New MBA 11.6" 500,000 To be manufactured b quantas

[Gruber]

Even the most superficial examination of the digital marketplace is increasingly evident that the desktop OS is no longer the competitive playing field of opportunity, and that mobile OSs are where the puck is heading.

At the moment, no. Mobile OSes are an addition, not a replacement. They are designed to enable media consumption and comm on cheap hardware. But there are still users out there that want to use their computers for work.

To run CAD, CGI, serious programming, typesetting, image composition on iOS, you would not only need a port of the applications into completely new user interface metaphors, but you would also need to open up the hardware. In short, you would inherit all the bad things that constitute the hardships of desktop operating systems.

You may be right that in a few years from now, we will see simplified home computers with iOS like operating systems and a focus on web surfing, media consumption, light home office and gaming. Also, desktop operating systems will have to change (new file system metaphors, always on, no file saving any more, decentral backup strategies etc.). Still, I don't see a conversion any more than between washing machines and dish washers.

 

[thinkdesign]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile6.0) Sprint T7380)

So, do you see next month's new dishwasher as being 11.6"?

And will the 13.3" 3 lb. washing machine continue to be made, and eventually updated?

 

[fyrefly]

Can you have i5/i7 and GT320 (the stuff that Macbook Pro 13" has)?

Or is it the same issue as i5/i7 and 9400M?

No, the G320M is a Integrated Mobile Chipset that runs the whole computer other than the Intel CPU. Intel is currently banning NVidia from making such controller chips - and NVidia sued them. It's a huge stupid battle that's just hurting MBA fans and computer users in general.

 

[Hands Sandon]

I hope it's not 11.6" when 13.3" is just big enough and no more. As many have noted too, trim the rim, and a new Air could be an inch narrower and keep the keyboard the same size.

If the new Air has feable graphics, possibly heat issues and a piddling screen (that'll look low definition compared to an improved resolution iPad2 and obviously the retina) then the wait will have been for nothing for me.

 

[Scottsdale]

No, the G320M is a Integrated Mobile Chipset that runs the whole computer other than the Intel CPU. Intel is currently banning NVidia from making such controller chips - and NVidia sued them. It's a huge stupid battle that's just hurting MBA fans and computer users in general.

Agreed which is why the justice department has already gotten involved. With any luck, Intel will just do the right thing soon. As of right now, Mac users are suffering terribly by being forced to use Intel's worthless IGP that doesn't compare to an over two year old Nvidia 9400m. The problem is that Intel's IGP is acceptable on Windows but unacceptable on OS X.

I have read that OpenGL and drivers in general are poorly written by Apple. It seems when device manufacturers get the opportunity to write their own drivers, they want to beat the competition. Apple is sorta making the situation worse by writing its own drivers which offer about 1/3rd the performance when it comes to OpenGL and 3D graphics modeling.

We are the losers here. In the long run, Nvidia loses big time too. When a company like Intel forces the little guy out until someone steps in and fixes the problem, the little guy loses market share and cannot spend money on R&D anymore. This is happening to nvidia right now. By the time Intel is slapped on the wrists, it will have caught up with Nvidia. However, it's essentially going to put us three years back in performance forever. We're stuck with 2008 Nvidia level GPU/chipsets until Intel has to let Nvidia back into the business. I know the 320m is newer, but it's essentially the same system probably with R&D being halted back when Intel announced that it was rejecting Nvidia's license.

If we could use third-party drivers, it wouldn't be so bad, but we're depending on Apple which is all worried about iOS and beating the hell out of Google in the smartphone market. Apple doesn't appear to give a damn about its Mac users right now.

 

[-hh]

Even the most superficial examination of the digital marketplace is increasingly evident that the desktop OS is no longer the competitive playing field of opportunity, and that mobile OSs are where the puck is heading...

At the moment, no. Mobile OSes are an addition, not a replacement. They are designed to enable media consumption and comm on cheap hardware. But there are still users out there that want to use their computers for work.

