The 12” MacBook Air: Back to Basics?
sixcolors.com
sixcolors.com
Having HDMI out built-in on the rMBP15, vs. needing to carry a mdp/tb2 to whatever dongle all the time, is a plus too.
USB 3 A ports are probably a minimum for me.
If I wanted no ports at all, I'd just use the iPad.
I don't think I could deal with OS X 10.10 on less than 16GB, either.
Were you comparing Safari with 0 extensions vs. Chrome with 0 extensions? Or does each have a different extension load?
I will often fall back to Safari if a page doesn't render properly in Chrome, but that's because I installed a bunch of extensions on Chrome and have consciously left Safari pure as the driven snow. It's a different problem domain, but I know certain extensions can use resources in surprising ways.
What's especially obnoxious about that behavior is that if you disable the dGPU, it works just fine. So what's the point?
Also, one would expect Chrome's own Web Store to work well in Chrome... but Google's attitude toward long-standing bugs is anything but exemplary.
Chrome burns 90% of a CPU on one thread, and another 40% on another. Coconut reports about 32 Watts used. Safari maxes at about 12% plus 8%, and tops at about 15 Watts. Base usage on this machine with the current screen brightness and applications that happen to be open is 10-12 Watts. I get approximately the same results with Incognito mode, which suggests the problem is core Chrome rather than add-ons.
Generally, this just makes things that bit faster. The more you can store in RAM (even trivial things), the better. I've never had any slow downs, and don't have to worry about opening Photoshop and Illustrator along with XCode, Sketch and 20 Chrome tabs.
Unless you're a true poweruser, no one really needs more than 8gb by todays standards. I have 32gb because I maintain and develop 4 different codebases each with their own setup in different VMs. If I didn't do that, I could manage with 8gb just fine.
Why? Genuinely curious why anyone would ever need that many tabs open. Why can't you use bookmarks/reading list? It doesn't seem possible that you would be actively using all of those regularly enough to need them all open.
I'm currently running with 19 tabs open. Any more than that and it becomes too difficult to identify them. Ideally, I try to trim it down to about 10 when I can. How anyone can be even remotely productive with 300 open is beyond me.
Now, 16GB, that's very good
If you need HDMI, USB 3 A, Gazillion RAM etc., there is a laptop for you/your company! E.g. rMBP13/15.
I wouldn't buy rMBP13, purely because it's heavier, and if you walk a lot with your machine,then it adds up.
Good thing it's USB-C then, a single standard for all uses. Now if this takes on (I'm positive it will) you can replace all cables with this one.
As the laptop offerings get smaller and smaller my frustration grows larger and larger. Sure, I can use my big monitor at work, but what about when I travel, or work from "home"? I'm willing to lug around a huge laptop if it means that I can see the screen and get actual work done.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyb...
This is a laptop with a full mechanical keyboard, 2x graphics cards and a 350W power brick.
But if that is not insane enough, there is a company called Eurocom, which will build you this monster: http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec
It can be configured with a 12-core(24 thread) Xeon CPU + 2 GPUs + 4 hard drives. It needs TWO 300W power bricks to function, and is supposed to be used as a mobile server.
✓ Fanless.
✓ 700 nit low-glare 2560×1600 display.
✓ Ports (μHDMI and SD reader is better than nothing).
✓ Apple-esque price tag.
[0]: http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ (Brad Linder's hands on)
[2]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-ed...
What is Samsung doing to make sure that this resolution is usable at this size?
2560×1600 is not a bad choice, however, since at 200 % scaling it has 1280×800 logical pixels, which is perfectly normal for such a monitor. If only Windows could reliably tell which applications do NOT support higher DPI displays even though they say they do, they could be just doubled in size and still be perfectly usable, if a bit blurry (you don't get aliasing effects, though). I guess Microsoft'll just have to make yet another API for DPI-awareness to catch the rest of the offenders.
Could be very interesting, especially in office locations where charger sharing goes on. Or even at home, how do you know that /your/ charger isn't the special version that not only powers the MacBook while also appearing as a bus device that's backdooring your machine and radiating your secrets back over your mains cables to an adversary?
Lots and lots of fun to be had there.
There's a big bug with both Firewall and TB that can bypass the security and infect the firmwares and so on.
Personally I have found myself continuously switching between the "pro" and "regular" offerings ever since the days of Powerbook and iBook, and if a 12" Air would be nothing more than a newer, better Air with a retina screen I would probably pick it over the 13" Pro I currently use.
Apple regularly moves the goalposts to avoid cannibalizing the high-end line.
I've been eager to move off of OSX for some years [1], but with this rumored laptop, they'll probably sink their teeth in me for another 3 years.
[1] If anyone knows of a laptop that is portable, that supports 16GB of RAM and works well with Linux, please let me know. Even the newly announced X1 and XPS13 are limited to 8GB (and I assume they get relatively poor battery life on Linux)
They are all limited to 8GB. According to [2] the new X250 is, like the new X1, also a single DIMM.
[1] - http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/
[2] - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8822/lenovo-thinkpad-x250
X230 (Ivy Bridge, 2 years old) supports 16GB and has the good keyboard/trackpad.
