New MacBook Air Released – $100 Cheaper
apple.com
apple.com
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/29/updated-macbook-airs-fas...
> All standard models of the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air now come with a faster 1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor along with the same 4GB of RAM. Both entry-level configurations of the 11-inch and 13-inch models now sell for $899 and $999 with 128GB of flash storage, while the higher-end 11-inch and 13-inch models now come in at $1099 and $1199 with 256GB of flash storage, respectively.
They're a cool company and all but I agree, fortunately things like this have a way of sliding off the HN frontpage fairly quickly.
Even if this is a minor upgrade (price cut and slightly faster processors), it still feels very weird to me.
I wonder how long it will be before Apple prevent after purchase customization at all.
OWC $142 Apple $300
Apparently the SSD in the retina models is upgradeable but only to PCI based SSDs
The only downside is on Linux you have to reboot if you unplug the ethernet, but apparently that's being improved in 3.15.
RHEL 7 will be a problem then, I assume, as it seems to be based on 3.10?
At which point the SSD and Retina display sound nice, but that other stuff seems like it's going to a pain in the neck on a daily basis.
Remember when the iMac was the first USB-only computer, and had no floppy drive? Both were really unpopular at the time.
(Lack of Kensington is stupid though, I'll agree on that.)
Although the fact it's Apple-made is probably more important, since they'll have made sure it works.
Allowing the product line to evolve and fit all the little niches crevices is not Apple's style.
I'd like to get an 11" form factor for all my pogramming stuff, and migrate the 15" into some form of desktop computer.
Edit: Probably what I'm looking for in a non-existant 11" MB Pro.
Edit: Also, that's the 11", I doubt they can squeeze many more pixels in there before it becomes unreadable. The 13" is 1440x900, which is more reasonable (I'm using it as we speak, actually!)
There are other considerations too. Phone usage patterns are way different to computer usage patterns. The vast majority of phone usage occurs in small blips of activity during which execution can be optimized for the CPU to race to sleep state as soon as possible. Computers don't have the same usage patterns at all, and have a legacy of first and third party software (on all major platforms) that have not yet been optimized for performance.
About your edit: remember that how Apple does it in the "Retina" models is increasing the definition, without affecting the actual size of the UI elements.
I would buy a "Retina Air" in an heartbeat.
I have the 2012 model, and it is an absolutely superb machine, but the lack of vertical pixels is its weakest feature. Reading documents is far from ideal: it is distracting to read a wide-columned pdf with a relatively small number of lines on the screen, and the screen isn't quite good enough to allow much zooming out. There is a noticeable difference in the usability of the machine when my eyes are tired. A higher-resolution screen would presumably help on both counts.
Because the software is generally well-put-together and the touchpad is excellent, the resolution is not so much a problem for actively using software, creating documents and so forth. But scrolling around and zooming in and out has an overhead, which again, more pixels would reduce the need for.
Retina would be nice though.
Admittedly the market for high end powerful 13" laptops might not be that big.
Lenovo can fit most of that it in their 14" T440. I'm sure if Apple set a team of top engineers on the problem they could find a way to make it work.
how fast does xcode runs on it ?
While there are obviously users that can use more than 8GB of memory (or heck, even more than 128 GB of memory) it's probably less than 1% of the Mac Using population that requires more than 8 GB of memory, and Apple expects that 1% to use the MBP. I don't think the Air will see more than 8 GB of memory for at least another 5 years.
My point is, with an SSD, you can swap, it won't be slow as the good old HDD days. On my workstation with 8GB of RAM and a 512 SSD (MBPr), I often have 8 or more GB swapped, it's not noticeable at all.
The only downside is that yeah, the VM file size will reduce your actual available disk space until you clean it up (reboot).
It would have been better if the price stayed the same but with 8 GB instead of 4.