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Comment by tvon | Hacker News Reader

Re: the Air... Man, Apple has balls.

The 11.6" is interesting, note it's 720p exactly (1366x768). Note also he said he sees it as the "future of the macbook", and the future of the macbook has no obviously removable/upgradable HDD (it's like RAM on the motherboard, so maybe it will somehow be upgradable).

People who didn't like Apple products yesterday aren't going to like them today either, but it's interesting stuff...

edit:

Flash storage ranges from 64 gigs to 256 gigs (depending on size/choices).

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"I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone." --pg, http://paul.graham.usesthis.com/

On another note, the 2 GB of RAM on the Air worries me--that's not a large amount anymore, and I'm dubious on swapping a lot to the flash memory--it'll be faster than swapping to HD, but swapping--especially if it happens a lot, as it would with only 2 GB of RAM--is a use case that puts a lot of wear on flash memory.

Expandable to 4G, but yeah, 2G really is a minimum these days.

But that only raises new questions. Can you even open the case and upgrade the RAM yourself, or do you have to overpay Apple when you buy the thing?

4GB is $100 more. At some point apple stopped overcharging for RAM. They now charge more than the minimum you can find it for from fly by night places (As they do with everything) But in line with market prices.

I really (honestly) can't wait to see how they do in the market, because the prices are so steep compared to the metrics that other people look at when shopping for laptops (display size, storage, speed). I don't even think Apple is gouging here; the unibody construction and flash storage are both pretty expensive.

So, Apple is pretty much saying, "Yeah, price, we're really not gonna compete on that" ... if that ends up working out well for them, that could be an interesting signal to other companies.

I think higher pricing is actually an advantage for Apple. It sets them to be somewhat "luxury" products. Not "signal I am rich" luxury, but to the point that they are more desirable for it. If they were priced the same as other laptops, and were as ubiquitous, I think they would those some of their appeal to some people.

Apple is growing Mac sales at significantly higher rates than the rest of the PC market. Apple has been competitive with others on prices for about 20 years.

Apple doesn't compete on the low end of the market. The people who think Apple is expensive are the people who compare an ATOM internet pad to a Macbook Pro and think they are both the same value because they are both "laptops".

Well, shit, I had no idea that I compared Atom "internet pad"s to Macbook Pros that way.

Thanks for the valuable insight!

Bah, commenting on HN is a complete waste of time anymore.

It totally is. You express anything that goes against the rigid leftist freetard ideology and you get voted down and people start putting words in your mouth, like you just did. (If you read my actual post, I never said you said that.)

I wonder if the Macbook Pro has a different future (or not).

Looked to me like the SSD is cooked right on to the motherboard.

Yeah, I mentioned RAM only because it looked like a "stick", and hopefully attached like RAM (meaning removable and not with some kind of proprietary connection).

Not even an SSD, it's flash-meets-RAM.

No, it's an SSD without a case.

I didn't spot anything that looked like a drive controller on-board. Form factor is much closer to RAM, too ... not that it matters much, it's just an interesting design decision.

In the leaked photo you can see the Toshiba SSD controller right next to the flash chips.

Got a link handy? Didn't know there was a leaked photo.

He mentioned it was "up to 2x faster". I thought SSDs were significantly faster than HDDs?

Keep in mind that Apple uses the slowest SSDs available; they're so slow that stores like NewEgg don't carry them. The performance difference also depends on the workload; 2x is reasonable for sequential access.

Please let the RAM be upgradeable, at least from the apple store...

Can go to 4GB. I'm betting it's still soldered on, and therefore unupgradable.

The SSD may be removable from the look of things.

Deleted comment

I don't think they changed it. There is probably just not enough room for the glass pane. I expect future larger MacBooks to be shipped with the black bezel as before.

The Air already had that color bezel...it was the last holdout, I believe (other than the white MacBook which I imagine is now replaced).

720p is a video standard that specifies a resolution of 1280x720 in progressive format (hence the name "720p") Apple, fortunately, seems to be sizing their screens based on HD formats, but giving some extra space for UI chrome.

Ah, good point. HD TVs are often (usually?) 1366x768. I guess they just picked that to provide room for chrome as you suggest? Seems an odd reason to go with 1366 and not 1360, and for video you'd think they'd promote using fullscreen anyway...

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