Oh, agreed: that's why I said where the puck is heading. I'm not trying to discount the use of computers for content creation - its just that we're increasingly doing more content consumption. I'm not sure if its time to invoke the Pareto Principle, but its 80/20 rule is probably a very low estimate of the ratio of what I read vs what I type (and so on).

Still, I don't see a conversion any more than between washing machines and dish washers.

To use your appliance analogy, 40 years ago, our households had far fewer appliances in them today: back then, it was stove, refrigerator, toaster, washing machine, dryer, TV.

Today, add: microwave, convection oven, dishwasher, icemaker, wine chiller (or keggerator), garbage disposal, George Forman grill, espresso machine and coffee grinder, water softener, air conditioning, humidifier, central vac system, VCR/DVR, DVD/BR player, TiVO, AppleTV, and more.


-hh

 

[codehead]

Someone's Got to Write The Content

Oh, agreed: that's why I said where the puck is heading. I'm not trying to discount the use of computers for content creation - its just that we're increasingly doing more content consumption. I'm not sure if its time to invoke the Pareto Principle, but its 80/20 rule is probably a very low estimate of the ratio of what I read vs what I type (and so on). -hh

Still, it's the 20% of us creating content for consumers such as yourself that need computers not mobile devices to create content. Perhaps that's part of the problem, we few versus so many of you and our needs are overlooked and our work under appreciated.

 

[bdwelle]

I've recently come back to Mac (27" iMac i5) and I have an old Thinkpad X40 that is a GREAT machine but getting rather long in the tooth (even with an SSD upgrade), looking forwards to replacing it with the new MBA. I would love a 13" MBA with 8Gb RAM and SSD. This seems like a logical configuration given that smaller gets pretty close to the iPad, although I will probably buy an MBA even if it is only 11.6". I don't care about gaming at all, and if the iPad can play movies I can't imagine that it will be a problem for the new Air, so what's the big deal about graphics specs?

 

[Perdification]

I've recently come back to Mac (27" iMac i5) and I have an old Thinkpad X40 that is a GREAT machine but getting rather long in the tooth (even with an SSD upgrade), looking forwards to replacing it with the new MBA. I would love a 13" MBA with 8Gb RAM and SSD. This seems like a logical configuration given that smaller gets pretty close to the iPad, although I will probably buy an MBA even if it is only 11.6". I don't care about gaming at all, and if the iPad can play movies I can't imagine that it will be a problem for the new Air, so what's the big deal about graphics specs?

Ah well, then the MBA is for you.

 

[-hh]

Still, it's the 20% of us creating content for consumers such as yourself that need computers not mobile devices to create content. Perhaps that's part of the problem, we few versus so many of you and our needs are overlooked and our work under appreciated.

As an aside, I'm a content creator too ... but I also recognize that I consume content. What the ratio is day-to-day really depends on what I'm doing; even within "work", there can be hours spent not 'creating' per se, but time that it spent simply researching a problem.

But you are clearly quite correct in observing that there will unfortunately be a potential for conflict between the solution needs for a generalist user and a any sort of specialist application (such as a content creator). A simple illustration can be found in the UI on how many mouse-buttons the OS supports: the conflict is that the metric is ease-of-use for a casual user (encourages one button mouse), versus a metric of productivity for a highly familiarized power user (encourages many more buttons on the mouse).

There is no absolute right or wrong answer here... just a lot of "art" in trying to strike an accepably good balance between the contrarian needs/desires from a heterogeneous user base when you're trying to come up with a single solution. And the biggest risk is that the trade-off may very well end up with a solution/approach that's poor at either task.


-hh

 

[Transporteur]

An 11" Apple laptop?

Great!
I recall Steve Jobs making fun of netbooks in his MacBook Air keynote.
"blabla no one wants such small keyboards...", "blabla fully sized display bla...."

 

[halledise]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile6.0) Sprint T7380)

So, do you see next month's new dishwasher as being 11.6"?

And will the 13.3" 3 lb. washing machine continue to be made, and eventually updated?

ha ha - classic! and in stark contrast to some of the feckless comments made in this thread

 

[CaoCao]

An 11" Apple laptop?

