Teardown of Apple's 11.6-Inch MacBook Air Underway

[richard.mac]

Why anyone would pay high-end notebook prices for high-end netbooks is beyond me. You can buy an Acer Timeline series with better specs and for half the price.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-T...JJJY/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1287697206&sr=8-9

that Acer has a slower CPU speed & you wouldn't notice the difference with an i5 over the Duo unless running multi threaded tasks and turbo boost kicks in all the time.

also has a 5400 rpm drive, Intel graphics, but come on the MBA is much more better designed. i would say at stock configurations the MBA is better specced and has the great design going for it. could maybe be $100 cheaper though

 

[Wild-Bill]

Is it really that much of a dealbreaker? The positions of the keys aren't that hard to remember.

Coming from someone with an aluminum Macbook that response is not that surprising....

 

[nutjob]

Check out the connector left from the RAM, looks like this is this trick for the in-store upgrade from 2to 4GB.

It's soldered on. The connector is for the SSD. You cannot upgrade the RAM instore.

You seem to have no idea in the technical realm. First you insisted that the leaked 13" model was the 11.6" model, now you think you can upgrade soldered on RAM.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

There were none to be had at the local Apple Store. Not even a display unit.

 

[CFreymarc]

Overall, I am impressed with the design. I would like to see some access time benchmarks of the all solid state drives from an independent third party lab. I'm getting one!

 

[jlc1978]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

go with 128GB I had say! ideally IMHO $1299 13" MBA is value for money... remember you might need to spend extra $100 for 4GB RAM also.

Is the 128GB upgrade and 4GB RAM upgrade really "worth" it? I'm a student and live on a budget so trying to find the best bang for my buck!

What do you have now? Unless you plan to store a lot of music/videos 64 gb should be enough. Go for the ram upgrade as it will impact speed.

As for screen size,try surfing/using iWorks for a while with the windows open to 11inches to see how you like it.

 

[ovrlrd]

Ummmm.... Are you insinuating that a company with $50 billion in cash reserves is worried about the price of a backlit keyboard? It's an LED light with some translucency built-in to the keys. Maybe $1.50 per unit? (total wild guess).

Trust me, I am NOT looking for something "to not justify the purchase", or to "make my current MBA look better". I, and thousands of others, was fully ready to buy either of the new MBA's until the "keyboard-gate" issue.

It obviously costs money to manufacturer the back-lit keyboards, otherwise every keyboard Apple makes, including the external wired and wireless ones would have it. Apple has to etch out holes in each key so that the light can shine through it. The LED lights themselves are pretty cheap, but the process of making the keys is not as cheap. Even if the cost of parts is say, $10 difference, that is still a significant cost difference for Apple.

You don't understand that they aren't dealing with an individual cost but an overall cost to manufacturer each batch. If they make about 10,000 units per batch, that is a difference of $100,000 per batch we are talking about. When you are already taking a loss with things like the expensive SSD, unibody casing, and special low voltage processor, every penny counts.

Remember how much the old MacBook air costs, and think about how much lower this new one is. They have to get that savings from somewhere!

Don't even try to lecture me about how cheap things cost, Apple clearly made the choice to not include it for a reason, and that reason is money plain and simple.

 

[mosx]

Coming from someone with an aluminum Macbook that response is not that surprising....

What kind of response is that?

I haven't had to look at the keyboard while typing since the mid 90s.

 

[SR2]

Posts like these just amaze me. That's like comparing a GM to an Audi.

That piece has Intel graphics (lammmme), it's 1.1 INCHES THICK, and weighs over 3 pounds. And I would love to see it get 8 hours of battery life... probably closer to 5. I think $300 extra for the MBA is fully justified. Plus PC netbooks are just plain ugly and chunky.

If you think 3 lbs is heavy then you need to start lifting nancy boy. Your paying double just for a super thin aluminum case. 64GB of weak ass flash storage with a laptop. Are you ****ing kidding? Forget the Timelin, the Acer 1551 comes with an AMD k625 dual core CPU at 1.5GHz, ATI 4225 GPU, 4GB DDR3, 320 GB HDD that's easily replaced with a REAL SSD.
This setup will give you 90 percent of the Apple netbooks performance for $500. Did I mention it comes with a replaceable battery and HDMI out.

 

[Ping Guo]

Why anyone would pay high-end notebook prices for high-end netbooks is beyond me. You can buy an Acer Timeline series with better specs and for half the price.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-T...JJJY/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1287697206&sr=8-9

That Acer Aspire you listed is over $700, not half the price. It's also 25% heavier, has a 5400 rpm HDD instead of SSD, is made of plastic, runs Windows 7, and has crappy Intel integrated graphics. If you don't see the difference then the MBA is definitely not for you.

