As MacBook Air ages, Apple rivals show the way to Retina | Hacker News Reader

As MacBook Air ages, Apple rivals show the way to Retina

news.cnet.com

15 pointsvellum51 comments

Pff, I bet you the three laptops mentioned in this article can't hold a candle to the Air's 12 hour battery life. Given that Apple has been shipping both larger and smaller retina displays for a while now, I'm sure they could add one to the MBA if they felt so inclined, and must have a good reason to not do it. Like, say, battery life.

Let's see:

HP Spectre 13 - "up to 9 hours of battery life" - http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/new-products/spectre-13-ultrabo... (and then the small text: "Battery life will vary depending on numerous factors including product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, use, wireless functionality, and power management settings" -- so basically, you'd have to have a stock configuration of Windows and not touch it to see nine hours. Useful.)

Dell XPS 11 - ??? - The laptop hasn't shipped yet, it seems, and no one's saying how the battery is.

Sony Vaio Pro 11 - "battery life in excess of 6 hours" http://www.cnet.com/laptops/sony-vaio-pro-11/4505-3121_7-357...

I would rather have 25% less battery for 200% better resolution. Apple's done nothing but incremental or nice-but-not-necessary improvements for years now.

Apple will happily sell you a MacBook Pro, if you are interested in making this trade off.

And note that the MB Pro 13" is only 20% heavier than the Air 13". A reasonable trade-off, if you care more about the display resolution than you do about the last ounce of weight and last hour of battery life.

Being able to charge my laptop at night, and not worry about getting though the day is incredible. It is game changing, I absolutely wouldn't give up 3 to 4 hours of battery life for a better resolution, not even close.

Being able to do a full day of meetings, using the laptop all day (12+ hours of real use), and finish they day out at my hotel with 15%+ left is something I am not about to mess with.

I didn't even find the bigger battery a compelling enough reason to upgrade from the 2011 model, it's just not that often I'm so far from my charger for such a long period of time.

To me the only real deficiencies are the dual core cpu and the increasingly dated resolution.

I don't know about you, but I find that any time I work for long stints of time, it is always in the same place, so tethering in to a power supply is no big deal.

Then consider that half the time I'm mobile, I'm doing something else too, so I just shut the lid and let it sleep...

Yeah, me and you live in different worlds. When I am traveling, I am rolling from office to office. Generally plugs are available, but I am sick of lugging stuff around.

The ease of only having to leave my hotel room for a 4 item checklist (wallet, keys, phone, laptop) is great. I used to carry a huge Lenovo bag with everything I might need, replacement batteries, powertree to share power in case there were not enough, charger... nothing like making that slim and sexy X1 require 10 additional pounds of gear.

Additionally, and worth mentioning, I don't use laptops as desktop replacements (anymore)... they are just a portable computer until I can get back to my "real" computer. I would be a very unhappy guy if I had to work for a month nonstop on any laptop these days.

Yes, because only Apple has access to Haswell processors.

"Battery life will vary depending on numerous factors including product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, use, wireless functionality, and power management settings”

Apparently the MBA doesn’t require battery to run its Wifi, either...

The 1.3Ghz 13" crushes other portables in 3rd party battery tests, getting 12:51 on engadgets movie test (http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/13/macbook-air-review/). While being light and easy to tote.

It is more than just the processor, this is one place where Apple's sourcing and close hardware/software bonding really shows value.

For me, it was a bit of a game changer, because I can charge it at home like a cell phone rather than dragging around the power supply and cables in my bag like I used to.

Excluding special "sheet batteries" and other basically external batteries, there are only a handful of laptops that are in the ballpark, and they are all significantly more bulky.

Lenovo 9-Cell T430 and X230 beat it out battery wise (slightly), and the Dell E6430 and HP 2570p come close. Out of those, the only one near it weight wise and size is the X230 -- and with the 9 cell battery it is still over half a pound heavier (3.5 versus 2.9). Also, the X230 as configured to beat Apple is slower and $650 more.

And of course with the impending release of OS X Mavericks - which is highly focused on optimizing power consumption - we will get even more battery life out of our MacBooks. Based on preliminary beta reports the 2013 13" MBA will get closer to 14 hours in real world usage.

My retina MacBook gets 2 additional hours of real world usage on Mavericks. Amazing update.

Funny, a search of "macbook air mavericks battery life" shows a best result of "approaching 12 hours of real world usage".

