An 11.88” Retina MacBook Air • Hacker News Board

Re: An 11.88” Retina MacBook Air

#61

Post by snowwrestler » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 12:00 AM UTC

mikhailt wrote: post #56

cenhyperion wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technology improves over time Not so much in battery tech. It's really holding back a lot of hardware innovation on computers and also holding back the viability of EVs for many consumers.

That is true but CPUs and panels do decrease in power usage over time to the point that you can adopt Retina in MBA without harming the battery life. Not to mention if they find a way to cut down on the weight, they can also increase the battery's capacity. The Retina display in iPad Air is much more power efficient compared to the retina display in 3rd gen iPad due to reduction of backlight LEDs and move to IGZO typ…

Yes but as CPUs and Retina panels get more efficient, they will be placed into the MacBook Pro as well.

Re: An 11.88” Retina MacBook Air

#62

Post by snowwrestler » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 12:36 AM UTC

danmatte wrote: post #49

snowwrestler wrote: post #42

To create the MacBook Air, Apple took out the spinning HD, the optical drive, and soldered in the battery. To create the new Retina MacBook Pro, Apple took out the spinning HD, optical drive, and soldered in the battery. But they also put in a Retina display--as well as the more powerful GPU and larger battery it requires The current MacBook Pro IS the Retina Air in everything but name only. It's the thinnest and lig…

A Retina Air would be more like a thicker Air than a thinner Retina MacBook Pro. As for power, I deliberately didn't go into detail, but the short answer is Broadwell.

The Air is 0.68" at the back. The Pro is 0.71". There's not much room there for a distinction between "thicker Air" and "thinner Pro," even if we think they'd be willing to make the Air less wedgey.

And when Broadwell chips roll out they will be placed in the Pro just as easily as the Air. They're both on Haswell right now.

Product differentiation matters to Apple. I just don't think a slightly slower processor and a 0.01" thickness cuts it.

Re: An 11.88” Retina MacBook Air

#63

Post by shurcooL » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 5:47 AM UTC

danmatte wrote: post #51

shurcooL wrote: post #41

It frustrates me more than it should when these high profile articles make mistakes about basic Mac hardware facts. >. > Recall that Apple made the discrete GPU-less 13.3” Retina MacBook Pro thinner last year, but not the 15.4” model. These facts would match up nicely with a three-tier laptop segmentation strategy. Eventually, Apple would sell only three Retina MacBooks ranging from thinnest to thickest, stratified b…

Good catch. I'll update the post. To clarify, what I meant by three-tier: 11.9" Retina Air - slightly thicker than the current Air 13.3" Retina Pro 15.4" Retina Pro And the older Air would stick around for a while. I really doubt Apple would throw away the Air branding or thinner design.

Thanks for fixing that. :)

Re: An 11.88” Retina MacBook Air

#64

Post by rsynnott » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 6:44 PM UTC

ucha wrote: post #55

snowwrestler wrote: post #42

To create the MacBook Air, Apple took out the spinning HD, the optical drive, and soldered in the battery. To create the new Retina MacBook Pro, Apple took out the spinning HD, optical drive, and soldered in the battery. But they also put in a Retina display--as well as the more powerful GPU and larger battery it requires The current MacBook Pro IS the Retina Air in everything but name only. It's the thinnest and lig…

The Macbook Air runs on a CPU with a nominal TDP of 15W vs 28W for the Macbook Pro Retina. I'm pretty sure a Retina display could run with the current Macbook air CPU given that they share the same integrated GPU. That will make a difference.

> I'm pretty sure a Retina display could run with the current Macbook air CPU given that they share the same integrated GPU

They don't share the same integrated GPU; the MBA is a HD5000; the 13" Retina is a HD5100, the 15" Retina is a HD5200.

The major practical difference between the HD5000 and HD5100 is clock speed; while they have a similar theoretical cap, at full speed the HD5000 uses 22W (more than the TDP of the chip it lives in!), so in practice generally operates at far lower speeds.

They could probably get away with a HD5000 powered Retina thing, but screen power consumption would still be a factor. IGZO should deal with this sooner or later, though.