MacBook Air - page 37

“Dude, your laptop case is, like, totally sick, brah!”

I looked up. It was my waiter, every inch of him a bro. He looked like the kind of guy whose cocktail of choice was a pounder of vodka and Mountain Dew, who spelled extreme with triple x-es, who never met a problem he couldn’t jump a skateboard over. He wore an Offspring t-shirt and a wallet on a chain covered in stickers. His goatee looked like a mullet growing out of his face.

I looked down. The “sick” case in question was the BookBook Case by TwelveSouth ($80) — a case which was designed to make my 11-inch MacBook Air look like some dusty vellum tome plucked from an ancient library.

BestBuy.com — a major Apple reseller — has now stopped shipping the current-generation of Apple’s ultraportable notebook as an upcoming refresh becomes ever more apparent.

Components makers in the supply chain for Apple’s MacBook Air are set to “run in full gear” during July as the company prepares for the upcoming launch of the latest model.

While yesterday’s reports of a black MacBook Air left many mouths watering, the device could remain all but a dream for the foreseeable future, after one anonymous Apple employee has confirmed that the company has tried, but failed, to create a black model of its ultraportable notebook.

Although Apple still sells a white model, the piano black plastic MacBook is much missed. It might be Back to Black time for the MacBook line, though, as several anonymous sources are now reporting that the Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge equipped MacBook Air could get a black anodized aluminum finish when it lands in July.

If you weren’t convinced that the most dramatic upgrade you can do to a Mac is install a solid state drive in its belly, check this video out.

15 seconds. Just 15 seconds. That’s how long it takes a 3.4GHz Sandy Bridge iMac armed with a Sandy Bridge processor and an SSD drive to launch all of its apps simultaneously.

Wondering just where in the hell those Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt are? Sitting in a warehouse, just waiting for OS X Lion to go gold, according to the most recent report.

Here’s a bit of sweet timing. Just as the PC Era collapses and everyone moves to the cloud, what is Apple selling? Why, the MacBook Air, a light mobile device that seems perfect for the iCloud generation. Oh, yeah, it’s also a “quasi-tablet.” No wonder analysts predict Apple will make billions off the device.

Are you looking for an external battery for your MacBook Air cobbled together from the cutting edge of Kruschev-era Soviet electronics? Want less functionality in that battery than one of Sanho’s excellent HyperMac offerings while also doing your small part to slaughter Mother Earth? Most importantly, want a gadget that can accomplish all of these heady things at a price far, far greater than the more eco-friendly competition? We’ve got you covered.

Apple has ordered 400,000 next-generation MacBook Airs to be built this month for a July launch, and each and every one of them will ship with low-watt versions of Intel’s cutting edge Sandy Bridge processors.

A refresh to the MacBook Air lineup appears to be imminent this week as retail sources worldwide report that supplies and shipments of Apple’s ultraportable notebook are beginning to diminish.

Speculation that Apple is to introduce ARM processors to the next revision of its MacBook Airs continues, as one source claims the company is internally testing the ultraportable notebooks with its A5 processor… but will we really see an A5 powered MacBook Air? I don’t think so.

As both a bibliophile and an 11-inch MacBook Air owner, there’s only one word to describe the new BookBook case by TwelveSouth: utterly gorgeous:

You’ll find a notebook to suit everyone within Apple’s family of notebooks: the entry-level MacBook is perfect for students and casual computer users, the MacBook Air is a blessing to the travelling businessman, and there’s a MacBook Pro fitting for just about everyone. And I’m not the only one who thinks so – Consumer Reports just dealt Apple’s awesome MacBooks a whole lot of love.

Apple’s latest lineup of MacBook Airs are incredible, and since their launch they’ve been lavished with attention from just about everyone – from the tech world’s greatest reviewers to the hooded youths that gather around them in the Apple Store. But a recent refresh to the MacBook Pro family is beginning to steal their limelight – boasting features like Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt ports – and the Airs want it back with their share of new components. They may only have to wait a little while longer, however, as one report suggests a refresh within the coming months.

