said:
Nevermind all the 'only 8 GB' protests (at least this means the next OSX should run very well on 4 GB again), what about the 'only 128 GB' cry?
In 2015, only offering 128 GB on a premium laptop is really miserly. Especially if it's the same outrageous cost increase to upgrade to 256 GB.

Perhaps if they skipped 256 GB and went with a 128 GB entry level and 512 GB upper level (a la 16/64 points on the iDevices) it wouldn't be such as bad offer.

What I do notice from the Broadwell specs is that the new i7 option (if it really is 2.2 GHz) turbos to >3 GHz so not that far off MBP performance.
Click to expand...


Hypothetically speaking, what if they release the 12" retina MBA, and lower the cost of the refreshed MBA's $200+.....would this still be such a bad scenario?
 
poematik13 said:
I wonder how the 6000 stacks up against the Iris and Iris pro?
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I haven't seen any GPU benchmarks on the intel HD 6000 yet, according to intel its about 22% faster in gaming.

Which would make it not quite as fast as Iris 5100.

pgiguere1 said:
According to Cinebench and 3DMark, the HD 6000 is around 20-25% faster than the HD 5000.
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I have been looking everywhere for 6000 benchmarks, can you please share the link to that


So given this article is true and that the current MacBook Air will not get retina, then I think the notebook lineup will look more like this:

I think it will be:
13"cMBA (non retina, 15W broadwell, HD 6000, same form factor) - starting at $999
12" rMBA (retina display, fanless, core M 4.5W, new design) - starting around $1199
13+15" rMBP same as before starting at $1299
 
Oh please Apple... 128GB of storage and 4 GB of ram - Its 2015 not 2010.

Honestly 4GB of ram (Soldered) in 2015 is not good enough. It may be passable now, but in 2-3 years it will be pretty bad.
 
WebHobbit said:
If these specs are correct Dell's new XPS 13 will remain an MBA KILLER!
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Dell xps is a really nice machine.
However, it has a slower cpu, and weaker gpu. At the same price point of MacBook air.

And the premium dell xps with the awesome display is more expensive.

Even the highest dell xps model only has Intel hd 5500. Which only has half the amount of gpu cores.

Last generation, Intel hd 5000 was around 40% faster than 4400
 
:) Early 2014 : MacBook Air 6 disappointment
:rolleyes: Mid 2014 : MacBook Pro 11 disappointment
:confused: Late 2014 : Mac mini 8 disappointment
:( Late 2014 : iPad mini 3 disappointment

New year, same company.

:mad: Early 2015 : MacBook Air 7 disappointment

Why was I even hopeful?
Oh yes,  rumor sites tricked me.
 
Mattsasa said:
Dell xps is a really nice machine.
However, it has a slower cpu, and weaker gpu. At the same price point of MacBook air.

And the premium dell xps with the awesome display is more expensive.

Even the highest dell xps model only has Intel hd 5500. Which only has half the amount of gpu cores.

Last generation, Intel hd 5000 was around 40% faster than 4400
Click to expand...

Ha, no way would most of us even consider the Dell XPS. Those Dell models come and go really fast. Plus, the Air has OS X.
 
I love my 2013 13" MacBook Air. The display is jarring when compared to the one on my 6 Plus, but the battery life on it is phenomenal. I can manage 3 days without charging even with all the papers and research Im doing. I can see myself using it till it breaks down which doesn't seem likely.
 
CJM said:
It feels like we've been on 1600MHz DDR3 for a thousand years.
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Don't worry. I just bought 16 GB of it when I upgraded finally from DDR2 533 to DDR3 two months ago.

DRR4 will be mainstream and affordable in no time, now. You're welcome. ;)


As for the MBA, the bezels are unforgivable. Could easily fit a 14" screen in the same chassis. The bezels on the 2006 MBP were half the size.
 
lewisd25 said:
If the Retina Air gets announced on Monday, then it is likely that the 11" Air gets replaced with the 12" Retina Air.
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Doubt that. They'll still offer the 11" to fit a different price point. This fabled 12" MacBook Air will almost certainly cost more than the base model Air right now.
 
If they're not upping the specs beyond the CPU and GPU, please tell me they're at least dropping the price.
 
Had this question before but didn't seem to get an answer . . .

Anyone know if USB C would be replacing magsafe for charging?
 
bjet767 said:
As a side note.

Where all the computers can improve speed isn't from the processor any more. The faster the connections the happier people are.

We need faster, USB, Video, Storage WIFI, BT and anything similar.

I get more annoyed at waiting for a wireless connection or for the storage connections to hook up an move data than I do rendering a video these days. If I click on a file or icon for any reason and the old spinning ball or similar icon appears for more than a moment or two I tend to start thinking this connection is junk or there's a problem.

Recently I paid the price and upgraded my router to an "airport extreme" and use the "express" to expand the network reach. I was very pleased to see the remote speed of the express connections was equal to being near the main router. It was worth the extra $ for the "upgrade."

It seems to me Apple "gets it" in these areas. But one does pay for it!
Click to expand...

Hmm, I also recently upgraded to a new Airport Extreme. I get great speed. But it is too bad that my older devices, including my iMac, don't have the latest ac standard wifi. My iPhone 6 is actually the devices that scores the highest on SpeedTest (sometimes exceeding 100 megabits if I do the test first thing in the morning (which I assume is because other folks in the neighborhood aren't up and using their internet)).

I might have to drop the $99 for the express to expand the network. It would nice to get better speeds on the second and third floor of the house.
 
Sitting at my desk now looking at my MBP and MBA, the obvious thing is that it won't be long before the innards of the former will fit in the latter. I imagine the medium term plan is for the MBAs to become the MBPs, if you see what I mean, and the MBAs to become one MBA - an ultra-thin 12" coffee shop machine, sans ports?

I hear what people say about not liking the MBA wedge shape. It has grown on me a little, and I like the way my wrists sit more easily on the MBA than the MBP when I type. However, on balance, I think I would prefer to see the MBA have the same shape as the MBP whilst keeping overall its smaller volume (hence thinner).

This shape would probably also allow more ports, which it would need, were it to become the top spec laptop of the range. One would also hope for the wasteful bezels to be all but eliminated.

In conclusion, the nearish future may be:

12" MBA (coffee shop user / traveller / second machine / for Mum or Granny)
13" MBP (in a thinner chassis than the current MBP, and with a slightly smaller surface area than the 13" MBA, courtesy of a reduced bezel)
15" MBP (in a thinner chassis than the current MBP, and with a slightly larger surface area than the 13" MBA, courtesy of a reduced bezel)

And who knows, with reduced bezels, perhaps a 17" version of the MBP may appear? Or a shift to 12", 14" and 16" in the above models?
 
Gudi said:
:) Early 2014 : MacBook Air 6 disappointment
:rolleyes: Mid 2014 : MacBook Pro 11 disappointment
:confused: Late 2014 : Mac mini 8 disappointment
:( Late 2014 : iPad mini 3 disappointment

New year, same company.

:mad: Early 2015 : MacBook Air 7 disappointment

Why was I even hopeful?
Oh yes,  rumor sites tricked me.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, I remember Tim Cook stating last year (2014) that Apple was going to being updating everything with great new products in the pipeline and all we got was minor spec bumps :mad:

But don't worry, the event is not over yet, Tim Cook will read this and change his mind, new 12" retina Air on Monday, whohoo!
 
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