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]
But there is definitely a group of power users who use their MacBooks for tasks like video editing who would welcome the return of the extra two inches of screen real estate. Especially as Apple has focused more and more on the possibility of, for instance, shooting video using your iPhone and then editing it from the back of your car, a return to the “ultimate mobile studio” would be more than welcome. Particularly if it meant we’d finally see a 17-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
The next revision of Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup will boast a brand new case design for the first time since the aluminum unibody models were introduced in 2008. The current lineup of MacBook Pros – which was recently refreshed earlier this year to introduce a Thunderbolt port, Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, and new GPUs – will be the last revision before an all-new design.
A source for MacRumors has provided “reliable confirmation” that a redesign is currently in the works, however, there are currently no details on what the new MacBook Pro will look like:
Unfortunately, we have no specifics on what the next MacBook Pro might look like, though many have previously speculated that Apple will take cues from the MacBook Air line.
I’m sure previous speculation won’t be far off either. Apple’s latest MacBook Air has proven to be a huge success and at its unveiling back in October 2010, Steve Jobs hailed the device the “future of notebooks.”
My guess is that the next MacBook Pro will be at least thinner and lighter, with SSD storage and better battery life. If we’re really lucky we’ll get one of those Retina displays everyone’s talking about.
Samsung could be about to sell its dwindling hard disk drive business as flash memory becomes increasingly popular, according to a person “familiar with the matter.” Thanks to the success of devices such as the iPod, iPad and MacBook Air, Apple has boosted the adoption of flash memory devices and encouraged consumers to ditch standard hard drives for speedier storage.
Samsung has set a target price of $1.5 billion for its hard drive business, but the Korean company is reportedly keen to sell it for under $1 billion if the right customer comes along. The Wall Street Journal report notes that Seagate Technologies could be a candidate for the business, though neither company has commented on the rumor.
Apple is considered to be the largest consumer of flash memory in the world, and predominantly responsible for the shift away from conventional hard drives to solid state drives. It’s believed the company’s iPad is entirely responsible for the complete reorganization at Acer – whose netbooks sales were hit hard by the popular tablet.
Apple is undoubtedly responsible for my personal adoption of SSD drives; after purchasing an 11-inch MacBook Air my other Macs felt incredibly slow in comparison. It seems once you go flash, there’s no going back.
[via Electronista]
AnandTech is reporting that Apple has appeared to have made some changes to the MacBook Air released in October 2010. The Macbook Air refresh last fall included some welcome surprises for Apple fans — a new 11.6″ form factor, an external case redesign, faster graphics, and larger SSD drives. All of this came at a lower price. The most interesting part of the refresh was the new SSD drives. Apple didn’t use regular 2.5″ or 1.8″ SSDs and instead introduced a whole new type of SSD form factor called mSATA SSDs a.k.a. blade SSDs.
Since its refresh in October 2010, the popularity of Apple’s MacBook Air has been rapidly increasing according to new research by J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz. Sales of the device have seen a 333% year-over-year rise, with a projected annual revenue of a whopping $2.2 billion.
Moskowitz said in his research note:
“We believe that the growth rate of the MacBook Air stands to moderate, but we expect the product to exhibit increasing contribution to the overall Mac business,” Moskowitz wrote. “(The fourth quarter of calendar 2010) was the first quarter in which the MacBook Air accounted for greater than 10% of total Apple Mac units. More importantly, the MacBook Air accounted for 15% of total notebook sales during the quarter, versus 5% in the prior year.”
The latest refresh to the MacBook Air line introduced an ultraportable 11.6-inch model – a perfect alternative to users looking for the portability of a netbook but with the stability of a Mac. When the device first launched back in January of 2008, a 13-inch machine was the only option, with a starting price of $1,799. Now there are two machines to choose from, both of which come equipped with SSD hard drives as standard, starting at just $999.
It’s believed that the lower starting price and a choice of two notebooks are the main reasons behind the growth in popularity of the MacBook Air.
[via MacRumors]
The release of Mac OS X 10.6.7 isn’t even two weeks old and Apple has issued a supplemental update that patches the latest OS release. The patch fixes problems encountered by late 2010 13-inch MacBook Air users who upon launching iTunes experienced crashes that left their computers completely frozen and unresponsive.
I even experienced it myself before the problem mysteriously disappeared after forcing the machine to restart by powering it off and then on again. Since then I haven’t had a problem, but for some the problem persists. Luckily Apple has a fix.
According to Apple:
This update addresses an issue that makes the system unresponsive when using iTunes. It is recommended for all 13″ MacBook Air (Late 2010) users running Mac OS X v10.6.7.
You can grab this update via Software Update on your Mac or download it directly via this support page.
Updates galore! Hot on the heels of the Snow Leopard 10.6.7 update yesterday, a fresh new update to Apple’s Aperture is also now ready for your installing pleasure via Software Update.
The Aperture 3.1.2 update fixes the following:
People have had complaints about video problems on the MacBook Air since they were first released. I encountered some video problems initially, but after the plethora of updates that Apple has released the video problems haven’t returned.
These updates and suggested fixes worked for some, but unfortunately they didn’t work for everyone. People are still complaining on Apple Discussion Forums about problems they are encountering when connecting their MacBook Airs to external displays.
People were hoping that the next Mac OS X release would solve these problems. That update, Mac OS X 10.6.7, was released yesterday.
It didn’t solve the problem for some people, but we’ve gotten some clues on how to resolve the problem for others.
I’ve had my 13-inch MacBook Air since they were first released and although I encountered video problems initially after the plethora of updates that Apple has released the video problems haven’t returned.
The updates included an EFI firmware update, a specific software update for the MacBook Air 2010 model, and the Mac OS X 10.6.5 software update. I even offered not one, but two suggested solutions to try.
These updates and suggested fixes worked for some, but unfortunately they didn’t work for everyone. People are still complaining on Apple Discussion Forums about problems they are encountering when connecting their MacBook Airs to external displays.
According to a post on Apple Discussion forums by user addcore AppleCare suggested a fix for the occasional problem where an external monitor attached to a MacBook Air would flicker. However, the fix doesn’t seem to be a complete cure, but according to addcore, ” I’ve seen two tiny instances which is a major improvement to the every thirty sec flickering. ”
So not completely cured, but better. Read on to find out how this was accomplished.
Apple’s new 11-inch Macbook Air with a 64Gb SSD drive is said to be very popular and flying off the shelves at Apple Stores everywhere and beyond. It represents the smallest notebook computer that Apple makes and the default base model ships with the smallest system disk drive available in any Apple notebook. Therefore it makes sense for users to seek ways to optimize the way they use disk space on this tiny new notebook and it was the computer that inspired me to write this How-To — which actually applies to any Mac.
A couple weeks ago, one of my friends brought me a new MacBook Air from the States, and as he delivered it to me, he — a die-hard Windows user — eloquently endorsed Apple’s sexy new, razor thin ultraportable by noting that as far as was concerned, “using this laptop is what living in the future feels like” and that “I’ll definitely buy one, because this computer will get you laid.”
He’s not an exception: I’ve turned more Windows-loving heads with the new MacBook Air than any other laptop I’ve ever owned. It looks like makers of Windows PCs have noticed the same thing, because Acer, Asus and Lenovo are all set to ape the MacBook Air’s incredible design.