Unless you're working with the laptop in one hand or using it regularly on journeys > 8 hours, I can't see much of a difference between Air and Pro.
However, -1 lbs + smaller form factor + better battery is pretty significant when you're traveling abroad with a backpack for a week or two. I'll take less weight + more socks any day of the week. Also, I almost killed myself trying to get power from an outlet at Phnom Penh International Airport.
So, personally, I find the 13" a compromise I could have just spent my way out of.
> But just because it will be inconvenient for some users doesn’t mean that Apple won’t do it. In fact, you can almost hear the stage patter when the feature is unveiled: Most connectivity is wireless these days, we’ve made a great $49 accessory that adds all the ports you’d want, and the included power adapter—the most innovative power adapter ever—features a breakaway magnetic coupler and is itself a USB and Thunderbolt hub. I’m making the details up, but you’ve got to think there would be more to the story than, “Yeah, your power plug is also your USB plug, get used to it.”
How cool would it be if every monitor in the future used the exact same type of connector and also doubled as a power supply for anything connected to it? Same thing goes for ethernet.
The power connector cable could be a variation on the concept.
Nearly all PC laptops, even many otherwise high-end ones, have had this horrendous cursor key arrangement for a few years now: a compromised design for a lower cost, one-piece, rectangular keyboard. It's one of the reasons I switched.
I really hope this isn't the start of a trend for Apple. At the very least, I hope sensible key layout can be a differentiator for the Pro line.
Also, given that Apple's wireless keyboard and all current laptops have the tiny "T" version, I wouldn't hold my breath for them to change course anytime soon.
Apple keyboard escape buttons have always been a bit harder to hit (imo), so I have trained up both of those shortcuts to good effect.
TB3 allows for 100W power transmission. Your Thunderbolt Display can then plug into your laptop with a single cable, including charging needs.
Additionally, TB3 comes with a new connector - which is smaller vertically. Perfect for a new thinner MBA.
√ retina display.
(In case you didn't notice – perhaps because of your font settings.)
☑ (U+2611 BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK)
✅ (U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK)
✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK)
✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK) <- winner
Here’s an example of how it looks on an iPad Air².
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Both iOS 5+ and OS X v10.7+ include the font Apple Color Emoji, and that font does have a glyph for U+2705 (the same glyph you see in my screen shot)², so OS X and iOS text rendering systems use it. On your Windows computer, I’m guessing the font that was substituted for Verdana/Geneva there was Segoe UI Symbol³.
As an aside, I’m pretty interested on how OS X and Windows decide on which font to use when there are multiple fonts installed containing the required glyph. For example, I have two other fonts on my OS X system that have a glyph for U+2705 (Everson Mono and Symbola), but OS X always seems to consistently pick Apple Color Emoji’s glyph. Maybe OS X’s text rendering system goes through the fonts in alphabetical order and uses the first one it finds containing the required glyph? It would be great if end users could have a bit more control over the font substitution process. I know it’s possible to do in some text editors like Emacs⁴, but I believe that programs like that use their own text rendering systems instead of that supplied by the OS (could be wrong though).
EDIT: Oh, I forgot to add, as for having the glyph be a green box with a white inner check mark, The Unicode Consortium actually mentions how the glyphs should look for characters with BLACK or WHITE in the name⁵:
“Q: What about characters whose names include WHITE or BLACK?
A: Names of symbols such as BLACK MEDIUM SQUARE or WHITE MEDIUM SQUARE are not meant to indicate that the corresponding character must be presented in black or white, respectively; rather, the use of “black” and “white” in the names is generally just to contrast filled versus outline shapes, or a darker color fill versus a lighter color fill. Similarly, in other symbols such as the hands U+261A BLACK LEFT POINTING INDEX and U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING INDEX, the words “white” and “black” also refer to outlined versus filled, and do not indicate skin color.”
――――――
¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution
² — http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-di...
³ — http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsuppor...
⁴ — http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-emacs-...
As the article notes, the original Air was very similar to the purported new Air. It had a micro-DVI, a single USB port and a headphone jack.
It didn't quite succeed, but I'd guess more because of its anemic performances (SSD was an expensive option to an already costly machine, the CPU wasn't exactly a performance star, and let's not talk about the GMA X3100) than its I/O limitations. And if anything things have gotten better since (more wireless and "cloud" with less physical connectivity required).
This is the biggest issue with this Air - that if you want to charge this laptop and use anything, even a USB mouse with it, you will need a usb adapter with power pass-through. It's just stupid. They should have left Magsafe 2 on it + USB-C, or at least 2 USB-C ports, so you can use one for charging and another for video/data.
They've always been an opinionated company producing opinionated products, right back to the launch of the very first Mac which was criticised for only being able to do what Steve Jobs wanted you to do. Or think of the original iMac - no floppy drive and USB-only connectivity before it had really taken off. Or the first iPhone launching with less features and connectivity than its competitors.
The times they tried to please everyone are when they did most poorly - remember the dreadful Performa range with loads of meaningless variations?