The Air’s Spot in the Lineup | Hacker News Reader

The Air’s Spot in the Lineup

daringfireball.net

32 pointsdavidedicillo28 comments

I think that this is spot on. I currently use a high resolution 15" MPB as my main development machine (with an external monitor at the office and at home) but would be interested in the MBA for carrying between the two instead and for travel. For detractors who say it's a glorified netbook, having play around with the last generation MBAs (which have lower spec hardware) it's not. The difference between an Atom processor and a C2D is light years. Even ignoring the additional graphics card power which can be used to make video actually watchable, a my netbook doesn't even really get considered for travel duty because it's nearly impossible to run anything more than a web browser + office on it (although I did run Lightroom 2 on it while traveling through Asia for two months - that was an experiment in extreme patience).

Honestly, I think the MBA is the most attractive option in Apple's lineup for the average consumer. The 11" model is the same price as a macbook and the 13" isn't much more but it's significantly lighter, harder to damage (SSD + Al casing) and more than enough power to do everything that normals do. I know that if my mom was in the market for a new machine now, the 13" MBA would be high on my list for her. The only thing normals probably aren't entirely accustomed to is the lack of a DVD drive. My mom still loves her Netflix subscription and even though Handbrake for mac is really simple to use the concept of explaining how to connect an external DVD drive and rip movies for the air plane is still a bit much. There is always iTunes (which is what Apple wants us all to use anyways).

Depending on what she wants to watch, there is also Netflix Internet video streaming ("Watch Instantly").

I agree on the whole, but I think it's some things wrong.

1 - Apple's ideal lineup doesn't include the 'just cheap' option. Everything must be ideal for something. The nano isn't just cheaper, its' small enough to clip to your collar and simpler to use. The mac mini is not just cheaper than the iMac. It's tiny, efficient and quite and doesn't come with a screen.

The problem in the lineup isn't the air, it's the macbook. The macbook is just cheaper than the pro. No advantages.

2 - I partially disagree with the secondary computer point. One things netbooks have taught us is that people are willing to use smaller more basic computer as their main laptop. Sure some techies and executives bought netbooks as secondaries, but the bigger market is students, cheapskates, developing countries, and people who don't use computers much. It's a cheap but not clunky option.

I think Apple is taking this as a (another) signal that power doesn't add much value to many users. If browsers and word processors work fine, they're happy. Apple are replacing cheap & light with light and sexy.

I think the MacBook Air line will drop the "Air" name in the near future (maybe in a year or so) and become just the regular MacBook line. It seems more like it was meant to be a test/bridge machine in Apple's quest to eliminate legacy ports, optical storage, and magnetic media. I'd bet that the market will make this choice easy for them as Airs begin to outsell standard MacBooks in the coming year. (Pure speculation, but from what I've seen of the reviews and general attitude toward the air from people I've talked to, it's now a serious machine that many are considering - some even considering switching to it from a MacBook Pro as the Air can do everything they need on a day-to-day basis. Time will tell...)

It's going to be a while before the specs on the Air match the bottom-of-the-barrel MacBook. I bought one of those for my family and aside from the SSD, it smokes the Air in performance. It's only 2.15kg too, vs. 1.05kg for the Air.

I don't see the skinniness (sharpness?) of the Air as a benefit worth trading your memory and CPU speed for at this time. The MacBook we have performs well, but I think taking some of the oomph out of it would really hurt the experience.

For most everyday tasks that ordinary users do, the presence of the SSD will make the Air seem like the fastest computer they have ever used. Only desktop games and flash-heavy websites will highlight the relatively ancient CPU.

I don't agree on "only" - another way of putting that is that the Air weighs less than half what the Pro does. The Pro isn't that heavy in absolute terms, but the Air is still going to be nicer to carry about the place - I'd seriously think about that if it was going to be a secondary computer.

I'm switching my primary machine from a MacBook Pro to an Air in large part because of performance. Sure, the CPU and graphics aren't as good, but it'll more than make up for that with the huge increase in speed on the one thing I (and most non-gamers) actually wait on these days: the disk.

Makes sense, although I'll be surprised if Apple doesn't switch all their laptops to flash storage in the near future. Ideally they'd keep the MacBook Pros the same size and ditch the DVD, so you can have both flash for the OS and apps, and a large HD for data. And post-2003 external storage options would be nice too...

I just put an Intel X-25 in my MacBook Pro and it's an improvement in a few places, but not a panacea.

It really improves boot and shutdown. This Mac starts up almost instantly. Shutting down takes only a few seconds.

It improves compilation of native code a bit, but not a lot. Macport installs are slightly faster. It doesn't really improve Java compiler results.

It also helps when you're running your machine at its memory capacity. I never hit swap hell anymore.

