The next MacBook Air will define the future of computing

[Icaras]

I'm fairly certain he means iPad + full-sized keyboard
(Not that I agree, just...RIF and all)

Fair enough, but even so, his facts are still wrong.

MBA 11.6" - 2.3 lbs

iPad - 1.3 lbs
Apple wireless bluetooth aluminum keyboard (with batteries) - .7 lbs

1.3 lbs + .7 lbs = 2.0 lbs < 2.3 lbs

If he/she wants more technical, add a smart cover for a proper laptop-like setup, and that's an additional .3 lbs (Yes, I actually weighed this).

Same weight now as the MBA at 2.3 lbs, but it's still not lighter than an iPad setup.

 

[Icaras]

If you want to play heavy games, why are you going for any computer with an IGP? Get a MacBook pro 15" at a min. MBAs won't have dedicated gpus for a long time, if ever.

By the way, I was curious and went on youtube and found this nice demonstration of the MBA's gaming performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-bqbFRsgcI

If you ask me, this is pretty impressive, and I think the constant bashing on the MBA's anemic gaming capabilities are way overblown.

 

[smeade]

Image
You have to see and work on one yourself to clearly see the difference and understand the whole beauty of this machine. It's the whole experience that makes the difference, the form factor makes it not feel like a notebook and more like a tablet for productivity with a keyboard.

+1

I've noted that a large number of people who don't understand the Air or don't like it seem to not have used one. It's not about the specs. There are some things that specs cannot communicate. The "feeling" of extreme portability, releasing one from their desk is just one example of something which is impossible to quantify or place on a spec sheet.

Look, if it were all about specs the then iPad would not have such a gigantic market share in tablets. The Air will be a game changer. Like the iPad, the new Air will define what all computer manufacturers - not just Apple - start producing toward and focusing on. They already are.

Let's check back in a year and see if I'm right.

 

[orfeas0]

People are still concerned about start up times? The only times I reboot are when updates force me. I delay updates occasionally just because I do not want to reboot.

Well, a lot of people use boot camp (if not daily, on occasion). And boot camp requires both a reboot on windows, and then going back to mac at some point. It's quite important to boot fast, but to be honest, any pc with ssd will boot fast, so the boot time isn't an issue any more on the macbook airs. Also , when you put your laptop on a bag to travel with it, don't you usually prefer to shut it down to conserve some battery? Your macbook may be sleeping, but the ram still needs a little battery to keep the status alive.

 

[tbobmccoy]

By the way, I was curious and went on youtube and found this nice demonstration of the MBA's gaming performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-bqbFRsgcI

If you ask me, this is pretty impressive, and I think the constant bashing on the MBA's anemic gaming capabilities are way overblown.

That's not too bad, but remember that Crysis is a 4 year old game. I'm saying that it should have no problem with Crysis, either (either the 320m or the HD3000) since my 9400m can play Crysis pretty decently as well. I'd be wary of loading Mass Effect 3 (or maybe even 2) on it, unless anyone's got a video of that for me to see so I can eat my crow

 

[Eidorian]

That's not too bad, but remember that Crysis is a 4 year old game. I'm saying that it should have no problem with Crysis, either (either the 320m or the HD3000) since my 9400m can play Crysis pretty decently as well. I'd be wary of loading Mass Effect 3 (or maybe even 2) on it, unless anyone's got a video of that for me to see so I can eat my crow

Crysis is apparently still a head turner. I remember when it was Doom 3.

 

[Icaras]

That's not too bad, but remember that Crysis is a 4 year old game. I'm saying that it should have no problem with Crysis, either (either the 320m or the HD3000) since my 9400m can play Crysis pretty decently as well. I'd be wary of loading Mass Effect 3 (or maybe even 2) on it, unless anyone's got a video of that for me to see so I can eat my crow

Sure thing on ME2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRkrdGIeiKo

Since it's still the current generation on Xbox 360, I would assume it would play similarly to ME2.

 

[tbobmccoy]

Really not too bad, although ME3 is built on a different engine than 2 (appropriately named the ME3 engine). I hope the new MBA is close at least, but if not, not a big problem for me anyway.

