When Will MBA Be Updated

[entatlrg]

I have some hope for the iPad going forward but, for the moment at least, it is critically limited. I usually use my iPad only to watch streaming video and listen to recorded books. Every one of the Web browsers available for it is limited to one degree or another so I almost always find myself going to a real computer when I want to surf the Web. The iPad's primitive mail client is brutally hard to use and is almost unconfigurable compared to Mail and other genuine mail clients. Maybe iOS 4.0 for iPad will make it more functional, I hope so.

I recall you spent some time with a 13" MBP a while back and liked it. Do you prefer a larger screen size more, like your 17" for your main notebook or could you drop down to a 15 or 13", for example if a new suitable MacBook Air came out?

Going to a 13" from a larger screen can be a bit of a shock, especially more noticeable to me lately when I'm not hooking up to my 24" ACD as often.

 

[cleric]

It pretty much has to be the next mac updated or its EOL in my opinion.

 

[soph]

It pretty much has to be the next mac updated or its EOL in my opinion.

Full ack. But then again this could mean "not in 2010", as everything else is pretty fresh now.

 

[gwsat]

I recall you spent some time with a 13" MBP a while back and liked it. Do you prefer a larger screen size more, like your 17" for your main notebook or could you drop down to a 15 or 13", for example if a new suitable MacBook Air came out?

Going to a 13" from a larger screen can be a bit of a shock, especially more noticeable to me lately when I'm not hooking up to my 24" ACD as often.

My first choice would be a refreshed MBA, assuming it had enough memory to give me confidence that it could run Windows apps in a VMware Fusion virtual machine in Unity mode. Failing that, I am seriously considering the 13 inch MBP as an alternative. I would be able to easily upgrade its RAM to 8Gb and its hard drive to a 256Gb SSD. At the end of the day, I suppose I could get another 17 inch MBP but, as you recalled, I was very impressed by my grandson's 13 inch MBP. In any event, I will certainly buy either an MBA or one of the MBPs. Fortunately, my current MBP's Applecare coverage doesn't expire until March 2011. This gives me another 8 months during which I can afford to watch and wait.

 

[jdechko]

I'm starting to think that maybe they don't give it a graphics improvement like we'd hoped (much to the chagrin of Scottsdale and many others), and that we stick with whatever the intel solution is. Looking at my current requirements, the only things I'd really need from the GPU is video decoding and whatever Apple uses in their Core technologies for rendering the UI (Quartz).

When I go back to school to pursue my Master's Degree (in Architecture), I'll probably supplement the Air with a Mac Pro or possibly an iMac.