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Updated MacBook Airs with Improved Haswell Processors See Minor Speed Boosts
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I seriously doubt this will happen. Broadwell CPU's aren't ready for WWDC, you are talking late Q3 at the earliest. Same for all their laptops and desktops, I'm actually kind of curious as to what will be shown outside of OSX and iOS, perhaps the smart watch.
The scores went up by ~10 points, which seems like it would fall within the margin of error even between tests on the same machine. The more notable part here is it the battery life, which increased despite the superficial "minor spec bump". Although, I don't actually know offhand what else they might have changed to effect battery life, so this point may be somewhat moot.
Edit: Didn't mean to be snarky, just misread the chart.
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The 13" Samsung Chromebook 2 has higher res screen. I think that says it all about this update...
Four months into 2014, we get a minor spec bump in one of the product lines... Yay?
"Can't innovate anymore my ***!!!"
Umm... What is the connection between innovating and minor spec bumps?
nobody else enthusiastic?
While I hoped for more of an update, the 10% price drop cheered me up a bit.
A 10% price drop+7% increase after 11 months is enough to make me happy. If the Mac Minis got that, they'd be priced at US $485 and have a 2.9-3.5ghz CPU about now.
While I hoped for more of an update, the 10% price drop cheered me up a bit.
A 10% price drop+7% increase after 11 months is enough to make me happy. If the Mac Minis got that, they'd be priced at US $485 and have a 2.9-3.5ghz CPU about now.
Complaining about ram is even older. Apple could drop the 4 GB $899 version and sell the 8 GB $999 version as the cheapest one and your complaint would vanish, but no one would actually benefit.
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That's assuming the new Airs are running Intel chips. The rumours of 12" fanless and retina make me wonder if a different "desktop class" chip is in the works. The Pros are getting dangerously close to the Airs in size (and price, before this drop) while offering superior performance and a better screen. I wouldn't be surprised to see the new Air drop in price and run an ARM chip, with the current Airs eventually being discontinued (when sales dry up) like the white Macbook.
The 9.7" iPad also has a higher resolution display than but which would you rather use to get work done? The MBA is a real computer with a functional OS. Besides, 13" may have the "resolution" but most people would be more productive with a 20"+ display regardless of resolution. On my last laptop I only used the laptop screen when I had to on the road.
Retina displays are little more than a crutch.
I don't get the complaints… the MBA is not meant to be a computing powerhouse, it's meant to be portable, yet a decent machine to handle most day to day uses. People always want products to do things they are not designed for.
Just saying.
I don't get the complaints the MBA is not meant to be a computing powerhouse, it's meant to be portable, yet a decent machine to handle most day to day uses. People always want products to do things they are not designed for.
Just saying.
SO glad someone pointed this out... I've had a 2010 13" MBP for 4 years, superb machine for general business... but you know... it get's bloody heavy on your shoulder when you travel 200,000 miles year. The new MBA will make a stunning replacement/upgrade and save my aching 49 year old shoulder/back/right knee!
...and on retina... yeah it's pretty as all hell... but it begins to become academic when you start to get old, wear glasses, get tired easy and have to project business presentations on random-quality LCD projectors at client sites. As one of my colleagues put it "retina is a lie; you can kid yourself that something is superb and visible - then it looks terrible and illegible when you plug into a clients steam-powered projector...
oh... and you know; there is always something better.... 'coming'
Internaut
macrumors 65816
In the UK it's very significant; they simply did a global search and replace using $ and £. I've been saying for a while that the entry cost for OSX is perhaps a little too high, especially in the absense of the long overdue update to the Mini.
Andy Ihnatkos window into the MacBook Air price drop. http://voices.suntimes.com/business-2/andy-ihnatko-macbook-air-price/
That section of Apple's "ecosystem" is getting heavily cluttered with products. You are just better off getting a $899 MacBook. Even with the 4 GB of RAM you get 128 GB of storage which means you are in striking distance of the iPad.
$499 for 16 GB along with the $100 storage increments ends up becoming ridiculous on the margins but then you are fighting with other products, even ones withing Apple's own line up.
The only reason they dropped the price by $100 is because there starting to feel the heat from "chromebooks"...period!