And I say that as someone who is entirely happy with Mavericks on my 2013 15" rMBP, lest there be thoughts of Apple bias.

I've found that the upper limit of MBA battery life depends a lot on how heavily you're using it.

I stopped worrying about my devices running out of juice on the move by packing one of these in the backpack :

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice/External-Battery-for-Mac...

At first, it seems like a little bit of extra weight to carry around, but you stop noticing after a short time.

I frequently get well over 13 hours on a single charge with my year-old x230, and it's significantly faster than the average MBA (full voltage processor). I also have multiple batteries, so I can easily get a full 24-30 hours without needing a cord. Not sure what configuration you're looking at, but at the time it was significantly cheaper for comparable specs, as well.

The X230 is heavier/bulkier, but it has the MBA pretty beat in terms of surviving motorcycle accidents and general durability.

The MBA is great for going to the coffeeshop and not needing to find a table with an outlet, but I wouldn't take it anywhere you need to go long periods of time without power.

Edit: Also, I'm running Linux. I'm sure I would probably get better battery life running under windows, but c'est la vie.

Which configuration are you running? I tried the i5 and i7 with 9 cell and generally ended up in the 7-10 range, not the 13+ range, and that was on a brand spanking new battery not one year old one.

i5(Ivy bridge), 9cell internal, slice battery, ssd, 16gb ram. The internal is one year old, the slice is two or three months. I have it set to always drain the slice first, which maintains the internal battery well, but shortens the long-term life of the slices. I can get 4ish(?) hours on the slice alone.

13ish hours is my number from a few weeks ago on top of Mt. Diablo. I was running a VM, making decent use of my 4g connection, and doing otherwise reasonably intensive tasks with the screen brightness all the way up. I've never done a video-loop at 75% brightness type test, so I can't give you an apples to apples comparison.

"Lenovo 9-Cell T430 and X230 beat it out battery wise (slightly), and the Dell E6430 and HP 2570p come close. Out of those, the only one near it weight wise and size is the X230 -- and with the 9 cell battery it is still over half a pound heavier (3.5 versus 2.9). Also, the X230 as configured to beat Apple is slower and $650 more."

What?

MBA, with 1.3GHz i5 processor, 4GB, 128GB flash, $1099.

X230 with 3.2GHz i5 processor (3.2, not 1.3), same, 9 cell battery? $949

Not sure how you go from $150 less to $650 more.

Try building it out feature for feature. The way you build the X230 (at least on their site) is nickle-and-dime central. Default configuration lacks bluetooth, camera, and SSD just to name a few.

Actually, I built it with a 128GB SSD. Adding the Camera and Bluetooth makes it $1,002. $100 less. I have no idea how you come up with $650 MORE...

I love getting down voted for pointing out someone using this disclaimer as evidence that the MBA must have inherently better battery life, as if any one of those things wasn't also a factor for the MBA.

Hah, you answered exactly the question I asked in a comment to that article. I'm an artist and I don't give a damn about the Air not being Retina; I upgraded from a 2010 Air to a 2013 solely because omg battery life. I can take the fricking thing out to the park and sit there under a tree for a few hours drawing my comic book, with the screen at full brightness, without having to worry about running out of power. And Mavericks is supposed to focus, in part, on stretching out the battery even more.

I own the current MacBook Air and I don't care about retina. Yes, it would be nice, but I prefer the extra battery life. It's the best computer I've ever used.

I own a retina and the battery life is simply horrendous.

5-7 hours is horrendous nowadays?

I spent 4 hours on a plane on Friday using my 15" MBPr the entire allowable time (4 ticks of screen brightness)and still had 50% of my battery left. Hardly what I'd call horrendous.

off topic, but I have been looking to get a new laptop and could use some opinions. My past laptop purchases have been pretty much a failure as I always opted for large 'desktop replacement' style laptops which in the end basically defeat the purpose of having a laptop in the first place.

This time, I want to make sure my laptop is portable and lasts a while on battery. I know tons of developers love the MBP but I am having a hard time reconciling the 1000ish dollar difference between equivalent windows based machines, along with the fact that I am not a big fan of apple and will be putting Linux on whatever machine I get regardless.

I guess my real question is, is there anyone out there who has tried both sides of the spectrum and can speak to whether any 'ultrabooks' can compare to the MBP in terms of screen quality, portability, and power. Or should I just bite the bullet and go for a MBP. My main use cases are standard development stuff. Relatively resource hungry Jet brains IDE, virtualization, etc.

