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New Slim 12" MacBook and MacBook Air Updates Soon

JoEw said:
Fanless? That implies it won't be using an intel chip to me.. this very well might be the coming of Mac's switching over to ARM, right in time with Jony Ive's rumored OSX redesign..
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I sure hope they add a retina screen to the current x86 MBA. I won't buy a ARM based MacBook.
 
erik7970 said:
I'm sort of surprised by the number of readers that like the idea of a 12-inch MacBook, not that I have anything against it personally. I guess the 1-inch difference between the 13-inch Macbook is a big deal?
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What Garylapointe said below you is the most likely reason why they're going with a 12" MBA. Assuming this is true, if you want an Apple laptop, you're probably gonna have three choices: A 12" MBA, a 13" MBP, and a 15" MBP. They're consolidating their lineup with this move.
 
No fan? How's that going to work. In my experience the MB can get very hot even with a fan. This only makes sense if they plan to move to ARM processors instead of Intel.
 
A 12 inch Macbook Air would be a nice replacement for both 11 and 13 inch models. There is zero difference between the two besides screen size.

The line would then be: 12 inch retina Macbook Air, 13 inch Retina Macbook, and 15 inch Retina Macbook Pro.

I would suspect the retina display on the Air won't be up to par with the MBP, maybe non-IPS? Hopefully it is though.
 
Renzatic said:
You have three possibilities.

It's an ARM chip. I kinda find this doubtful.

It's an Intel Atom chip. It's backwards compatible with x86, but gives you roughly the same power as an ARM chip. Basically, it'd be a really fancy netbook, so I doubt that'll happen.

It's an i3 or i5, underclocked slightly and with turbo boost disabled so it doesn't generate any nearly as much heat under processor intensive tasks. This seems the most likely to me.
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I sure hope you are right!
 
The button-less trackpad sounds stupid though. I much prefer tap to click, but you need to click for some things, like dragging windows. There better be a better way to move around windows with the new solution.

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Rm.237 said:
Hope that it would widescreen like the 11". Gotten way too used to it at this point.
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No please. 16:10 is far superior for laptops.
 
jkichline said:
I know it's been said before... But I really think this is going to be an arm64 laptop. Amazing battery life, retina display and running OS X. Possible touchscreen too. As an iOS dev, my hope would also be the ability to run iOS apps on it, but Apple is going to be careful to not make this a convergence program.
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The next MBA is not going to be an ARM based, enough with this nonsense already. Even assuming Apple miraculously ports MacOS and all of its bundled apps to ARM (there have been zero rumors to that effect) - they would immediately break all 3rd party app ecosystem that exist in MacOS X world. What are you going to run on that ARM laptop? iPad apps? Not happening.
 
xmichaelp said:
The button-less trackpad sounds stupid though. I much prefer tap to click, but you need to click for some things, like dragging windows. There better be a better way to move around windows with the new solution.

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No please. 16:10 is far superior for laptops.
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3 finger drag?
 
xmichaelp said:
A 12 inch Macbook Air would be a nice replacement for both 11 and 13 inch models. There is zero difference between the two besides screen size.

The line would then be: 12 inch retina Macbook Air, 13 inch Retina Macbook, and 15 inch Retina Macbook Pro.

I would suspect the retina display on the Air won't be up to par with the MBP, maybe non-IPS? Hopefully it is though.
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I'd sure would be willing to pay a lot more for a MBA with a high quality screen option.

The iPads have fantastic screens compared to the MBA and it makes me very frustrated. I can't use an iPad (need to run x86 applications) but I want the form factor of the 11" MBA.
 
The offering will likely be lighter and slimmer than the existing MacBook Air to further highlight ease of portability in the cloud computing era.
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If there's a lighter and thinner notebook than the Air, doesn't that defeat the purpose of it? This makes no sense.
 
Shaun said:
No fan? How's that going to work. In my experience the MB can get very hot even with a fan. This only makes sense if they plan to move to ARM processors instead of Intel.
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Broadwell ULX is just 4.5W TDP, and will allow fanless x86 laptop. It is however still sometime away, so I don't see this rumored update happening "soon".
 
