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New school Air with old school keyboard
- Thread starter SweWriter
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I would have been perfectly fine with that, but I also realize that I’m probably in a minority. To be honest, I would have loved a revival of the 11” Air, a form factor that I still adore. I have a 2015 11” Air for my personal use and a 2011 11” Air that I tote back and forth to school. It’s wonderfully small, the keyboard is top notch, and I really don’t have any complaints about either of them. It’d be nice to have a better screen, but such is life.
Not me. I much prefer the "old" 2017 Macbook Air. I love the speed (i7), the ports, keyboard, trackpad, and the price ($799 for a new i7/8GB/128GB)
But I understand the real dilemma that others are facing in wanting an MBA with a higher-res screen. If I were in their shoes, I don't know what I would choose.
In Canada, we never have any deals on Macs. And the exchange rate between USD and CAD doesn't help either.
The i5 model costs 1200$CAD and the i7 BTO brings the price up to 1480$CAD (still with 128GB).
1480$CAD ~ 1110$USD, which is 310$USD higher than your price of 799$USD.
So my question is, where are you getting a 2017 i7 MacBook Air for only 799$USD?
Like @sracer I got a good deal on an 2017 MBA w/ i7, 8GB and 128GB SSD. Though he did beat my deal by $100. Ouch.
When weighing my options, I considered the pros and cons of the two laptops (2018 vs. 2017.) With the old school i7 model, processing power is virtually identical to the new i5 (actually a rebranded m5.) So that's a wash, as is the battery life.
The styling is another factor to consider. The new one is certainly more modern looking, but the old one has a classic look that I really like. This point goes marginally to the new one. The display is another area where the new one wins.
But other areas are where the old one captured my money. The keyboard was the big one - not just it's feel, but the longevity as well. Hopefully I won't have to worry about replacing it in a year or two. The other point that won me over was the ports, as well as the Magsafe connector. I don't have a single USB-C or TB3 peripheral, so for the time being having those USB-A and Thunderbolt 2 ports suit me well. And I don't have to deal with stupid dongles.
And the final plus point for the old model is the SD card. Quick and easy storage expansion, without long USB thumb drives sticking awkwardly out of the laptop.
When weighing my options, I considered the pros and cons of the two laptops (2018 vs. 2017.) With the old school i7 model, processing power is virtually identical to the new i5 (actually a rebranded m5.) So that's a wash, as is the battery life.
The styling is another factor to consider. The new one is certainly more modern looking, but the old one has a classic look that I really like. This point goes marginally to the new one. The display is another area where the new one wins.
But other areas are where the old one captured my money. The keyboard was the big one - not just it's feel, but the longevity as well. Hopefully I won't have to worry about replacing it in a year or two. The other point that won me over was the ports, as well as the Magsafe connector. I don't have a single USB-C or TB3 peripheral, so for the time being having those USB-A and Thunderbolt 2 ports suit me well. And I don't have to deal with stupid dongles.
And the final plus point for the old model is the SD card. Quick and easy storage expansion, without long USB thumb drives sticking awkwardly out of the laptop.
I went from Air 2 -> Pro 9.7 (1st gen), and will most likely get an Air again as my next iPad. But why on earth wouldn't you get the Pro 10.5 (2nd gen) Smart Keyboard going on clearance right now for $80 at Costco for the new Air? The Air (3rd gen) Smart Keyboard is exactly the same thing just in a new box with new SKU selling for MSRP
They would have sold like hotcakes, I guarantee it. And there would be no keyboard debacle, either.
That's exactly what I had been waiting for, for years. Still using a mid-2010 Mac mini here. And yes, that's a Core 2 Duo. At least they were upgradable back then, so it has 16GB RAM and has a 128GB SSD as its main drive, the optical drive is gone and was replaced by a 750GB HDD.
At the very least, I was expecting Apple to lower the price of their 2017 MacBook Air, but no... And I'm not going to pay the same price in 2019 for four-years-old* technology.
So either I wait for Apple to lower the price of the 2018 MacBook Air, which in theory should at least force them to also lower the price of the "2017" model, or look for a used model with 8GB RAM.
* they only updated the base model by 100MHz in 2017, that wasn't an update. So technically it's the 2015 MacBook Air, not 2017.
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There's also half-length microSD-to-SD adapters, which makes the card flush with the laptop body. And since the most recent models have an SDXC card slot, it should support cards up to 2 TB (2048 GB).
What I'm wondering is when we'll actually get this. Apple's apology on the keyboard makes clear that it knows there is an issue, and I'm sure Apple sees at least some posts from people like me who are thinking of leaving the Mac for reasons like this one (especially this one, since I would have bought the new Air already but for the keyboard). Doesn't Apple at some point realize it's leaving money on the table and finally offer us the thing we want to buy?
I agree on ports, too. Everyone loved MagSafe, so it's inexplicable that this should disappear. The ability to charge via USB-C should be an addition, no a replacement. Including a single USB-A port and an SD port (and headphone jack, obviously) also would recognize that we actually use the damn thing in the real world.
I agree on ports, too. Everyone loved MagSafe, so it's inexplicable that this should disappear. The ability to charge via USB-C should be an addition, no a replacement. Including a single USB-A port and an SD port (and headphone jack, obviously) also would recognize that we actually use the damn thing in the real world.
I've got one of those low-profile micro-SD adapters on order. It should arrive today.
I have the same model, and my internal SSD gets 680MB/s write speeds and a little over 1200MB/s read speeds. It's faster than any drive I've ever owned, although the boot speed seems about as fast as the more pedestrian SATA SSDs. That may be because I have FileVault turned on.
Haven't really tried any major data transfers over the other ports. The only exception is my microSD card. I took a moment to benchmark it; write speeds to vary quite a lot, from 20MB/s to 60MB/s, but read speeds were consistently 80-90MB/s.
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New school AIR with old school keyboard is a pipe dream... as much as I would love to see this it won't happen... I would also love to see the option of having an i7 processor with additional ports like the 2013-2017 MBAs had...
I would rather pay a hefty sum for this alternative than pay for a butterfly keyboard. It is like writing on a plank.