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my mba impressions
- Thread starter tim100
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what about the camera?
I have the 13 inch and find the battery to be a bit concerning, dont get close to the advertised 7 hours...but I have the 4gb ram, 256 gb storage, 2.13 mhz version, maybe that draws power faster? makes sense i suppose. oddly enough the ichat camera seems to draw a lot of power and my friend says the quality is not as good as my imac...
I have the 13 inch and find the battery to be a bit concerning, dont get close to the advertised 7 hours...but I have the 4gb ram, 256 gb storage, 2.13 mhz version, maybe that draws power faster? makes sense i suppose. oddly enough the ichat camera seems to draw a lot of power and my friend says the quality is not as good as my imac...
Better camera would be nice. I for one don't miss the light sensor - I turned it off on my MBP, it never got it exactly where I want the brightness to be. Adjusting brightness is too easy to give up precise control. Backlit keyboard missing though... 
I agree 100% except for the light sensor... I always disabled it, just like on my iPhone... when I'm in environments where I want to control it, it never picks the right setting. Like on an airplane when I'm flying in a dark cabin at night, it'd dim my MBP to 2-3 bars, when I'm happiest on 1 bar of dimness... so I'd find myself fighting with it.... and it always won, haha.
yes. i agree. what about the macbook pro what will we get next update/how does the new mba impact the macbook line?
Apple said new MBA is the future of notebooks. Apple is going to push flash memory instead of hdd. The biggest difference between MBA and mbp are
Flash memory
Optical drive
Apple will keep up with optical drive on mbp for long time, but hdd will die out eventually. Ssd is a lot quieter and faster.
The MBP was just updated in June.
Think of it this way... to "update" you have to have specs that have been generally available to the market for a month. We tend to hear about technologies that are "now available" and assume they can just add them tomorrow. Apple has to engineer, test, and accept the specs into the design, order the parts, then send the new manufacturing schematics to China. To say this can be done in a week or two or a month, is a stretch. Certain elements can be pre-planned, but a month leadtime is fair, plus the month after something is released.
With that said.. people keep asking about the MBP. There's a solution for those who want the i series processor in the 15", so that's out... but what other technology that's available today, or has been available since September 1 would you want added to make a "refresh" of the MacBook Pro? It's easy to say "refresh already!" but the only thing that really comes to mind for me is USB 3.0... but aside from that, there's really nothing that the MBP line doesn't have that's available mass-market today.
I disagree... I think the optical drive is done. Let me ask you this... how many times have you used the optical drive in the last 365 days? Me... 3 times, all 3 to reinstall OS X... imagine if they can recover 20% extra space for ___________ (you fill in the blank) inside the body by eliminating the drive... or thinning down the entire pro line in absence of the drive. My use constitutes about a 1% use of the drive... to me, I'd rather them kill the optical drive, hell, they can even keep the price the same. Then on the rare case I need a dvd burner I'll shell out the $79... but I think most are like me, the drive is just there..
So which are you going to keep? I'm interested to know if anyone with a 13" as satisfied going to an 11".
I looked at a 13"MBA in the Apple store today. I found the text in the web browser to be way too small compared to the 13" MBP that I'm typing on. I know you can make fonts larger, but I was wondering if you really need that much resolution on a 13" screen. I think part of the problem is age - the resolution is probably fine if you're 25, but a retired old coot like myself struggles with the superfine resolution.
Can we increase the font size, not only those in web browser but everything in the OS interface? I am new to Mac so this is a newbie question.
I guess it's more like choosing a lower resolution...if the texts and buttons and everything are just too small for the eyes. Can we do that if we are so inclined?
Yes you can do that. Go into Displays Preferences on your MBA and reduce the resolution from 1440 X 900 to 1280 X 800. That will automatically increase the size of all fonts. They won't look as sharp as they do at the higher resolution but they will be larger.
MBP 13 inch can go to i3 processor because so many people are crying too much about it. Also, apple might push SSD on MBP very aggressively like MBA. USB 3.0 is not happening to MBP in next update.
People still watch movies on spinning disks?
I haven't owned a DVD or blu ray player in 2 years... I spend $20 a month for a 30MB internet connection capable of simultaneously streaming 10 HD movies... not sure spinning disks have a place for most anymore. If Target's 10 foot wide movie section is any indication, adios spinning disks.
Too bad resolution independence wasn't ready for Snow Leopard. Windows 7 has it and it works great, especially on the 13.1" Sony Z with the 1080p displays.
Have to disagree - tried it on Windows 7 and it only works pretty well at the preset scaling options - if you try "in betweens" then things get iffy quickly. If 125% or 200% is your thing, then its ok, but some programs that weren't built with scaling in mind end up with wonky dialog boxes and such.