 

[KillerTree]

The future of mobile computing is touch screen, and the as a workstation the Air will never match a full-fledged desktop or even a large MacBook Pro, or at least until they offer comparable HD space and screen resolution.

Desktops will not be replaced until we live in a Minority Report-style computing environment.

I would love to have an excuse to buy an Air, but for it does I can't justify it.

The future of workstations are mobile PCs for most people.

I don't see how a 13" Macbook Air can't replace a desktop. It has a 1440x900 resolution screen, full sized keyboard, and an i5 and maybe i7 processor. It can also play all games at medium or low settings.

You can also have a quarter terabyte SSD. If you need more space a thunderbolt hard drive would be great

 

[Icaras]

The future of workstations are mobile PCs for most people.

I don't see how a 13" Macbook Air can't replace a desktop. It has a 1440x900 resolution screen, full sized keyboard, and an i5 and maybe i7 processor. It can also play all games at medium or low settings.

You can also have a quarter terabyte SSD. If you need more space a thunderbolt hard drive would be great

Hoping you're post wasn't a stab at sarcasm....If I had to bet, this might not be far off from the real truth and Apple's ultimate agenda. This sounds great and I would really look forward to MBA sized workstations

 

[firewood]

It is a thin Core 2 ULV notebook with a custom nVidia chipset solution. Unless you invoke product incest feedback loop it is yet another ULV notebook.

You make the mistake of thinking that the reason the iPad and MBA 11 sell so well is because of the hardware performance specs. That's the same mistake that most of Apple's competitors make. Look at their P&L statements for the correctness of that reasoning.

Yes, some minimum performance spec is required, but that's not the reason they sell so much better than other similar sized stuff.

Try shooting at +50Mb/s AVCHD for instance and then editing it on MBA with Final Cut.

The percentage of typical consumers and business computer buyers who do this more than rarely, rounded to the nearest whole percent, is probably zero. It would be quite profitable for a consumer computer company to simply ignore them (until technology catches up in its natural course), and still massively increase market share.

 

[Hellhammer]

The percentage of typical consumers and business computer buyers who do this more than rarely, rounded to the nearest whole percent, is probably zero. It would be quite profitable for a consumer computer company to simply ignore them (until technology catches up in its natural course), and still massively increase market share.

I never said it is what MBA is meant for but if people make claims that "MBA is the future of workstations", then they don't have the smallest clue about MBA's capability and the usage of workstations. Thus I asked the one who made that statement to try editing from high bitrate content on an MBA to see that it's nowhere near a workstation.

 

[skinnfell]

?

I might be a newb to this forum, but have been using and following macs for well over a decade. (remember, back when laptops looked like toilet lids, and were roughly as useful too)

Anyway, given the consensus around here about what the new MBAs will do and contain (moderate to good speed bump, possibly more ram, lion preinstalled, TB enabled, worse graphics), i think they will NOT define or change anything, unless apple decides to really surprise us price wise.
Provided they cost more or less as much as the current ones, they will still cost more than PC equivalents, enough to make the majority of regular consumers choose a PC.

Now if Apple decided to drop the "apple tax" just this once, it might change something (Apple is now one of the worlds biggest companies, and IMO, the essence of their success is getting people to voluntarily pay the premium.)

Even if they did it would not change computing in the way that iPhone and iPad did.
I almost never see a businessman/woman without an ipad anymore, and myself I just can not see how I can live without an iPhone.


Even though I really REALLY want one, I can live without the new Macbook Air.

 

[halledise]

Hellhammer does indeed know what he's talking about!

to the rest, try this:

 

[orfeas0]

Hellhammer does indeed know what he's talking about!

to the rest, try this:

http://youtu.be/FWBUl7oT9sA

humm i don't wanna open a youtu.be site, sounds fishy. any admins here?

 

[Hellhammer]

humm i don't wanna open a youtu.be site, sounds fishy. any admins here?

It's just an abbreviation that Youtube uses, redirects to normal Youtube. I embedded the video so nobody has to click anything, though I don't know does it add much to the discussion.