CrystalPepsi said:
I bet these 12" Macbook Ultralites will use the "iPad Maxi" screens that showed up in the display pipeline a while back. ARM-based CPU? 12 hour battery life?
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I really think you're right. I don't believe Intel has anything powerful enough to run neck-and-neck with the 13" MBA, drive a retina-class display, and not have a fan. Apple's custom ARM cores, scaled up of course, could do this.
 
ctyrider said:
The next MBA is not going to be an ARM based, enough with this nonsense already. Even assuming Apple miraculously ports MacOS and all of its bundled apps to ARM (there have been zero rumors to that effect) - they would immediately break all 3rd party app ecosystem that exist in MacOS X world. What are you going to run on that ARM laptop? iPad apps? Not happening.
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Agree 100% An ARM based Macbook is beyond silly.
 
Yeah let's just keep fragmenting all the product lines. And let's keep pretending like iPad "Air" makes any sense. This is exactly what screwed Apple before Steve came back. Then he streamlined the whole product line and made it appealing and things got better from there. Seems to me like Apple hasn't learned its lesson.
 
garylapointe said:
Remember, you're reading rumors, there were a lot of "likely" and "expects" in there, not facts.

Apple has THREE different 13" MacBook models right now (Air, Pro and Pro with Retina), so additional fragmentation really isn't so weird. Keep in mind, they used to have 12" PowerBooks and 12" iBooks and I believe they had a 14" iBooks while they had 15" PowerBooks. I think it is more likely Apple could be transitioning sizes.

I could see Apple doing a 12" Air and ditching the 11" and 13"? Maybe making making a 12" retina Air and keeping one or two of the others?? Or dump the 11" + 13" and just have a 12" Air and a 12" Air w/ Retina?

It just depends where they can get the pricing, they always like keeping a $999 model.

I don't see how they'd do a 12" Air Retina and make it significantly thinner than current models; although they iPad Air is 50% heavier than an iPad 4, that was a lot to shave off!

The options are staggering when it's just rumors...

Gary
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You're right, I am jumping the gun at a rumor. But it's a rumor with leaks! :p

Seriously though, I'm just frustrated at Apple's boneheaded moves lately (well, not that boneheaded, they're making money hand over fist). I'm just slowly being pushed out of their ecosystem as I don't like any of their recent product decisions. Not ONE.

Me and Apple are increasingly out of sync, and while Apple will be fine, I'm sure, I'll be left with old hardware, the memory of how things used to be, and the pain of imagining what could have been if Steve hadn't died.
 
ctyrider said:
The next MBA is not going to be an ARM based, enough with this nonsense already. Even assuming Apple miraculously ports MacOS and all of its bundled apps to ARM (there have been zero rumors to that effect) - they would immediately break all 3rd party app ecosystem that exist in MacOS X world. What are you going to run on that ARM laptop? iPad apps? Not happening.
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Sorry but I disagree there is LOTS of historical precedent and actually the Mac App store (and iPad app) store would make this transition much less painful than the last two processor switches Apple did. Apple ran parallel X86 development for YEARS with hardly any rumors until shortly before the change was announced. Regardless of whether this product, or any future product, will feature a desktop class ARM processor I'm willing to wager that Apple has a fully working OS X on ARM prototype. Given the specs of this laptop it seems VERY likely this will be the platform the introduce it on.

Without a doubt there will be a very good X86 emulator and a very careful migration platform. And, yes, I think it will be iOS compatible. Or do you think Apple has made of the UI changes (launch pad, etc.) to OS X since 10.6 because they're actually *better*?!
 
The only thing I care about is that the top end MacBook Pro have user replaceable ram and storage. Don't want to pay over $3k for a computer with ram that will likely crap out right after the 3yr warranty is over. My 2013 Mac Mini is just under 1 year old and is already on its 3rd set of ram sticks.
 
Well, a fanless design would need some truly magical way of cooling itself unless they cut the CPU and GPU power.

I hope they don't do that :O
 
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