Great!
I recall Steve Jobs making fun of netbooks in his MacBook Air keynote.
"blabla no one wants such small keyboards...", "blabla fully sized display bla...."

IIRC you can get an 11.6" MBA by removing the bezel around the screen and keyboard so I'm not sure about the 11.6" screens

 

[fyrefly]

An 11" Apple laptop?

Great!
I recall Steve Jobs making fun of netbooks in his MacBook Air keynote.
"blabla no one wants such small keyboards...", "blabla fully sized display bla...."

He was referring to 8-9-10" screens, imho, and non-full-sized keyboards.

And in case you aren't a student of history - Apple's already had a 12" laptop with a full-sized keyboard and display:

11.6" is just an updated version of that.

IIRC you can get an 11.6" MBA by removing the bezel around the screen and keyboard so I'm not sure about the 11.6" screens

Yeah, but the digitimes rumour (take it for what it is, yes...) said 11.6" screens, did it not? The current MBA screen is 13.3".

Remove the Bezel and it's still 13.3" - just no bezel.

 

[CaoCao]

He was referring to 8-9-10" screens, imho, and non-full-sized keyboards.

And in case you aren't a student of history - Apple's already had a 12" laptop with a full-sized keyboard and display:

11.6" is just an updated version of that.



Yeah, but the digitimes rumour (take it for what it is, yes...) said 11.6" screens, did it not? The current MBA screen is 13.3".

Remove the Bezel and it's still 13.3" - just no bezel.

I mean if you remade the MBA with minimal bezel you could have a 12" or 11.6" computer

That is why I'm confused about 11.6" screens

 

[fluidedge]

The older among us will still remember OS/2, BeOS, RiscOS and so on. The younger might not even have heard of them. They were all better than Windows at the time.

There was a lesson in this: The choice of desktop operating systems depends largely on available applications. No Adobe suite and Maya on Linux = no creativity users. No MS Office on Linux, and bad MS Office on MacOS = no Linux in the secretary's office, and little MacOS there. No games on Linux = few home users of Linux.

Our own stubborn insistence on MacOS is due to the fact that we largely have the apps we need, don't do serious gaming, and we do not want to switch to an operating system with high-maintenance anti-virus programs.

Unless a Google OS would natively run the most important twenty PC or Mac applications, I don't think that it could overcome the critical threshold for desktop use anytime soon.

Linux is *the* primary platform for creative professionals using maya.

 

[gwsat]

I mean if you remade the MBA with minimal bezel you could have a 12" or 11.6" computer

That is why I'm confused about 11.6" screens

I, too, don't understand what the screen size on an 11.6 inch MBA might be. If the bezel around the screen could be reduced in size to a fraction of an inch and still retain the requisite sturdiness necessary to withstand the banging around to which any laptop is subjected, it might work. Who knows, though? I certainly don't.

I keep coming back to the problem some of us discussed earlier in the thread: RAM. I am worried that even a new MBA would have no more that 4Gb of RAM, which would be no better than marginal, and perhaps inadequate, to allow use of Windows running in VMware Fusion's Unity mode. I have 6Gb of RAM in my MBP (it can't reliably accommodate 8Gb) and even 6Gb doesn't completely eliminate page outs. Thus, my prospects look pretty bleak for being able to satisfactorily use a computer with only 4Gb of RAM as I now use my MBP with 6Gb.

 

[CaoCao]

I, too, don't understand what the screen size on an 11.6 inch MBA might be. If the bezel around the screen could be reduced in size to a fraction of an inch and still retain the requisite sturdiness necessary to withstand the banging around to which any laptop is subjected, it might work. Who knows, though? I certainly don't.

I keep coming back to the problem some of us discussed earlier in the thread: RAM. I am worried that even a new MBA would have no more that 4Gb of RAM, which would be no better than marginal, and perhaps inadequate, to allow use of Windows running in VMware Fusion's Unity mode. I have 6Gb of RAM in my MBP (it can't reliably accommodate 8Gb) and even 6Gb doesn't completely eliminate page outs. Thus, my prospects look pretty bleak for being able to satisfactorily use a computer with only 4Gb of RAM as I now use my MBP with 6Gb.