What do most macbook air users do with them? They go online! For that same thing you can buy a good chromebook for around $300-350.
Time apple stepped up there game and stopped this whole minor spec ug on all there products!
What do most macbook air users do with them? They go online! For that same thing you can buy a good chromebook for around $300-350.
Time apple stepped up there game and stopped this whole minor spec ug on all there products!
That minor spec bump seemed trivial at first, but combined with that ~10% price drop I think was a good move.
So, I have a 2010 macbook pro (i7 2.66) and I just ran Geekbench 3 and got 2160/4185. I have two reactions -
Wow, a macbook air is just as powerful as my current machine.
and
Geez, their NEWLY UPDATED 2014 Macbook Air is as slow as my aging 2010 Macbook Pro.
It's time for me to get a new machine, and I'm really struggling with the decision. My machine today, even though it's 4 years old, runs pretty nicely, has 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD (self installed).
Spending $2700 to get to 16GB/512GB on a top 'o line Macbook Pro would give me the speed and capability bump I'd like, but that just feels like a ton of money. Every time I walk through best buy and I see tons of nice looking windows laptops starting at like $400 and well equipped at maybe $1400, I just feel like the macbook pro is overpriced.
On the other hand, the MBA is just not an upgrade from what I have now (amazingly, 4 years later). And the 13" retina, while nice, is dual core instead of quad (though the current i5 is prob 50% faster than my i7), and going to 16GB / 512GB gets the price pretty close to the 15".
My most recent thinking is that I'm probably going to have to get a desktop again, after many years of not having one. iMac 3.5 for the desk would give me the nice step up in power, and then I can probably live with a 13" MBP retina for carry-around.
Ugh.
Wow, a macbook air is just as powerful as my current machine.
and
Geez, their NEWLY UPDATED 2014 Macbook Air is as slow as my aging 2010 Macbook Pro.
It's time for me to get a new machine, and I'm really struggling with the decision. My machine today, even though it's 4 years old, runs pretty nicely, has 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD (self installed).
Spending $2700 to get to 16GB/512GB on a top 'o line Macbook Pro would give me the speed and capability bump I'd like, but that just feels like a ton of money. Every time I walk through best buy and I see tons of nice looking windows laptops starting at like $400 and well equipped at maybe $1400, I just feel like the macbook pro is overpriced.
On the other hand, the MBA is just not an upgrade from what I have now (amazingly, 4 years later). And the 13" retina, while nice, is dual core instead of quad (though the current i5 is prob 50% faster than my i7), and going to 16GB / 512GB gets the price pretty close to the 15".
My most recent thinking is that I'm probably going to have to get a desktop again, after many years of not having one. iMac 3.5 for the desk would give me the nice step up in power, and then I can probably live with a 13" MBP retina for carry-around.
Ugh.
In other news, they wear sunglasses when someone lights a candle, and apply sunblock if a birthday cake has enough candles for someone older than 8. Those give off more heat than chromebooks. Signed a chromebox owner.
Interesting that you say that, because the iPad Air scores in at 1465 and 2643, respectively.
Imagine what a quad core A8 running in a spacious roomy and cool chassis with large L2 and L3 caches and LDDR4 RAM where it can really stretch its legs and not be throttled?
I reckon we could get up to 2700-2900 range single core scores and from 5000 and up multi core scores on the next gen A series chip from Apple under this type of setup. That is not overly optimistic either because it isn't even double the current performance, something Apple has been able to achieve regularly in the past.
It would cost a fraction of the Intel chip and be an improvement over the current generation MBA in terms of performance, even if it were to fall short of Broadwell's mobile, low watt SKU's, but then it would also come out 6 months earlier, and it could be the case of the two leap-frogging each other going forward.
With essentially one click recompiling tools available, software compatibility would not be an issue, especially through the MAS.
I don't think it will happen personally, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does, nor overtly disappointed. It would be an interesting and exciting development.
No thanks.
Ugh - give me an i7 please.
i5 always comes across like the core2duo of the corei3/i5/i7 line these days.
Ugh - give me an i7 please.
i5 always comes across like the core2duo of the corei3/i5/i7 line these days.
Give us a hard drive increase of 256gb and 8gb ram for the entry level air and I will be one of the first in the queue.
That won't happen for probably another 3 years
