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New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

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Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#181

Post by mahyarm »

dmarble wrote: post #164
mahyarm wrote: post #151

Almost as good as a Vaio Z12. It just needs an 8GB RAM option and 13" 1080p.

Almost? If you live and die by external design and feel (trackpad, keyboard, sturdiness) than most everything but a Macbook will seem inferior, but overall if you're an equal-opportunity platform user and want the thinnest and lightest complete desktop replacement like me, I don't think it's remotely close. I'm typing this on a year-old Z11, which you can pick up used now for about the cost of a MBA, with: * Core i5…

I'm an iPhone developer and Hackintosh just doesn't work. I'm stuck on apple machines, anything else is an exercise in frustration.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#182

Post by tgood »

blinkingled wrote: post #170
tgood wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last part isn't true. I've got the bottom priced 11" and being an entrepreneur I use it heavily for design. My only issue is the memory. After CS5 and a couple other programs I was down to 10gb.I'm 80% in front of a big cinema display but even working on the go its great. Photoshop too. My usual is itunes, mail, 5-10 safari windows, Photoshop, Illustrator and no spinning wheel of death. My experience of Apple is…

Are you sure you do that all at once without slowing down on a MBA with 2GB RAM? I just tried my regular use case - Mail, Firefox, MS Word and Excel plus Adium and it was 350Mb into swap and switching apps wasn't all that instantaneous. What does your swap usage show (Activity Monitor - page outs with all that workload? However with 4GB it shouldn't be that much of an issue for this workload. So I might just bite the…

I have for the last 12 days, and this was after using an iMac from years back which processed everything excessively. Right now my swap usage is 640 MB. Worth mentioning, I am returning it tomorrow to get the latest offering. Probably in the same setup.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#183

Post by kelnos »

macavity23 wrote: post #89
micheljansen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple never does price drops. They have a fixed product line and while the hardware changes over time, the price stays the same.

Rarely, but not never . My 2nd gen top-of-the-line macbook air was £1850, top of the line now is £1450. That's a fair difference.

Really? My 2nd gen top of the line (11") MBA was $1400 (I think), and now the top is $1650. Maybe it's different for the 13"...

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#184

Post by kelnos »

nolanbrown23 wrote: post #139
w1ntermute wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems most people are interested in the 13". Does anyone have any comments on the 11"? The only downside I can see is that only 1 external monitor is supported. After all, when you're traveling, the smaller the better.

Echoing the sentiments of the other 11" owners, I love my 11" MBA. It's not perfect but it's close enough for the time being. I just bought a brand new 11" with a bigger SSD and the i7 and the only thing I wish was different was the amount of RAM. If it had 8GB RAM, then it would easily be the best computer I've ever owned.

Agreed. I have a 2nd-gen 11" MBA, and I've been really happy with it as a primary (and only) machine. I can even do Android dev on it, thought Eclipse tends to stretch it a bit thin sometimes.

The new ones are so close to perfect. I share your disappointment in the lack of an 8GB RAM option. I'm also a little worried about the Intel graphics, though I hear the HD 3000 is comparable to the nvidia 310M, which presumably is only a slight step back from the 320M in the 2nd-gen Air.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#185

Post by FaceKicker »

scottchin wrote: post #165
joshklein wrote: post #108

I'm going to be purchasing the 13" MBA, and I'm trying to decide between the baseline version and the maxed out version. I would pay the $100 to upgrade to the i7, but one can only do so by also paying $300 for the 256GB of memory. Honestly, the 256GB memory vs 128GB isn't important to me (most of my stuff is small files or in the cloud), so I'm finding it hard to justify $400 for the better processor. Any advice fro…

here's how I justified it. Say you use your new air for 2-3 years. Say you spend around 20% of your days using it. That is about 5000 hours. Say you get 10% speedup using 1.8ghz i7 vs 1.7ghz i5. That saves you about 500 hours of time. 500$ more for 500 hours time back. ;)

