Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What prevented a retina Air?
- Thread starter rovex
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Sort of. Windows itself is OK, particularly Metro, but Desktop apps are often horrible at scaling. I run Windows 7 occasionally on my rMBP at 199% scaling, and quite often text in title bars, or even entire dialog boxes are tiny or mis-scaled.
----------
Most people don't buy new notebooks every year. Particularly since tablets became popular, notebook buying cycles have slowed.
Apple won't up the screen resolution until Retina displays become economical and less power-hungry. I have a rMBP, and while I like it, the extra weight takes some getting used to. It really feels heavy compared to my previous MacBook Air. Maybe in a year or two yields will be better and power consumption will have improved. In the meantime, 1080p doesn't make much sense since OS X isn't optimized to scale (and more importantly, neither are OS X applications). Windows 7 and 8 can scale, but only Metro UI applications can really take advantage of it (or at least that's what it seems like). Since Windows 8 is made to scale, 1080p makes sense.
I'd actually like it if Apple came up with an 11.6" rMBP. It could be a little thicker and heavier to accommodate a larger battery, but still be more portable than the 13.3".
MBAir = entry level notebook. has hi-res display. more than adequate.
MBPro = professional level notebook. retina display for those who need/desire it and are prepared to pay the extra.
MBPro with non-retina display + superdrive for many markets where internet access is slow or patchy and the need for an optical drive continues; inexpensive pricing
why no rMBAir?
cost
cannibalise MBPro sales
MBPro = professional level notebook. retina display for those who need/desire it and are prepared to pay the extra.
MBPro with non-retina display + superdrive for many markets where internet access is slow or patchy and the need for an optical drive continues; inexpensive pricing
why no rMBAir?
cost
cannibalise MBPro sales
Yes, they gained bigger batteries because the hard drive and optical drive were removed. There isn't much space in the MBA
It's a marketing thing.
1) The customer-perceivable difference between the 13" rMBP and the MBA is currently too small. Adding a retina display would cannibalize sales of the more profitable rMBP
2) A retina display would add about 200-300$ to the price. That's just too much for a consumer notebook. Remember that the MBA is their honeypot notebook for switchers. If they on the other hand wouldn't increase the price it would hamper profitability, which they can't afford currently (i mean, financially they can, but the investors are a little bit nervous already).
I guess the MBA will get the retina display or at least a better IPS/TN display (1080p) once the 13" rMBP got its upgrade to Haswell. I'm sure that they'll add Thunderbolt 2 and support for 4K displays to it (to make it "pro" again) so that their product line is balanced again.
1) The customer-perceivable difference between the 13" rMBP and the MBA is currently too small. Adding a retina display would cannibalize sales of the more profitable rMBP
2) A retina display would add about 200-300$ to the price. That's just too much for a consumer notebook. Remember that the MBA is their honeypot notebook for switchers. If they on the other hand wouldn't increase the price it would hamper profitability, which they can't afford currently (i mean, financially they can, but the investors are a little bit nervous already).
I guess the MBA will get the retina display or at least a better IPS/TN display (1080p) once the 13" rMBP got its upgrade to Haswell. I'm sure that they'll add Thunderbolt 2 and support for 4K displays to it (to make it "pro" again) so that their product line is balanced again.
I don't understand. What exactly is the attraction of a MBA w/ Retina Display?
A MBA w/ Retina Display would presumably:
Add all those up and you have a MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display…
Is it that people want a Retina display but with everything else staying the same? Essentially a $1099 laptop that has the thinness/lightness/battery-life of an Air and has an awesome display?
A MBA w/ Retina Display would presumably:
- cost more
- require more battery compared to a non-retina screened Air
- would be thicker/heavier because of the larger battery and screen
Add all those up and you have a MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display…
Is it that people want a Retina display but with everything else staying the same? Essentially a $1099 laptop that has the thinness/lightness/battery-life of an Air and has an awesome display?
I disagree. While the laptop overall offers a nice package, the screen is sub-par. For the same kind of money you get laptops from Acer, Asus and Dell with drastically better screens. The Air has a low-res, cheap TN panel that has fairly sucky contrast, bad viewing angles and washed-out colors.
Forget about the retina. Get the 13" or 15" rMBP if you want retina.
I think most people would have been happy with a smaller bezel on the 13, thus a slightly larger screen (maybe 14"?) and higher resolution.
I think most people would have been happy with a smaller bezel on the 13, thus a slightly larger screen (maybe 14"?) and higher resolution.
This was my wish before the announcement. I knew we wouldn't get a retina MBA, but a small bump in resolution still would've been nice. I agree with you that at least switching to an IPS panel would've been good. Kis (quoted below) sums up my feelings about the current 13" MBA screen nicely. That being said, I'm still planning on upgrading my current MBA to the 2013 model once the back to school promotion starts.
oh really? how do you figure? i know they didn't upgrade the chips in the pros, but look at the battery difference between the classics v retinas
it's substantial.
i think they made the right call re retina but i agree with others, a display improvement would have been nice but i don't really care.
the 11" is an ultraportable. the 13 has the retina counterpart in the pro. i don't really see the problem.
i was actually rooting against retina as for me the real bottle neck with the11 in particular is battery life.
----------
i agree with all of this, but Apple has a long history of not caring about "cannibalizing" i think the bigger concern is keeping the products distinct as you also alluded to.
the 13" rMBP is only a couple hundred more than the MBA. and has (well had) a "better" chip and came standard with a larger ssd. it's .5 heavier and has a smaller footprint. not to mention the fact that adding retina would drive the price up so ultimately adding the retina to the MBA would basically just mean you're choosing between the taper or the classic unibody. doesn't make sense to do that.
for the 11 - again, battery life. bigger battery = heavier computer. the 11" market is for ultraportable. why do you want retina on your 11"? most people don't if it means making it heavier.