I think Apple when they update will have an option for 4GB or 8GB

 

[gwsat]

I think Apple when they update will have an option for 4GB or 8GB

I certainly hope that there is an 8Gb option, although Apple's price for 8Gb of RAM could end up being extortionate. But I am borrowing trouble. My immediate wish is that Apple doen't discontinue the MBA. I'll worry about an updated MBA's features when and if it is actually updated.

 

[MacBobo]

I certainly hope that there is an 8Gb option, although Apple's price for 8Gb of RAM could end up being extortionate. But I am borrowing trouble. My immediate wish is that Apple doen't discontinue the MBA. I'll worry about an updated MBA's features when and if it is actually updated.

We'll know these features very soon. I ordered a MBA 2,13 Ghz, 128 MB SSD 2 1/2 weeks ago from a local reseller. Not in stock and should have been supplied to them within the week by Apple. Today I got (finally, after insistive inquiring) the confirmation that Apple will no longer supply the MBA with these exact specs. Any timeframe for the supply of the "new" model wouldn't be given. Although the reseller can provide me with a MBA with the exact specs I ordered by getting it from the stock of another seller I decided to wait.
If Apple holds back deliveries because of an imminent upgrade I cannot imagine that it will take another month or so to come out with it.
As my order confirmation states a 13.3" screen I am sure not to get a notebook of another size.
So now I wait and hope it won't become a Christmas present...

 

[thinkdesign]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile6.0) Sprint T7380)

gwsat: "...borrowing trouble...". What a great figure of speech I've never heard it before.

 

[Scottsdale]

We'll know these features very soon. I ordered a MBA 2,13 Ghz, 128 MB SSD 2 1/2 weeks ago from a local reseller. Not in stock and should have been supplied to them within the week by Apple. Today I got (finally, after insistive inquiring) the confirmation that Apple will no longer supply the MBA with these exact specs. Any timeframe for the supply of the "new" model wouldn't be given. Although the reseller can provide me with a MBA with the exact specs I ordered by getting it from the stock of another seller I decided to wait.
If Apple holds back deliveries because of an imminent upgrade I cannot imagine that it will take another month or so to come out with it.
As my order confirmation states a 13.3" screen I am sure not to get a notebook of another size.
So now I wait and hope it won't become a Christmas present...

This is great news! I think the information is leading to an MBA update in October.

 

[Maven1975]

Scottsdale:

Didn't catch you on another thread, but I agree with your statement:

"I feel like Apple should eliminate the optical drive as a discrete GPU is far more useful for the vast majority of us."

A F'in Men!

I bought a Sony Z last night as I was tired of waiting. However, I just cant get into Win 7. Also, I am seriously spoiled with Apples trackpads and displays. I got a smoking deal at the Microsoft store and a free xbox to boot. I will just eBay the Sony Z and keep the xbox.

I have been using a MBP 13" and find it good overall. But the fact that they don't use dedicated chipsets in the 13" "PRO" line is absurd. It makes gaming a no go for those of us that don't need the screen real estate daily.

Steve - I dont give a rip if you want to charge $300 for a dedicated option. I know you would be raping us, but I would pay it to get the system you should build in the first place.

Damn.. The wait is killing me! We will finaly see what Apple TRULY thinks the Air should be. This will be, for me, the telling update on what their vision is for the Air. Is it form over function, or is it beyond that and breaking the boundaries of tech.

 

[Eric-PTEK]

Right now I'd spend $1,500 on a MBA if it had a 4 gig upgrade option.

I don't care about running Windows, I just RDP into a Windows box but the form fact would be killer for me with good battery life.

11.6 or 13.3 I don't care, just so long as it has decent battery life.

 

[Transporteur]

He was referring to 8-9-10" screens, imho, and non-full-sized keyboards.

And in case you aren't a student of history - Apple's already had a 12" laptop with a full-sized keyboard and display:

11.6" is just an updated version of that.

Right! I must have totally forgotten about the 12" books.

And no, I'm not a history student.