I don't think you were being totally serious, but I don't think this justification works (even assuming you got all the hour numbers right) because for the vast majority of the tasks you're going to be doing on the machine (e.g., web browsing, coding, etc.), the speed differential between the i7 and i5 will save you 0 time.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#186

Post by kelnos »

BornInTheUSSR wrote: post #87

I just bought the maxed out 13 inch air in October, and it's been a great dev machine (rails, ios) someone please talk me out getting the newest shiniest for no good reason

I'm having trouble resisting as well. On used Mac sites, the maxed out 11" 2nd-gen is going for around $1150 (maybe lower in some places?). The maxed out 11" 3rd-gen costs $1650. I could upgrade for $500+tax. (Or $400+less-tax if I'm willing to wait for my sister to buy it for me with her edu discount in a lower-tax state and mail it to me...)

So difficult. I'm worried about the Intel graphics, but I bet they're much better supported under Linux than the 320M is.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#187

Post by wmboy »

corin_ wrote: post #42

I'm really not a fan of their non-US pricing, it rarely works out well for international buyers. For example the $1,199 model costs £999 in the UK. $1,199 is equal to £744. So to buy it from the UK store you're paying 34% more? For the cheapest option, $999 in US store, the UK price is 37% more. And I'm too lazy to work out the 13" price differences.

Yeah it sucks, buying Apple products in NZ puts you in the same situation.

11 inch MacBook Air (64GB) = US$999 (which should convert to NZ$1,169.46 using the current exchange rate).

In NZ we've got a 15% GST (sales) tax, but that should only bring the price up to about NZ$1,345. Instead the entry level MacBook Air costs us NZ$1,549.00.

So that's a NZ$204 mark up for what??? Wish we could just buy them directly off the US Apple website!

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#188

Post by onwardly »

FaceKicker wrote: post #185
scottchin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's how I justified it. Say you use your new air for 2-3 years. Say you spend around 20% of your days using it. That is about 5000 hours. Say you get 10% speedup using 1.8ghz i7 vs 1.7ghz i5. That saves you about 500 hours of time. 500$ more for 500 hours time back. ;)

I don't think you were being totally serious, but I don't think this justification works (even assuming you got all the hour numbers right) because for the vast majority of the tasks you're going to be doing on the machine (e.g., web browsing, coding, etc.), the speed differential between the i7 and i5 will save you 0 time.

Exactly. I think the grandparent is missing that only in very special circumstances does the i7 make a difference, probably less than 1% of your time.

Lets assume its 10%. 3 years * 52 weeks *40 hours per week= 6,240 hours working.

Lets assume that for 10% of that day you're using your computer in a way that the i7 is able to make faster. Assuming you get 10% speedup, that saves you 62.4 hours, the equivalent of paying yourself $8.01/hr.

But frankly, assuming your computer spends 10% of your workday performing i7 optimized tasks seems high. 1% is more likely (if not still unreasonable). And at that rate, you're paying yourself $80.13 per hour.

And keep in mind that you are paying yourself to sit there for an extra couple microseconds between computer operations.

Not that you shouldn't get the i7. Just don't dream that its somehow paying for itself!

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#189

Post by amorphid »

ascendant wrote: post #145
crazygringo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For regular computer stuff, my 2nd-gen Macbook Air works like a dream, and in day-to-day use it's the SSD that makes it so much faster than my work computer with a normal HD. In the SSD era, if you don't use videogames or do video rendering, I don't think processor speed matters that much anymore. (Cue mobs with torches...)

The pragmatist in me realizes I don't need a core i7 to edit text files and run unicorn_rails in the background...but the geek in me punched the pragmatist in the face and said "yes you do".

I watch Netflix streaming on an attached monitor and surf web on main screen using base level 2nd gen MBA. It gets a bit slow.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#190

Post by stock_toaster »

iaskwhy wrote: post #23

Still glossy display only.

This is one of the few things holding me back as well. I have a couple gen back 15" mpb with matte finish, and have tried to like the glossies, but after extended use they really make my eyes ache. Not so with the matte.

I keep hearing the mba glossy isn't too bad. I will have to wander down to a mac store and fiddle with one in person.

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