Apple’s domination of NAND flash is so complete that even when the industry figures out a way to greatly improve their efficiency, they’ve got to sit around and wait for Cupertino to approve it.

Despite Apple being their number one customer, Samsung’s done a healthy trade in ripping-off Cupertino’s gadgets and selling their own, often patent infringing doppelgangers… and with their new Series 9 ultraportable, Samsung now has the MacBook Air square in their sights.

Expect as much as twice as much storage to be stuffed into 2012’s MacBook Airs. Industry market research firm Gartner says that the price of solid state drives will drop below a buck per gigabyte by the second half of 2012.

When I first got my Macbook Air, I fell in love with its diminutive profile, speedy boot times and incredible portability, but after living with it for a few months, one thing became glaringly apparent – 128GB was simply not enough room. Having convinced myself it would be at the time or purchase – I have recently found myself umbilically attached to a 500GB USB hard drive for music and photos.

Now, 6 months in, I was faced with two choices – stick the current MBA on eBay and stump up the extra cash for a larger capacity Air – or invest in a 3rd party storage solution. The first option is just stupid, so an upgrade was on the cards.

Will Apple, as rumored, shift the MacBook line over to an ARM processor this year, starting with the MacBook Air? If you answered yes to that question, one analyst has some compelling reasons why you might just be huffing fumes.

OCZ has just announced its Agility 3 and Solid 3 series of 2.5-inch solid-state drives aimed at users dying to get their hands on a super-speedy SSD, but with a tight budget to contend with.

An analyst believes that as soon as this year, Apple will rip the Intel right out of the MacBook Air and transfuse an ARM-based chip in its place, maybe even some successor to the iPad 2’s A5 SoC. But that’s just stupid. Isn’t it?

Microsoft’s latest attempt at persuading customers to buy a Windows PC rather than a Mac is an advertising campaign that compares the price of Apple machines with computers from Asus, Dell, HP, Sony, and others; and then asks buyers to “do the math” and look at the money they could save – which they could then spend on a trip to Hawaii.

For example, compare Apple’s MacBook Air with a selection of Windows netbooks and straight away you’ll notice the difference in price – with the MacBook Air listed at $1,049 compared to netbooks for as little as $299. We’ll ignore the fact that Microsoft has classed the MacBook Air as a netbook and move on to specifications.

Other World Computing has just announced its latest Mercury Aura Pro Express solid-state drive designed for the latest generation of MacBook Airs. Boasting a whopping 480GB of storage, the upgrade offers nearly 4x more capacity than currently available from factory available SSDs, and is an incredible 68% faster.

As you’d expect from an SSD, however, especially one designed for the latest MacBook Air, these babies come at one heck of a price. The 480GB upgrade will set you back a staggering $1,579.99, but you’re not going to find this kind of storage for Apple’s ultra portable notebook anywhere else.

Crucial has just launched its new M4 lineup of 2.5-inch solid-state drives, which are the successors to the RealSSD C300 range, and boast faster read and write speeds. The M4 uses 25nm technology NAND flash created by its parent company Micron, and is available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB models.

Crucial claim the new M4 SSDs reach read speeds of up to 415MBps – a 17% increase over its predecessor – while write speeds are up 20% with speeds of up to 260MBps.

As with all SSDs, however, this technology doesn’t come cheap. The 64GB M4 will cost you $130, which rises to $250 for the 128GB, $500 for the 256GB and $1000 for the 512GB. All can be purchased directly from Crucial and include a three-year warranty.

While the M4s are pretty pricey, solid-state drives are a great way of improving the speed of your Mac. Traditional hard drives are famous for being the bottleneck in modern-day Macs, and since the release of the incredibly nippy second-generation MacBook Air, many users have realized the difference an SSD can make and have adopted the new technology. Recent tests have proven that MacBook Pros equipped with SSD drives are significantly faster than those with traditional HDDs.

[via Macworld]