The MacBook Pro 13'' has a 63.5 watt-hour battery. The retina MacBook Pro 13'' has a 74 watt-hour battery. That is a 16.5% larger battery. They both provide 7 hours of battery life, according to Apple. So, without that 16.5% increase, the battery life for the retina 13'' would have been around 5.5-6 hours.
Now, the new MacBook Air 2013 has a 54.4Wh battery, an increase of 8.8% compared to the MacBook Air 2012. Yet, Apple managed to increase the battery life from 7 hours to 12 hours. It seems to me that there's plenty of battery life to spare to add a retina display, and still improve battery life drastically over the past generation. The Haswell CPU largely contributes to this.
you said it wouldn't affect the battery life much at all.
i suppose we differ on how we define the word...
but again, the point is why?
I agree that they could have improved screen quality, but retina? it makes little sense on the 11" as the 11" is primarily an ultralight - and, in my opinion anyway, the limiting reagent pre 2013 was battery life. I think they would have had to increase the battery size and therefore weight of the machine to put in retina which, given the purpose of the laptop, is counterproductive.
I understand that you are arguing with the more efficient chip that they could have left the old battery in there and still put in retina, but as we haven't seen a retina screen on a machine with the new chip that is just conjecture at this point.
As for the 13" MBA, again - if you want a 13" macbook with retina display, why not get the Pro? The stock 13" rMBP is $300 more than the 13" MBA with 8 gigs ram. The 13" rMBP is only half a pound heavier and has a smaller footprint, if you want a retina display get that.
Then there's the issue of price - the MBA is the "economy" Apple macbook. They drove this point home 5 years ago when they got rid of the Macbook alone...there's the pro and then there's the air. i don't think you're going to see them further splitting the playing field as they have already done with the retina/non retina pros.
I didn't really say that, did I? I quoted you because you were questioning another guy's claim that battery life wasn't affected much by retina. I provided numbers which show that retina in this case isn't killing battery time, and also that Apple easily could have put retina in MacBook Air with the new Haswell chip, and seemingly still have plenty of battery life to spare.
I think it's illogical to draw the conclusion that Haswell (including it's Intel HD 4600/5000 here) is handling a retina screen worse than Ivy Bridge (with it's Intel HD 4000). Haswell was designed to be a far more power efficient chip.
my mistake! i didn't bother to look and see that you weren't the person i quoted.
----------
i didn't say that it would a handle retina screen worse, i said whether or not it would be significantly better enough to warrant putting it on the airs is conjecture at this point as we haven't seen a Haswell Retina screen yet. Yes, the chip is more efficient so ostensibly it's not unreasonable to assume that it would run Retina more efficiently than IB.
For all of the other reasons I listed in my post, retina didn't make sense this time around. I am trying to avoid using "and obviously Apple agreed with me" in my argument as hindsight is obviously 20/20, but this has been my position for a while now.
This is the fourth iteration of the current MBA line, and the only one with an advertised increase in the battery - not a minor bump, one that is almost doubled. There's no way a retina screen would eat 4+ hours of battery life, probably hardly more than half of that. We could have had an 11" rMBA w/ a 6+ hour battery, absolutely no changes otherwise.
There are certainly factors at play (likely screen yield/cost issues), but battery ain't one of them.
Last edited:
all fair points and i imagine you are right about the battery issue. however "absolutely no changes otherwise" is not quite correct as adding Retina would have added cost and the MBA is the "economy" macbook. they have gone out of their way to keep the pro separate ever since getting rid of the "just macbook."
obviously they could have made it an option like the did with the pro... rMBA vs cMBA but that is very unlike Apple...the only reason they did it in the first place is, i suspect, out of fear that they wouldn't sell if they just made the MBP $300 more expensive out of the blue. Apple tends to keep prices constant and just change out the merchandize.
Retina is a BS marketing term anyway - it means whatever Apple wants it to mean.
i don't see them having 2 lines of MBPs AND 2 lines of MBAs. I wonder if the "classic" MBP will go away when the hasswell pros come out?
the 13" rMBP is already "confusing" enough. It seemed obvious to me that at the very least there would be no 13" rMBA. The 13" rMBP is $300 more and functionally the same as the 13" air. Want high res? get the pro.
and if there was to be no retina 13, why would they make an 11?
i am sure some people are disappointed, and yes obviously they COULD have done it (as in it was in the realm of possibility) but i never thought it was likely at all and quite frankly i was surprised at the number of people who expected it.
Though I don't think people on here and the other tech forums are necessarily a good population sample of the "real world" and the so-called "normal" people who are upset about the lack of a retina MBA either don't have all the facts or simply haven't thought it through.
I'm hearing all kinds of talk about the MBA display not being that fantastic. I'm intending to buy my first MBA so can anyone explain to me what exactly is the issue?
I'm happy with it not being retina if that's what people are talking about. But correct me if I'm wrong it's still a standard display similar to the non-retina MBP?
I'm switching from a 15inch Macbook Pro late-2008 model btw.
I'm happy with it not being retina if that's what people are talking about. But correct me if I'm wrong it's still a standard display similar to the non-retina MBP?
I'm switching from a 15inch Macbook Pro late-2008 model btw.
I have an early 2008 MBPro (as my backup machine) and the display on the current Air is way sharper - equivalent to a hi-res older MBPro display.
not retina, yet still pretty dang good