Any opinions are appreciated.

13" base MBA. It's super awesome. The 12 hour battery is epic. and you don't need more compute power than there is on an MBA.

I have a new MBA and it's superb, I'm really satisfied.

That said I'd suggest waiting for Lenovo's new Thinkpads to become available before making a decision. If the new Thinkpad Yoga's digitizer works with Linux it would be a pretty impressive competitor to the MBA, surpassing it in every are except perhaps battery (just depends on how it reviews.) I'm not sure if the TP Yoga has a soft-touch finish though, that's one area where I would go for a Thinkpad over a Macbook, cold aluminium is attractive but not so flesh-friendly.

I really don't think retina is that big of a deal. I've owned a MBPr since they launched. But I also regularly use standard res screens, and I barely even notice the difference.

My rule of thumb: If it’s a CNET article, don’t bother reading it.

At least for developers who basically do all their work in an OS it's not easy to switch between OSX and Windows, even if Windows machine is way better in spec you have to wait for Apple for better product. Simply because switching from Windows to Mac and vise versa doesn't worth it most of times.

Switching between Linux and Mac is easier but when you put Linux on those machines you lose a lot of battery life optimization and maybe even certain hardware!

If you use Windows you can choose from any hardware on the market, including Macs; if you use OS X, you are limited to only Apple-produced machines. Perhaps a reason to make the switch?

Is the article written by a guy that can't wait any longer for Apple to release a new macbook air? Seems like he's dying for it to come out.

This man suffers from a case of what I now call "CK Syndrome". Everything is awesome and he's still complaining.

I have a 2011 air. If they can make an MBA with retina and good battery life, it's an instant buy for me.

Me too, but I was hoping for this year... At this point it looks it will be one more year.

I never seen any non-Apple laptop which can actually live over 1~2 hours with only battery from first. They advertises something a lot, but nothing's trustworthy.

MacBook battery also ages and decreases, but at least it's usable for a few years unlike others which is unusable from first.

While it's interesting to know about the screen resolution in these new laptops, I notice that that's usually the only aspect of the display mentioned in this type of superficial article. Just as important is the color gamut, color accuracy, etc.

"It's certainly doable."

I love these sorts of armchair tech pundit comments.

The thing I'm dying for is the trifecta:

- 1080p+ resolution

- 8 hour battery life (of actual use, say listening to music, web browsing and typing)

- Excellent keyboard

Pretty much nothing else matters to me.

That's pretty much just the Retina MacBook right there.

My retina gets about 3-4 hours, so I don't think 8 hours is a real possibility.

Disable your dedicated GPU.

http://gfx.io/

I want 24 hours of battery life in a small form factor. Everything else can be mediocre.

I don't have a hard release date, but I understand that the Haswell ThinkPads are dropping this month (October) and will have 1080p (and IPS!) as an option.

Per what I've read, higher end units may offer an Nvidia 720-whatever as an additional option, although for some reason not initially in the U.S. Otherwise, you get the Intel 4400 (?) integrated graphics processing.

I just picked up a used T430 after trying it out briefly and finding that I could indeed adapt to and live with Lenovo's newer.... "upscale chiklet" keyboard.

Be warned, though; I think they've made further changes to the trackpad that hit the ThinkPads with the 440 (T440, T440s) line.

So... might be worth seeing what drops. Also, rumors are Apple may announce/release the Haswell 13" MacBook Pro during their October announcement. If so, many opinions seem to be that it may hit a sweet spot.

P.S. I also read somewhere that the Haswell ThinkPads are expected to really be north of 10 hours of battery life. I don't know about when you hang the 1080p display on one, go up to the i7 processor, or -- of course -- run the optional 720 discrete graphics support.

Another thing that matters to me about the ThinkPads -- present at least with the T430 I mentioned. The palm rest is not "ginormous", and the front edge is curved/bevelled plastic rather than a sharp metal edge. For me, this makes an essential difference in typing/use comfort, especially when working on a work surface I can't adjust to optimal height. I can't stand having a ginormous palm rest with a sharp edge pressing against my wrists.

I think the fact that the author replaced his Macbook Air with another Mac says it all.

Can someone with the haswell air comment on whether it gets hot under load?

I bought when they were first released. I think the fan has kicked on once maybe. It has never been warmer than body temp. But it's my personal dev machine. Never played games or anything like that.

Never heats up.. like ever - even running games it stays cool.

Well, not quite true, mine gets warm playing Fez.

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