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New reports on next MacBook Air iteration, Intel microprocessors being tested for it.

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Republius

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 14, 2014
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Go here: https://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/02/intel-broadwell-core-m-macbook/ and http://jackgmarch.com/2014/11/02/in...ll-core-ms-to-be-used-for-the-12-macbook-air/

For those much more technologically advanced than I am, do the above-referenced reports shed any light on whether these Intel microprocessors will drive a retina display without sacrificing battery life or current MBA processing power? What do they foreshadow in terms of potentially making the device fanless?

Apple seems fixated on making their new devices thinner. The MacBook Air is already thin and mobile enough. What it needs is a retina display without sacrificing processing power or battery life. Form that is good enough should not trump performance.
 
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The new chips seem to have better performance at lower power consumption so I am sure the GPU can drive a retina display. But those screens are power hungry, I doubt the current Air could be so thin with such a small battery with a retina display. Look at the 13" rMBP-it's all battery inside.
 
I think we have to remember what the Air is for. It's a super-lightweight long-battery portable. It was never designed to be a quick computer. I'm looking forward to the air as a tiny laptop, to use on the move or the sofa. If it can run Safari, email, and XP in parallels I'm fine with that. It doesn't have to be quick, as there are MBPs and iMacs and Mac pros for that.

But I do want it to have a retina display.
 
Republius said:
...
For those much more technologically advanced than I am, do the above-referenced reports shed any light on whether these Intel microprocessors will drive a retina display without sacrificing battery life or current MBA processing power? What do they foreshadow in terms of potentially making the device fanless?
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Fanless, no. These "new" chips are just different SKUs of existing 4.5W chips, which were epic failures in the "fanless" Lenovo Yoga 3 (which ended up having a fan and still suffered from horrible performance due to thermal throttling). So they will still suffer from the same heat/throttling issues.

I think Apple will likely wait until the "real" Broadwell chips are available for any hypothetical new laptops. Not these low-power, low-performance Core Ms.
 
motrek said:
Fanless, no. These "new" chips are just different SKUs of existing 4.5W chips, which were epic failures in the "fanless" Lenovo Yoga 3 (which ended up having a fan and still suffered from horrible performance due to thermal throttling). So they will still suffer from the same heat/throttling issues.

I think Apple will likely wait until the "real" Broadwell chips are available for any hypothetical new laptops. Not these low-power, low-performance Core Ms.
Click to expand...

I am reliably told that the new MacBook Air Retina will be super thin and fanless, plus will come out at the time Apple Watch does. That may mean waiting for Broadwell U chips in February instead of utilizing Broadwell Y Core M chips, with a device release by Spring eliminating any chance that Skylake is utilized.
 
Republius said:
I am reliably told that the new MacBook Air Retina will be super thin and fanless, plus will come out at the time Apple Watch does. That may mean waiting for Broadwell U chips in February instead of utilizing Broadwell Y Core M chips, with a device release by Spring eliminating any chance that Skylake is utilized.
Click to expand...

i mean that's what all the rumors point to. I'm going out on a limb and saying, there won't be a laptop powerful enough in the next year that can also be fanless. I can see it being an "iPad Pro", but to drive a retina display in macosx, there will be a fan.
 
FrozenDarkness said:
i mean that's what all the rumors point to. I'm going out on a limb and saying, there won't be a laptop powerful enough in the next year that can also be fanless. I can see it being an "iPad Pro", but to drive a retina display in macosx, there will be a fan.
Click to expand...

You folks understand the engineering a lot more than I do. But the folks I am aware of with inside sources insist that the MacBook Air Retina will be a different product than the upcoming iPad Pro and also fanless, though clearly they are concerned that driving a retina display without a fan with a low wattage chip on the MBA Retina will significantly compromise processing power.
 
Republius said:
A live body who is very well connected in this regard.
Click to expand...

Right. A few weeks ago you were making similar claims based on nonsense web pages you had found on the internet. Are we to believe that since then, you met somebody who works in product planning at Apple and now they're leaking information to you?
 
There's a lot of misinformation going around about the Core M processors; they're not what we want to see in a MBA, they're a downgrade compared to Haswell-U chips used in the current models.

Case in point, look at reviews and benchmarks of the new Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, it has a retina-like display and is powered by a Core M; it's super slow and chokes on mundane tasks, and is slower than the previous Yoga 2 Pro powered by a Haswell-U processor. It wouldn't be such a big deal if the Yoga 3 Pro wasn't promoted as a MBA-like premium ultrabook with a $1300+ price tag.

We're all stuck waiting for Intel to release Broadwell-M and Broadwell-U processors the first half of 2015.
 
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