New MacBook Air Specs | Hacker News Reader

New MacBook Air Specs

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27 pointsabstractwater47 comments

The Core 2 Duo is disappointing.

I've been holding off on replacing my Dell, hoping Apple would announce a more powerful 13" model of some sort. My Dell has been technically excellent (LED backlit display, SSD, etc), but the build quality is distractingly bad. So, I've been seriously considering biting the bullet and getting a Macbook.

As impressive as the rest of the new Air seems, it's tough to justify buying ~2008 technology two months from 2011. It's hard to believe there's not a single 13" Macbook available with a Core i5 or Core i7 yet.

I would personally place the blame squarely at Intel's feet. They no longer allow nVidia to make chipsets for Nehalem onwards, so instead of having a chipset with integrated graphics, you now have to have an additional chip on the motherboard for standalone graphics. In this form factor, that's just not an option.

I guess Apple could also be faulted for wanting to standardize on decent graphics, but I just can't bring myself to see that as anything but a good thing!

It will be interesting to see how this changes with time. Sandy Bridge, Intel's upcoming CPU release, has graphics on die, but it will still be vastly outclassed by the nVidia 320M that's in the new Air. Unless Intel comes along with vast improvements with their 22nm refresh, Ivy Bridge, Apple's still going to be in the same bind - in 2012.

Anyone else notice the Software Reinstall Drive?

http://images.apple.com/macbookair/images/specs_flashdrive_2...

USB drive with Mac OS X?

OS X has supported booting from USB drives for quite a few years now.

But I assume this is the first time they've actually packed the OS on a USB drive, no?

Sony crams an i7, a gorgeous 1920x1080 high-gamut display, quad RAIDed SSDs, and an optical drive into a 13.1" 3-lb. package with great battery life. That's impressive.

http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Special/Computer/Vaio/Z/index.ht... (quad SSDs available only in Japan)

I love OS X, but I feel like a retard for sticking with Apple hardware when they're outfitting "the next generation of Macs" with the previous generation of processors.

You forgot to compare the price. The "reasonable price" option there is more expensive than the highest price macbook air.

The price I'd be willing to pay for a powerful MacBook Air sickens me.

And I hate to think what more they could include if they weren't so obsessed with the tapered edge. More than 4 GB of RAM? A real SSD? WWAN?

Isn't the Core 2 Duo rather old? Why did they use that instead of a more recent i3/i5/i7?

It comes down to graphics performance. If they used an i3, they would need to use intel's integrated graphics, which are much slower than the geforce 320m. Going with the Core2 allows them to use Nvidia's chipset, which has a much faster integrated graphics chip.

Why not a i5 or i7 then?

E.g. the MacBook Pro 15" (i5) comes with a Nvidia GeForce GT 330M.

Does the i5/i7 and related chipset dependencies take up more space maybe? They seem overall more performant and better battery savers than the Core 2 Duo.

Yeah; Intel locked NVidia out of the chipset market with Nehalem, so in order to use an NVidia GPU you need to have an extra die on the motherboard, you can't fold it into the chipset.

There's no room in the Air chassis for that, so to stay off Intel Integrated graphics, they have to stay on Core 2 Duo.

…and they can't include both the integrated graphics and Nvidia, because of space constraints.

See http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/05/new-intel-ulv-proc...

My current MBA has an overheating problem because they didn't bother to design with heat dissipation in mind. Going to wait and see if similar complaints come up about current gen.

That is in fact a problem with the Air, the fans are simply not powerful enough to cool the CPU at full speed for more than 5 minutes. You're wise to wait (I'm not).

That is, frankly, a poor design.

I'm tempted to buy one but this is the one thing stopping me (existing MBA owner).

interesting.. they renamed the iSight -> "FaceTime camera"

I'm wondering if that just implies a lower resolution camera than what is found in the Macbooks/Pros

You know what I love? TWO USB PORTS. Finally.

Not just that, but ports on each side. No more external mouse cables wrapping around the computer.

