How would that affect the GPU? The current 13" Retina MacBook Pro can be quite slow when driving an extra screen, can't imagine that a slower MacBook Air can drive a Retina screen without feeling slow.
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New MBAs can't be fanless
- Thread starter motrek
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Aren't the MacBook Airs so damn thin enough?! How thin will they go?! You get to a point where thinner is not better. If they are too thin they could break easily. And there's barely a difference in portability vs the current Airs.
I don't want to get papercuts from my iPaper xP
I agree, no point in going any thinner. What I would love and see as real progress would be to reduce the bezel around the screen to a bare minimum, so that almost the whole things is a screen. For example the 11" could almost take a 13" if the bezel was tiny around it, the 13" could house a 14" or 15". That would be real progress and I would go for one!
Yeah, the Mini is flatter so it seems bigger but I think if you look at the volume, it's smaller than the older ones. Either smaller or very similar.
But the old Minis also had enormous power bricks that were almost the size of the computer themselves. That was a little ridiculous. I'll take the new Mini's internal power supply any day of the week.
I don't think the Mini can get much smaller without sacrificing features. Right now it has a pretty high-performance (albeit laptop) processor, easily-upgradeable RAM, easily-upgradeable hard drives, an internal power supply, and a pretty solid number of ports.
You can definitely make smaller computers like Intel's NUC, but those have weak processors, minimal RAM expansion, no standard-size hard drive, minimal ports, and an awkward external power supply. No thanks.
Only if you don't look for benchmark evaluations that Intel enables:
Anantech ran some numbers 14 days before this thread started.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8515/quick-look-at-core-m-5y70-and-llama-mountain
Because the vast majority of folks looking to render complex graphiics selection MBA to do the job? Most folks buying a lightweight, long battery life, thin laptop are looking for those features.
Core M is faster to the point that it is somewhat of a sideways (or better) move on overall performance on most workloads. There will be corner cases where it doesn't work, but Apple hasn't been working on "race to sleep" additions to the OS and libraries/frameworks for nothing.
In which alternative universe did that happen in? The press release from Apple's introduction of the MBA.
"... “We’ve built the world’s thinnest notebook—without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or a full-size 13-inch display,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. ..."
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/20...MacBook-Air-The-Worlds-Thinnest-Notebook.html
Or a couple years later when they reinvented the MBA as being
" ... lighter and smaller— ..."
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/10/20Apple-Reinvents-Notebooks-With-New-MacBook-Air.html
Apple stopped playing the "world's thinnest" after Sony (and others ) was regularly one-upping them at it. But the "thin" (and implicitly relatively lightest weight) has remains a marketing focus for them.
The notion that the MBA was a performance first focused laptop is other worldly. It has never been a top goal.
At this point the MBA is both lightest and most affordable laptop. It has taken over the role the MacBook held when the MBA was first introduced. The Core M options are both "good enough" for most mainstream workloads and likely also more affordable. ( The fact that ark.intel.com won't list the price (http://ark.intel.com/products/family/83613/Intel-Core-M-Processors) probably it means it is lower than the 'U' class that has higher performance. ). The MBA had to drop in price to maintain value. Apple needs a solution with a lower cost of a CPU package if they want to push "Retina" screens down into the lower systems price points.
Coupled with a drop in MBP 13" retina prices (and perhaps a tweak to shed a littte bit more weight) the folks who really are more performance focused will be herded to "step up" to the MBP (and a fan).
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I know you meant this as a silly, rhetorical question but there are plenty of people who start threads on this board who want to run fairly intensive 3-D video games on their MBAs, or to do video editing, or other similar things which would quickly led to thermal throttling on a Haswell or even a Core M if it were passively cooled.
Doing this sort of task is like asking someone street race in a camry. It will work but you probably wont win.
Yes, yes, it's obvious you think I'm retarded but I actually know what I'm talking about and I suggest you take what I say a little more seriously.
Notice that Jobs very deliberately specified a 13" display in his comment, because I'm sure he knew full well that Toshiba had been selling thinner laptops with slightly smaller displays for at least a few years before the MacBook Air came out.
So, sure, making a thin laptop has been Apple's priority for a long time, ever since the PowerBook Duo laptops (which you probably don't remember). But making the THINNEST laptop? Nope. And I don't see why they would start now.
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Sure, but let's say you're going to buy a fairly expensive laptop ($800+ is an expensive laptop for basically anyone) and I give you this choice:
1) You can have one that has a fan, it's silent for all practical purposes, and it performs as well as any other laptop in its price/size class and you can use it for "serious" work or light gaming in a pinch
or
2) For the same price, you can have a laptop that's a couple millimeters thinner, is silent, is imperceptibly lighter, is potentially prone to overheating if you use it in the sun (or with a lot of power-hungry USB devices plugged in), and after a minute or two of video gaming, it will run less than half as fast as most competing laptops at this price point.
I know which one I would choose.
Not? Try to use both the internal screen and a 27" ACD, it's really slow. If you close the lid so it only has to run the 27" it's fine, but both is just slow.
this is all speculation. we dont know how much smaller and lighter it would get. we dont know how bad the thermal throttling will be.
but there wont be overheating. intel is not stupid.
i know i would/will buy this device and i would buy it exactly for what it is designed for. mails, websurfing, office, paying bills, youtube, itunes, some vacation photos.. while being as efficient, thin and light as possible. which is where the name AIR comes from.
i think you overestimate the amount of people who actually want to play games on the air and its clearly not apples target with this device. they are more than happy to have these customers switch to the rMB line.
since the air will also be getting a retina display now, they will need to further differentiate these devices anyway.
im sorry to break it to you: you should buy a rMB.
How much smaller and lighter do you think a laptop can be??