It does improve things, but I wouldn't trade the 2.6GHz CPU in this for the much-less-powerful 1.8GHz CPU that's top of the line for the Air.

Seconded. I have the X-25 my MBP. It is probably faster than what apple is putting in the airs, but I haven't checked. 2.33 GHz c2d, 3 GB ram. I still have a lot of trouble doing things like heavy multitasking, full screen web video or viewing pages heavy in JS/Flash.

SSD isn't a cure all. It's good for booting up, loading large applications, and when you're low on ram.

Actually, the 13" Air has an option for a 2.13GHz CPU.

Why not just install an SSD in your current MacBook? They're not too expensive these days, and the performance improvements are definitely worth it.

I installed an OCZ Vertex II in my 13" MacBook a little while ago and it made a big difference. I actually benchmarked the machine at each step of the process:

http://thingsaaronmade.com/blog/hardware-upgrades-for-develo...

How great would it be if you could pay a little more to get a MacBook Air with 3G, and the same no-contract pricing from AT&T as the iPad?

Great. I was wondering why this wasn't an option..

The Macbook Air is a game changer. I know four people (including myself) at work who are upgrading from their MacBook Pro to a MacBook Air. I have a pretty decent work system, (MacBookPro6,2, 2.53 GHz, 4GB) - but, after spending 90 minutes in the Apple Store with the new MBAirs, I realized how archaic what I'm working on is. The new systems are amazingly wonderful to carry around, and, after six years of being paranoid about closing my monitor screen (it's incredible how many people carry their MBPs with a book or something wedged to prevent their laptop screen from closing - I'm not the only one who doesn't have flawless recovery from standby ) - I'm praying that "Instant On" really will be that.

But, most importantly, the new MacBook Airs _scream_ in terms of responsiveness. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the 2008 and 2009 MBAirs, but these new systems are similar in name (and manila envelope thinness) only - definitely an upgrade in user experience for the casual user of productivity apps. I hammered on every app they had, bounced from iTunes to iPhoto to Pages, popped open terminal, and just basically hammered on the laptop the way I would at work - it was just "twitchy fast" responsive. It may not have the processing power of a MBPro, but it "felt" more responsive to me. I left the store excited and ordered a 4GB 13" system online immediately.

We'll see how excited I am after a couple weeks of usage (My MBAir should arrive in a couple days) - but, I'm pretty confident this will be my primary system for the next four years.

No question - the new MBairs will be cannibalizing several product lines at Apple.

The main thing keeping me from doing this isn't processing power, but battery life. If Apple's estimates are correct, the 11" Air has 50% worse battery life than the 13" MBP, and the 13" Air has 30% worse. Since the weight of the 13" MBP is already light enough for me, the slight additional decrease in weight for a big decrease in battery life actually reduces its portability for me.

It was mentioned, that the battery life for MBAs was measured using stricter tests. Maybe difference is not as bad as it looks?

With regard to your first paragraph, have you tried disabling "Safe Sleep"? I do this on all my MBPs because I find it makes sleep more flakey.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2007030221032892...

Your thing about sleep surprises me, as that's my favourite feature of the Mac.

Whereas I can't truly trust my Win7 HP to come back from sleep OK, my MBP is always perfect. It eats a lot of power while sleeping, which I've never really figured out - but it comes back like a champ every single time.

I fully expect the next rev of the MBP to drop the optical and gain an MBA inspired case. If I could get a 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM (for parity with my current MBP), I would happily take a regression in processor, even the wild hit going from the current i7 back to C2D. Put a higher res screen on the 15, and include Firewire, and I'm in heaven, but knock a pound or two off with a redesigned case (from losing the optical and using a custom SSD form factor) and I'll buy.

Including the OS on a flash drive just says to me that shiny plastic disk enthusiasts will have to look for a new supplier of mobile hardware. The DVD drive is finished in the Macintosh.

So once you spend a bunch of money on this, a couple of years pass, and a large chunk of software starts requiring twice the resources compared to today, how do you upgrade the machine?

Miniaturization is great, but couldn't manufacturers like Apple still use sockets instead of soldering everything on their boards?

I upgrade by buying a new one. ;-P

Yeah, that's sort of my point :-)

a more fun thing to think about is the benchmark of the lineup. the air has a benchmark of aprox. 2000 using an intel core duo. the ipad has a benchmark of 500.

will the next air be based on an arm a5. a quad a5 maybe ?

OS X apps would need virtualization or recompilation in order to run on an ARM. Unless you're saying the next Air will run iOS..

"Remember when I said that netbooks aren't good at anything and they're just cheap laptops?"

http://www.fakesteve.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/original...

Knew you did.

Surprise! The Air isn't even in the netbook category. Do you know why they are even called netbooks? It isn't because they are 12" notebooks.

whoosh

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