 

[MRU]

Workstations are for number crunching,

So are accountants, and I know a couple who own MacbookAirs




I'm looking forward to the refresh, and I probably will sell my 11.6" MBA if 'both' the benchmarks peg the new model significantly faster and more importantly 'real world' hands on also peg it a dramatic improvement.

It wont replace my MacPro just yet though

 

[halledise]

It's just an abbreviation that Youtube uses, redirects to normal Youtube. I embedded the video so nobody has to click anything, though I don't know does it add much to the discussion.

the discussion was becoming rather serious verging on nasty, so I thought I'd inject a little humor

 

[firewood]

Thus I asked the one who made that statement to try editing from high bitrate content on an MBA to see that it's nowhere near a workstation.

You don't have to be near a workstation in performance to be its future.

I used to work down the hallway from a room full of millions of dollars worth of high-bitrate video servers. More than once. With multiple high-end multicolored graphics workstations in my office. At companies that no longer exist.

And a few MBA's with Thunderbolt HD's could probably outperform all that stuff. It was and is the future. Your workstation is just as rapidly becoming a museum piece as were my workstations.

 

[smeade]

People who argue that mobile and lightweight are not the future of computing are probably the same people who argued that software-as-a-service and cloud content storage were not the future of the Internet.

 

[Hellhammer]

You don't have to be near a workstation in performance to be its future.

I used to work down the hallway from a room full of millions of dollars worth of high-bitrate video servers. More than once. With multiple high-end multicolored graphics workstations in my office. At companies that no longer exist.

And a few MBA's with Thunderbolt HD's could probably outperform all that stuff. It was and is the future. Your workstation is just as rapidly becoming a museum piece as were my workstations.

It doesn't matter what your workstations were a decade ago. I doubt you were processing 4K video back then. They were great for the content back then. However, even the fastest workstation of today will become obsolete sooner than later. That is why Intel and other manufacturers release newer and faster hardware which can keep up with the content and you should upgrade your workstation by time to time.

MBA would become a museum piece overnight. If you still worked in the video industry and were offered a high-end MBA and high-end workstation, which would you pick? I.e. do you want to sit there 10 hours waiting for the video to render or do you want it to be done in 4 hours?

 

[firewood]

IIf you still worked in the video industry and were offered a high-end MBA and high-end workstation, which would you pick?

What a few customers might pick is no indication of the future. Most of the companies who have offered those high-end video workstations (which some number of customers picked) no longer exist.

Home and office desktop computers that require a big heat-sink and fan will go the way of the record player for audio fanatics.

 

[halledise]

humm i don't wanna open a youtu.be site, sounds fishy. any admins here?

f.y.i - it's a genuine url shortened by using an extension from Apple's Safari extension library

you should try a few sometime, my friend

http://goo.gl/L9ej

 

[KPOM]

MBA would become a museum piece overnight. If you still worked in the video industry and were offered a high-end MBA and high-end workstation, which would you pick? I.e. do you want to sit there 10 hours waiting for the video to render or do you want it to be done in 4 hours?

On a side note, if we could come back in 200 years, I'm guessing we would see a fair number of Apple products as "museum pieces." The MacBook Air may be the iconic "notebook computer - early 21st century". I think the original IBM PC would be in that museum somewhere. Of course, it's also possible some archaeologist will find a well-preserved Packard Bell 386SX in an old landfill somewhere with a working hard drive and consider it the find of the 23rd century.

 

[Icaras]

You don't have to be near a workstation in performance to be its future.

I used to work down the hallway from a room full of millions of dollars worth of high-bitrate video servers. More than once. With multiple high-end multicolored graphics workstations in my office. At companies that no longer exist.

And a few MBA's with Thunderbolt HD's could probably outperform all that stuff. It was and is the future. Your workstation is just as rapidly becoming a museum piece as were my workstations.

Although I mentioned earlier how interesting it would be to ever see an MBA sized workstation (I know, I doubt it), do you honestly think ILM or Weta Digital would rather use Macbook Airs over Mac Pros to finish up the next Transformers or The Hobbit films?

Good luck trying to convince the execs to pay the animators over-time sitting on their arses waiting for renders to finish.

Who needs a release schedule anyway?