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Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

macobserver.com

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#11
post #3

These things keep getting harder to resist, and I'm a Windows user. Can anyone tell me if it's true that Windows on boot camp doesn't take advantage of all of the power saving features, and so doesn't last as long? And if so, how big is the difference?

Paul Thurrott did a review of running Windows on a Macbook Air and seems to indicate that the battery life is in the same general time as Apple estimates for OS X.

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-wi...

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#12
post #8

I am likely going to fall for a larger MB Air... if they sell a 15" model, I'll be the first in line. However, I'm still not sure if I like the non-discrete video. Anyone with an MBP'11 that only has Intel HD video care to tell me if it's any good for gaming? At least the current MB Air has discrete video.

Depends on what kind of gaming you want to do, playing some passive wow (I hear raids take up a lot) would probably do ok, or most of the simpler games out there. But even something like hl2 will still have trouble with intel graphics, not really for gamers.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#13

As a longtime user of Dell Latitudes and HP Pavilions, I promise you that the MBAir will blow you away. I always pooh poohed "Light and Thin" - until I had a light and thin laptop, with SSDs, and a 1440x900 13.3" display, with Terminal.App (which is 50%+ of the reason I love OS X) and insanely addictive (and useful) touch pad). The only major downside of the MBAir is that it is so competitive a form factor for an iPa…

The touchpad on my Mac laptops are the reason I'll never buy another non-Mac laptop again. Best tactile surface I've ever felt.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#14
I am genuinely intrigued by the MBA, but I can't seem to get my head around getting that instead of a MBP 13" (I would be getting a MBA 13", 11" is too small for me).

Aside from weight, which isn't a real concern for me in a MBP 13", if I decked out a MBP 13" w/ an SSD, is there a compelling reason to still go with an MBA? One of my main concerns is that the MBA can only go to 4GB of ram while the MBP can theoretically go to 16GB. Seems more future proofing etc.

Just so you know, I do mostly iOS, Android, and Web dev (Ruby, Python, JS and Erlang).

I also have several Ubuntu instances up at all times if I'm doing iOS or I run Ubuntu the majority of the time if I'm doing other stuff (Ubuntu is still a better dev environment, IMO, but that is for a different post :) )

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#15

I am genuinely intrigued by the MBA, but I can't seem to get my head around getting that instead of a MBP 13" (I would be getting a MBA 13", 11" is too small for me). Aside from weight, which isn't a real concern for me in a MBP 13", if I decked out a MBP 13" w/ an SSD, is there a compelling reason to still go with an MBA? One of my main concerns is that the MBA can only go to 4GB of ram while the MBP can theoretical…

I believe the 13" MBA has a higher screen resolution than available in the 13" MBP.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#16

I am genuinely intrigued by the MBA, but I can't seem to get my head around getting that instead of a MBP 13" (I would be getting a MBA 13", 11" is too small for me). Aside from weight, which isn't a real concern for me in a MBP 13", if I decked out a MBP 13" w/ an SSD, is there a compelling reason to still go with an MBA? One of my main concerns is that the MBA can only go to 4GB of ram while the MBP can theoretical…

my main machine is a 4gb 13" MBA, I do heavy web development with music playing and photoshop open all day long, along with skype, and the thing never skips a beat. 6 hours of battery even after 9 months, weighs less than 3 pounds.

It's the best computer I've ever owned. And it's my first Mac, I'm not much of a fanboy.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#17

I've been waiting for this - my MBP15 is long in the tooth and desperately needs a refresh. I don't need nearly the same amount of raw power I used to, so a MBA is going to be a blessing on my back!

You may not need the power, but you're going to get it. :) The new MBA will be much faster than your old MBP.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#18
post #3

These things keep getting harder to resist, and I'm a Windows user. Can anyone tell me if it's true that Windows on boot camp doesn't take advantage of all of the power saving features, and so doesn't last as long? And if so, how big is the difference?

On a full Macbook Pro, Windows is unable to force the use of the integrated graphics card, and thus always uses the dedicated. This results in a much warmer piece of aluminum and decreased battery life. I despised using Bootcamp for the while I did.

Ubuntu is limited as well. I'm not sure if this will change with Window 7's ability to boot from EFI or with GRUB2 now supporting EFI. If I recall there are several bits of the Apple/MBP EFI implementation that causes things to not work as smoothly as they should... some things that Apple either cut corners with or did intentionally to force you to keep OS X on the hard drive, not sure which.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#19
post #7
post #5

Sweet built-in DRM!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Other_details Sounds like quite a big turn off, I wonder how bad this will be in practice

That tech isn't really DRM. It in no way reduces or inhibits current functionality. All it does is provide something extra that content providers may choose to use (for streaming hd video). You aren't forced into using it, and if you don't have it you simply won't be able to take advantage of those kinds of streams.

Much unlike HDCP which virtually all computers have nowadays and actually does inhibit normal functionality.

Re: Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs

#20
post #7
post #5

Sweet built-in DRM!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Other_details Sounds like quite a big turn off, I wonder how bad this will be in practice

Why? I don't mind Netflix securing their content that they deliver to my device. It doesn't force me to use it by any means. As for the "vPro" technology, that has been available in many modern Intel computers and is obviously only used if intentionally utilized by a corporate IT environment.

I don't see anything there that would prevent me from easily choose Sandy Bridge, despite not really liking the idea of DRM.

I don't know why people are surprised by this. I try to explain how the DRM components of Netflix work and why they're able to be used in Linux devices with hardware security. Android has DRM providers that are backed all the way to hardware, I'm assuming this Netflix Chrome extension will leverage some new DRM framework that will be part of Chrome (maybe, maybe not Chromium). And really, in terms of everything, I think it's reasonable.

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