Enjoy your Acer.

 

[mackiwi]

That Acer Aspire you listed is over $700, not half the price. It's also 25% heavier, has a 5400 rpm HDD instead of SSD, is made of plastic, runs Windows 7, and has crappy Intel integrated graphics. If you don't see the difference then the MBA is definitely not for you.

Enjoy your Acer.

+1

 

[kdum8]

A watt-hour is not a measurment of power!

The article notes that:

"The battery consists of six separate cells offering a total of 35 watt-hours of power"

Except that a watt-hour is a unit of energy not power.

35 watt-hours = 35 watts * 3600 seconds = 35 joules/second * 3600 seconds = 12600 Joules of energy.

Power is not energy!

 

[diddl14]

It's soldered on. The connector is for the SSD. You cannot upgrade the RAM instore.

You seem to have no idea in the technical realm. First you insisted that the leaked 13" model was the 11.6" model, now you think you can upgrade soldered on RAM.

Eh, where did I state you can upgrade soldered RAM? I got a bit overly exited after seeing a connector left to the RAM and missed the 1st pic where the SSD was removed from that spot... Peace.

 

[ts1973]

Look at the number on the chip and google a bit. You'll find its a stock Toshiba chip with an embedded JMF612 SSD-core. Like all OEM implementations, it just reports itself with a unique SATA device id, in this case from Apple, see

(picture from 11.6" MBA, taken today in Apple Store)

OMG a JMicron chip

The worst chip on the market today, I so wished it would've been Intel or Sandforce or Micron (Crucial), not that piece of garbage.

 

[Chase R]

OMG a JMicron chip

The worst chip on the market today, I so wished it would've been Intel or Sandforce or Micron (Crucial), not that piece of garbage.

Sandforce would have been nice... I haven't heard any praises about JMicron's controller.

 

[rdlink]

That Acer Aspire you listed is over $700, not half the price. It's also 25% heavier, has a 5400 rpm HDD instead of SSD, is made of plastic, runs Windows 7, and has crappy Intel integrated graphics. If you don't see the difference then the MBA is definitely not for you.

Enjoy your Acer.

Agreed. Not to mention the STD that pops up when you push the power button...

But, in fairness the case of the Acer is aluminum. Butt ugly, but aluminum.

 

[gorgeousninja]

This post is disappointing. You clearly don't care about the internals of your computer, and that's fine, but other people want to know what is in it and which parts they can replace and which parts they can't. It's good to know what you are getting for your money, not everyone wants to think of it like a "magic" box or something.

Not once have I seen iFixIt's attitude be about "the public's right to know" it is more them doing a service to other people who want to know the information like I just mentioned above.

Helping rival manufacturers? WHAT??? Are you crazy? Do you not realize that the second a product is released on the market any manufacturer can pick it up and do exactly what iFixIt did? In fact even despite iFixIt they might do it themselves so they can inspect individual components with their top engineering teams.

You really have no clue at all how the computer industry works, or how competition works. The way manufacturers compete is not by trying to hide the internals of their products after it's out, they do it by trying to hide the ENTIRE product BEFORE it is out. Once it's out the door, it's free game, and EVERY company knows that. That's why they have something called patents, to protect their inventions even after they are out on the market.

Really gosh is that it works? Gee, I sure feel stoopid....
I'm sure you haven't detected anything smug in iFixit because you're even more patronizing.
Don't be so presumptuous to assume that someone knows more or less than you do. You will invariably be wrong.

 

[LillDrutten]

Bad that it had a fan. That make it not so funny as a music recording device. You could sitt in a recording studio with a guitar and record tracks with a nice interface. Now you still need remote display-keyboard-mouse or a remote.

 

[Boston007]

Is the 128GB upgrade and 4GB RAM upgrade really "worth" it? I'm a student and live on a budget so trying to find the best bang for my buck!

IMO the 4G ram upgrade is more valuable than the 128GB upgrade.
Once you get 2g you can NOT upgrade that. You could probably upgrade that hard drive though in the future.

For you needs(scholastic) the 11" 64G 4G is perfectly fine. IF you need more storage carry a portable hard drive. They are so cheap now, and can hold a lot.

That's my thoughts.

 

[John.B]

Bad that it had a fan. That make it not so funny as a music recording device. You could sitt in a recording studio with a guitar and record tracks with a nice interface. Now you still need remote display-keyboard-mouse or a remote.