Also, re: overheating. Look at the iPad, which can't be used outside on a nice sunny day for more than a few minutes before it displays a message that it's too hot and has to shut down. Because it's passively cooled. Is that what you want your laptop to do, too?
Also I notice that sometimes when I have two devices taking non-trivial amounts of power from the USB ports on my MBA (e.g., ripping a DVD to an external hard drive), the system temperature will rise and the fan will spin up even though the processor is cool. In this situation, a passively cooled laptop would eventually have to shut down. Is this what you want?
But regular USB is on its way out, if you consider the new connector as a replacement. And since the MBA is all about portability, and Ivy has a fetisch with makig things skinny now, I would be surprised if the rMBA doesn't use the C-type connector.
On top of that, using your own arguments, everything is starting to become cloud based, so there's less and less need for connectors. Sure, they will still stay for a long periode, but we don't rely nearly ass much on them now as just 3 years ago.
there is still plenty of room for improvement in the weight departement.
these are not things i would do with the air. i dont buy physical media.
but apple is not going to ask me or you if thats a problem for us.
and as you proved with the ipad example, it wont stop them from releasing such a device.
these are not things i would do with the air. i dont buy physical media.
but apple is not going to ask me or you if thats a problem for us.
and as you proved with the ipad example, it wont stop them from releasing such a device.
I don't understand why you're expressing concerns as if a fanless MacBook Air already exists on the market. Apple may be working towards a fanless MacBook Air that does not have the technical problems you are describing.
I agree with the question on how much thinner laptops can become before compromises are made on a laptop's strength and durability, and I think the answer to that is most companies have common sense not to cross that line.
I mean, I've never used it with a ACD but with a regular 1080p screen 24" and the internal display on the rMBP and it's smooth. I've never played with it on the ACD.
But regular USB is on its way out, if you consider the new connector as a replacement. And since the MBA is all about portability, and Ivy has a fetisch with makig things skinny now, I would be surprised if the rMBA doesn't use the C-type connector.
On top of that, using your own arguments, everything is starting to become cloud based, so there's less and less need for connectors. Sure, they will still stay for a long periode, but we don't rely nearly ass much on them now as just 3 years ago.
Fine, I don't know what to say to you guys. (Not you in particular, T'hain, but kinda everybody.)
If you think Apple is likely to make a even thinner, even lighter laptop with passive cooling and no ports and a processor that's suitable for web browsing and not much more, then great. I think Apple calls that an iPad but whatever. It's in the realm of possibility and of course I can't prove it won't happen so I'm going to shrug my shoulders and walk away from this.
But I don't think that agrees with Apple's design goals. Look at the cheapest, base model 11.6" MBA. It's not labeled "professional" and I'm sure most people who buy one just have basic web-browsing needs and not much else since it is the cheapest laptop Apple sells.
But Apple still puts a $315 Core i5 processor in there, with turbo boost, hyperthreading, virtualization features, a nice GPU, etc. They could have cheaped out and put an i3, Pentium, or Celeron in there with the same TDP and saved themselves a bunch of money and probably satisfied most of the people who buy it. But instead they made it a machine that's very capable of doing some real work, with enough processing power and ports and whatnot that you can effectively do most things on a base model MBA that you can with any other MacBook.
Considering Apple doesn't go after the $300-$600 laptop market and considering the components they put in their laptops, I assume they want MacBooks to have the reputation of being capable machines no matter where they slot in in the lineup.
Using Intel's Core M chips in a MacBook would basically be the same as using a Celeron or Pentium in a MacBook right now. The Core M is Intel's lowest performing tier of Broadwell chips, intended for cheap fanless tablets. Of course Apple COULD use it in a MacBook just as much as they could have put a Celeron in current MacBooks, but they didn't. And I don't see why they would change their minds now and start putting Intel's weakest chips in their products.
no, seriously just no. atom is for the cheap tablets. Core M is for the more expensive tablets and is still much faster than the ipad.
core M might be the best CPU that intel has made in years and many techsites seem to agree.
of course if all you care about is benchmarks, you are not going to be happy.
the days where the CPU was the bottleneck are far gone. todays CPUs are bored on daily tasks, probably more than 99% of the time and only short bursts of power are needed - which the core M will be able to handle easily.
it will also need to have a fast SSD in there and a GPU that can handle the high resolution without much lag. that's actually the only thing i'm worried about. i'm not sure how powerful the intel HD 5300 will be. if there's lag while scrolling i'm gonna wait for the next generation with skylake.
i believe the mini and hope it will look like the mac pro but be the size of the current time capsules.
Wait what? I always use my iPad outside on sunny days, I haven't even heard that they could overheat
Well first of all, it doesn't have to be literally fanless to be virtually silent.
With current design you practically can't hear the fan when it's spinning at 2k rpm, so..
A# Improve chip efficiency to decrease W/heat flow B# make cooling fan slightly bigger to increase airflow (+redesign the heatsink of course) C# make the fan spin in silent low-rpm range.
And there you have it.
Mobile CPUs come without IHS, thankfully, so the CPU shouldn't be affected by the abnormal overheating issues like recent Intel desktop CPUs since there will be substantially better thermal conductivity between CPU die and the cooling system.
With current design you practically can't hear the fan when it's spinning at 2k rpm, so..
A# Improve chip efficiency to decrease W/heat flow B# make cooling fan slightly bigger to increase airflow (+redesign the heatsink of course) C# make the fan spin in silent low-rpm range.
And there you have it.
Mobile CPUs come without IHS, thankfully, so the CPU shouldn't be affected by the abnormal overheating issues like recent Intel desktop CPUs since there will be substantially better thermal conductivity between CPU die and the cooling system.
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