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Warming-up for the all-new redesigned retina 2014 (2015?) MacBook Air

skaertus said:
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I don't know about the speed of the memory and of the SSD yet, so I cannot affirm it is worse than in the current Air. I don't know why Thunderbolt is so important, I don't find any use for it, and I don't care about it.

This laptop is thinner and lighter than the Air, and it has a better screen. Of course it has advantages over the Air. It may have a slower processor, and that is to Air's advantage, but not everything in the Air is superior.
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Yes, no need to try to argue re: RAM and SSD speed. RAM speed essentially doesn't matter now that CPUs have multi-megabyte caches. This has been the case for years and is proven by basically any real-world benchmark testing. And any SSD speed over a couple hundred MB/s is fairly pointless unless you're doing something very specific that requires that speed, which most people certainly don't.

I would also argue that the size/weight differences between the Samsung and current 11" MBA are insignificant. A small fraction of an inch and a small fraction of a pound.

The difference in screen size is also fairly inconsequential. Remember than the 11" MBA actually has an 11.6" screen. With the amount of bezel it has, it could easily accommodate a 12.2" screen with zero changes to the form factor.

So basically it boils down to the Samsung having a better screen and the MBA having a more powerful processor. And also being significantly cheaper. So I'm reluctant to say that the Samsung is a clear winner here.

Of course ideally Apple will release an "11 inch" MBA with a screen similar to the Samsung's and not too much of a price increase. I imagine it will happen sometime but only a few people know when.
 
motrek said:
Yes, no need to try to argue re: RAM and SSD speed. RAM speed essentially doesn't matter now that CPUs have multi-megabyte caches. This has been the case for years and is proven by basically any real-world benchmark testing. And any SSD speed over a couple hundred MB/s is fairly pointless unless you're doing something very specific that requires that speed, which most people certainly don't.

I would also argue that the size/weight differences between the Samsung and current 11" MBA are insignificant. A small fraction of an inch and a small fraction of a pound.

The difference in screen size is also fairly inconsequential. Remember than the 11" MBA actually has an 11.6" screen. With the amount of bezel it has, it could easily accommodate a 12.2" screen with zero changes to the form factor.

So basically it boils down to the Samsung having a better screen and the MBA having a more powerful processor. And also being significantly cheaper. So I'm reluctant to say that the Samsung is a clear winner here.

Of course ideally Apple will release an "11 inch" MBA with a screen similar to the Samsung's and not too much of a price increase. I imagine it will happen sometime but only a few people know when.
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I am not saying that the new Samsung is a clear victor in the battle against the MacBook Air. The product has not even launched yet. The Yoga 3 with the Core M processor looked promising, but ended up being a disappointment according to several reviews, due to the weak processor. The same may happen with this Samsung, and we are yet to see how things go this time.

As a matter of fact, the Samsung is more than 10% lighter than the 11-inch Air (2.09 lbs. vs. 2.38 lbs), and that is not insignificant, although both are light enough. And the screen of the Samsung has a 16:10 aspect ratio, similar to the ones in the 13-inch MacBook Air and the MacBook Pros, while the 11-inch Air has a 16:9 aspect ratio. That will make a difference especially with such a small screen. Look at a comparison of both screens here:

http://www.displaywars.com/11,6-inch-16x9-vs-12,2-inch-16x10

I suspect Apple may use this very same screen for the next Air.
 
skaertus said:
Except for the fact that the 12-inch MacBook Air doesn't exist yet, and has not even been announced. It lives only in our heads and perhaps in manufacturers' labs. We don't know about the CPU, GPU, battery life, trackpad, thinness and lightness of the 12-inch MacBook Air. We suppose it will be like this, but we can't affirm for sure at this point.

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I don't know about the speed of the memory and of the SSD yet, so I cannot affirm it is worse than in the current Air. I don't know why Thunderbolt is so important, I don't find any use for it, and I don't care about it.

This laptop is thinner and lighter than the Air, and it has a better screen. Of course it has advantages over the Air. It may have a slower processor, and that is to Air's advantage, but not everything in the Air is superior.
Click to expand...

I didn't say it didn't have any advantage of the MBA. I did say is that it has taken an awfully long time to get to a stage where still only the screen of of a worthy advantage. Considering the stage the MBA is at.

Well is Skeartus has not use for Thunderbolt then it must not have any use, let's not use modern super fast external bus that can be used for external devices, displays, graphics cards, use firewire devices etc. Man, you should try it, the joy of just plugging in a single cable is wonderful :)
 
cyb3rdud3 said:
I didn't say it didn't have any advantage of the MBA. I did say is that it has taken an awfully long time to get to a stage where still only the screen of of a worthy advantage. Considering the stage the MBA is at.
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In addition to the screen, the Samsung laptop is also thinner and lighter than the Air. The difference is small in absolute terms (0.29 lbs), but it is more than 10% of the weight, which, in relative terms, is not negligible.

I agree that, four years after the release of the current Air, it is still competitive, apart from the screen.

