...I'm all in about thinner and lighter, but when I buy a $999 piece of electronic, I would expect it to be a bit sturdier.
Why wouldn't it be sturdy? Stronger materials have been developed that's much lighter than the current alloy they're using.
No touchscreen laptop in sight? Not surprised since Apple never wanted to take that route for the most part. But messing with my Asus Q501LA touchscreen laptop on Mavericks (hackintosh), the launchpad is so nice going through the app menu, feels just like an iPad or iPhone.
edit: I'm just saying, it feels too good swiping through the Launchpad for me to think Apple isn't working on something here. I'm open to being wrong though.
But, as for real applicable use, who knows...
Apple and Jobs already clarified a few times they will never do this.
The trackpad is the best solution for this. Expect the trackpad to get smarter over time, possible an LCD in there. Heck, they can expand it horizontally to make it possible to write with a stylus.
Holding out your arm on the screen is just going to tire you quickly, you'd be quicker to use the keyboard/trackpad throughout the day.
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..
Apple has never not transition to a new CPU architecture when it is weaker than the previous one. ARM will not catch up to Intel for another several years, therefore ARM is not coming to Macs any time soon.
Intel is quickly reaching the power efficiency levels than ARM is quickly reaching the performance of Intel. ARM actually have more to lose than Intel if they don't keep pushing the boundaries in the next several years.
As for fanless, the upcoming Broadwell ULX chips are not going to require fans. It is possible that Apple will have exclusive early access to this.
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.
The upcoming Broadwell ULX chips don't need fans, it's very power efficient.
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.
FYI: iOS is the ARM version of OS X, it just doesn't have the Cocoa UI recompiled for ARM, which won't take much. Their iWork/iLife apps would already be ready to go considering majority of the codebase is already available on the iOS platform.
However, I agree, ARM won't be coming to Mac anytime soon. But that doesn't mean Apple doesn't have this in a special lab at their R&D already. Just like Intel version was running next to the PPC version for 5 years before it was revealed.
But I don't see Apple releasing something that is not sturdy. Period.
Okay? Lighter and thinner does not mean less studier. Stronger materials can be used instead.
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".
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple have early access to it. There were samples already available back in Sept, 2013.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7322/a-closer-look-at-broadwell-its-new-small-form-factor-package
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.
Huh? You do realize such a 12" MBA would get rid of both 11"/13" MBAs? They'll streamline it to make it 12" MBA and 13"/15" rMBP. Far less than before with 11"/12" MBA, cMBP, 13"/15" rMBP.
Would it be possible to have an Intel emulator running as a layer?
To do that, you need a quicker CPU, not a weaker one like the ARM. There's no point of doing this. Intel'll get to the power efficiency requirements faster than ARM'll get to the performance requirements.
Could Apple be getting these special Broadwell parts well before other manufactures? I do agree that 'soon' sounds too early. Maybe, however, Apple earned special bargaining power from Intel by threatening them with the (realistic) possibility of replacing their ULV Intel processors with ARM based AX parts .
Yes, they've done this a few times in the past.
So let me get this straight. You believe that not only will OS X be ported to ARM and run decently, but it will also be able to emulate an Intel processor at a workable speed.
I think you must have some secret knowledge of major breakthroughs in ARM processors in the past year.
OS X already have been ported to ARM, it's called iOS. The main differences are front end, CocoaTouch on iOS vs. Cocoa on OS X.
With a 12" retina haswell MBA, what's the point of the rMBP 13"? An extra 1", 1 lbs, and $500?
Storage, more memory, extra ports, and so on. Don't expect this 12" to have the same spec expandability as the 13" rMBP.