Does anyone code on an Air? Just wondering how well the current ones do.

I wouldn't buy this as a dev machine unless you're pretty sure you're not doing anything more than trivial local compilation. Unless you bike everywhere and the size is really important.

Why not? I use a similarly spec'd 12", 1440x900, 1.8ghz Lenovo X200s. Sure I dock it and connect dual monitors when I'm at work, but having that resolution plus being able to cart it everywhere and pop it open without hassle makes it a great dev machine. I was able to compile our whole Java webapp, maybe a million lines of code, in the same time as my previous machine - most likely IO was the limiting factor not horsepower. What kind of compilation or other intensive work do you expect to need to be doing that would offset the portability benefits?

I do the same but with an x200. It kicks ass and I do Linux kernel hacking on it all the time. Compiles a full kernel in 15 minutes. It also has a 128GB ssd like the air.

It'll probably work well as a thin client to ssh into a dev server, although the resolution is a little low for my liking (especially the 11")

I learned to program on a C64, and later in Turbo Pascal on an XT with 256KB. Now I code on an Air, (rev. A) and it works fine. I miss a really big screen (but you can plug one in) and it's slow for some tasks such as running tests (but you can run those on a server).

Maybe I'd be slightly more productive with a Mac Pro and two 27'' screens. On the other hand, with the Air, I can code in bed (and I do).

You code in bed? Wow, your back must hate you. (And if not yet, soon it will...) Seriously, though, my back starts hurting if I don't maintain good posture while sitting; I can't even imagine what it would do if I tried to use a computer in bed.

Some studies indicate that a reclined position is much better for your back than sitting up at a desk[1]. My back starts hurting after a couple of hours at a desk, but I'm never uncomfortable in bed. I really think that horizontal computing is the way of the future.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6187080.stm

I'm considering the new Air as main programming machine. I'm only leery of the Core 2 Duo processor (why didn't they use i5/i7?) and the glossy display which is not ideal for programming. I will have an external monitor as main display though.

But it's so much cheaper than any MacBook Pro with a SSD!

I was really hoping for more than 2GB of memory. I frequently want my entire application stack for whatever project I'm working on, dev environment, and a windows VM running simultaneously and that already can get tight with the 4GB I have in my MBP.

You can actually configure any new MacBook Air up to 4GB RAM when you buy it.

Two things I disliked about the earlier Air was display resolution and memory. Both have been improved quite a bit. Now someone needs to check heat dissipation.

Seems pretty much an Apple netbook, but 2-3-4-5 times the price.

Jobs said they weren't interested in that market because too cut-price, but now it's died down a bit.

It will be interesting to see if Apple ease-of-use etc will be enough to win yet another market - I think it might.

It seems like this might cannibalize iPad sales to some extent, no? A $999 11" MacBook with 64GB of storage is an awfully good deal compared to the top-of-the-line iPad choice, isn't it?

4GB RAM at last! Let's see if Santa gets me this one or a Dell Adamo. The Dell still doesn't have 4GB, but perhaps that will change before December.

1.4ghz chip at the low end? I suppose that explains in part where the good battery life and low cost is coming from.

I'm a little disappointed with the battery life. I recently bought a 13-inch ASUS and regularly get 12+ hours of battery life out of it. 5-7 hours sounds less than impressive especially if you are on the move/hate looking around for an outlet wherever you go. But there is no denying that the MBA looks considerably better/thinner/lighter...

How much of that time is spent computing and how much is it sitting around? Because it sounds like Apple was citing the former.

Assuming "All Flash Storage" => SSD

Yes, although the flash memory is not in an enclosure.

It's not really a drive anymore, just individual flash chips, not replaceable.

Is that a joke ? So what do you do if the 64GB are full ? Throw away the computer ?

Empty the trash... ;-)

After throwing away the computer.

Most people never upgrade their own laptop hard drive. I'm assuming you'll be able to take it in to have the apple store swap in a bigger storage circuit.

I'm on the third harddisk on my macbook.

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