Well is Skeartus has not use for Thunderbolt then it must not have any use, let's not use modern super fast external bus that can be used for external devices, displays, graphics cards, use firewire devices etc. Man, you should try it, the joy of just plugging in a single cable is wonderful :)
Click to expand...

I have never seen a Thunderbolt device for sale here in Brazil, apart from the uber-expensive Apple Thunderbolt Display, which costs north of US$ 2,000 here. No Thunderbolt devices. And, to be honest, I found a small number of Thunderbolt devices in the US as well. So, I don't see much use for it, despite it being very fast.
 
skaertus said:
In addition to the screen, the Samsung laptop is also thinner and lighter than the Air. The difference is small in absolute terms (0.29 lbs), but it is more than 10% of the weight, which, in relative terms, is not negligible.
...
Click to expand...

Except that relative terms don't matter for s*** in this case.

My ability to pick up something and move it around and rest it on my lap is not calibrated according to the weight of the 2010 to 2014 model MacBook Air.
 
motrek said:
Except that relative terms don't matter for s*** in this case.

My ability to pick up something and move it around and rest it on my lap is not calibrated according to the weight of the 2010 to 2014 model MacBook Air.
Click to expand...

Yes, definitely. But, as weight is concerned, I would prefer to carry around a 2.09 lbs laptop with a bigger and better screen than a 2.38 lbs laptop.

I don't know if it is the case, but I was just wondering if Samsung used in this new laptop the screen that will equip the forthcoming MacBook Air. This screen would be perfect for the Air, as it has 12 inches, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and would allow for a smaller bezel while keeping a full-sized keyboard and trackpad. And Samsung is perhaps one of the screen manufactureres for the next Air.
 
DieAllianz said:
NO it's not.
Such a display would have a 1280x800 screen real estate. That's 25% less then a 13" MBA now has (1440x900)
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Yes, but a 1280x800 screen real estate would be more or less similar to the one in the 11-inch Air (1366x768). Anyway, the screen could be adjusted to look like 1440x900, just like the Pros, and would still be sharper than the 13-inch screen, so it would not represent any kind of downside.

And at this point, I don't think Apple would use a 2880x1800 screen in the next Air. I think it would adopt a resolution more consistent with the Pro line, even if that means some sort of sacrifice. In any case, a 2560x1600 screen would drag less battery than a 2880x1800 screen.

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NutsNGum said:
But if it's Retina then it's going to have scalable modes, so that's irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Exactly. And 2560x1600 is sharp enough for a 12-inch screen.
 
I'm more interested which version(s) apple will implement. There are some interesting differences between them.

On paper I like the low power i7 quad core I think. My current HD5000 is plenty to drive two screens of which one is 2560x1600 so I'm sure it'll be fine opposed to having the iris.
 
cyb3rdud3 said:
I'm more interested which version(s) apple will implement. There are some interesting differences between them.

On paper I like the low power i7 quad core I think. My current HD5000 is plenty to drive two screens of which one is 2560x1600 so I'm sure it'll be fine opposed to having the iris.
Click to expand...

Huh? All of the U-Series are Dual-Core.

The Iris Broadwell models are 28W - these aren't suitable for MBAs (these are for MBPs).

The new Air will use i5-5250U on the low-end, and i7-5650U as the BTO upgrade option. Direct upgrades for the current models.
 
I thought the link provided showed them in quad core core as well?

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Ah well I'll go for an Asus Celeron-M then.
 
Would Apple reduce the weight?
Compare to the laptops nowadays in the same segment, it seems a bit heavier.
I want 12-13 inch that under 1kg.
Like NEC 13 inch lavie z
 
Intel stated today something as vague as Broadwell bringing 1-1.5h more battery life swapping chips in current Haswell devices with new Broadwell chips (but that was on Windows i guess). So Apple could probably use ~10% smaller batteries and not lose in battery life simply swapping chips in its current MBA11. Or they might prefer to reach a round 'up to 10h' with a new 12" model.
Now, there is also the addition of a retina screen to count in the equation...

But yeah, with a redesign one could expect they'd want to pass the psychologic limit of 1kg, that's just 80g away.
 
Might be a nice form factor, but I think the machine will be crippled if Apple is doing their usual thing.

Lowest wattage Broadwell:s are slow, and the low-end machine will likely come with 2 GB of RAM, and 64 SSD. For $999. Barely usable.
 
Mackan said:
Might be a nice form factor, but I think the machine will be crippled if Apple is doing their usual thing.

Lowest wattage Broadwell:s are slow, and the low-end machine will likely come with 2 GB of RAM, and 64 SSD. For $999. Barely usable.
Click to expand...

Everything you can buy now is 4/128 at least. There's no precedent for going backwards on specs and no reason to assume that a new model would be crippled.
 
so these cpu are only for Macbook air or 13" macbook pro
for imac or macbook pro 15" where are they?
 
DELL XPS 13
3200 x 1800 13,3 inch :eek:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-edition-announced-at-ces-2015

ces-2015-dell-xps-13-8531.0.0.jpg
 
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