The reviews I've seen, and the 10 minutes hands-on that I got with one, tell me the fan on the new MBAs are remarkably quiet. As a musician, I completely understand the point, but these are well below the ambient noise threshold. Give one a try before you write it off.

 

[pr5owner]

that Acer has a slower CPU speed & you wouldn't notice the difference with an i5 over the Duo unless running multi threaded tasks and turbo boost kicks in all the time.

also has a 5400 rpm drive, Intel graphics, but come on the MBA is much more better designed. i would say at stock configurations the MBA is better specced and has the great design going for it. could maybe be $100 cheaper though

Posts like these just amaze me. That's like comparing a GM to an Audi.

That piece has Intel graphics (lammmme), it's 1.1 INCHES THICK, and weighs over 3 pounds. And I would love to see it get 8 hours of battery life... probably closer to 5. I think $300 extra for the MBA is fully justified. Plus PC netbooks are just plain ugly and chunky.

please explain to me how the nvidia GPU will be 100% utilizied when the MBA has a POS U9400? i doubt that garbage cpu can even utilize 100% of the 4500HD, both can play 1080p videos, but thats about all, onboard graphics is crap in general

1.1" thick? omg you cant cut yourself because its not sharp enough? wont fit in your laptop bag? stop using an envelope has your bag then, actually the acer will still fit in an envelope so nvm continue using the envelope

over 3 lbs?!?!, how the hell do people carry MBP 15+?

yes i would love to see the MBA get its rated battery life as well

oh BTW the U9400 gets 964 marks
the i5 gets 1,132 marks

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html

at least the i5 has turbo boost, the mba doesnt have crap all, not even HT

That Acer Aspire you listed is over $700, not half the price. It's also 25% heavier, has a 5400 rpm HDD instead of SSD, is made of plastic, runs Windows 7, and has crappy Intel integrated graphics. If you don't see the difference then the MBA is definitely not for you.

Enjoy your Acer.

you keep forgetting

the Acer can be upgraded to a 256GB sandforce controled SSD while still being cheaper
the acer already comes with 4GB of ram
windows 7 isnt the only OS that can run on the system, ubuntu can be installed in about 12 minutes
the laptop is made of aluminum
the crappy integrated graphics gives better battery life, battery life being more important in an ultra portable than gaming power (the extra gaming power in the MBA cant even be used since the cpu is so damn slow)
the acer also has more USB Ports, HDMI, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, and a card reader, these items are far more useful than being more shiny.

what is being super thin and shiny going to do for you when you need to get pictures off an SD card?

 

[pr5owner]

Sandforce would have been nice... I haven't heard any praises about JMicron's controller.

im sorry what were you saying about GM and audi?

the POS MBA has a garbage controller for its SSD while netbooks and pc ultraportables can be upgraded to anything the user wants.

the ram in the MBA is the cheapest of the cheap, Elpida, only low end dells and hps use crap like that while Pc users have already upgraded their ram with low latency OCZ/Crucial/Gskill/Patriot


i think the MBA is more the chevy cavalier of cars, gutless, conservative, feature lacking, white and rounded

 

[marconiusrex]

I don't know about anyone else, but there's something 'bout ifixit that I find really annoying. It's like taking a painting and telling you all the colors that were used. It's not really the point. And they do it with such a smug tone of 'the public's right to know'. All they are actually doing are helping rival manufacture's, and giving all the 'I want 8Gb of ram, or i wont buy it' brigade' something more to moan about.

I completely disagree with you. I'm always fascinated to see how Apples wondrous machines are built and iFixit caters to that curiosity that I and many others have. I've never found their tone to be smug or negative in any way. Also they provide a valuable service to folks who like to fix their computers and save money. The other poster is of course correct - you can bet that every major computer manufacturer out there tears apart and examines every new thing that comes out from Apple immediately after it's release.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Yup. And all it really means is that you have to go to some trouble to get the bits, which are expensive and useless for anything else -- it doesn't actually stop anyone from opening it.

I already had to buy a set Jeweler screwdrivers and Torix screwdrivers to open my MBP. I doubt I'll be using them on jewelry so I'd say they're pretty much useless to me except on Apple products anyway. Maybe someone can become rich selling Apple bit kits to open all the latest Apple products in one magnetic screwdriver + bit set.

 

[LillDrutten]

The reviews I've seen, and the 10 minutes hands-on that I got with one, tell me the fan on the new MBAs are remarkably quiet. As a musician, I completely understand the point, but these are well below the ambient noise threshold. Give one a try before you write it off.

Not a chance. If apple specify that it maximum spl is 5 dB(A) i will give it a try. My guess is that it is about 20 dB(A) if it has any function.