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13-Inch Haswell-Powered MacBook Air With PCIe SSD Tested
MojoKid writes "In addition to the anticipated performance gains that Intel's new Haswell CPU architecture might bring to the table for their new MacBook Air, there are additional component-level upgrades that Apple baked in to their latest ultra-light notebook; namely a higher capacity 54 Whr battery and a PCI Express-based Solid State Drive (SSD). Apple still hasn't seen fit to up the ante on the MacBook Air's display, opting instead to stick with the 1440x900 TN panel carried over from the previous generation 13-inch machine, with the 11-inch variant sporting a 1366x768 native res. But in terms of performance, this is Apple's fastest Air yet, with storage throughput in excess of 700MB/sec for reads and 400MB/sec for writes, along with graphics horsepower that rivals entry level discrete GPUs, thanks to Intel's HD Graphic 5000 core in Haswell. Battery life has been improved dramatically as well, with the new Air lasting over 9 hrs on a charge, playing back 1080p video content. Apple also reduced their MSRP by $100 versus last year's model."
Not too bad at around $1100. The 54Wh battery looks it improves the portability a bit.
That's actually a pretty competitive price. I can't find a way to configure, say, a Lenovo Ultrabook with an SSD and anywhere near comparable CPU for less than $1200.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Can it run Crysis?
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Just not on the embedded display...
And I love it. I get about 2 - 3 days of average use out of the battery (home use, after work, on the couch, 3 - 4 hours each night). I get an honest 12 hours from the battery with normal use. Snappy, and very usable. I thought I would miss my macbook pro, but I really don't.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
I thought I had disabled ads.
define better
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Losing 7% sales when global PC sales are down 12% is a net market share gain - and they are doing it all at the high end. I'm not sure that's a bad story.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
IMHO the "Mac Premium"
Mac is "mid range" for exciting premium products you have to look at companies like google with the Pixel
Umm .. I'd suggest that you don't understand what is meant by "mac premium".
http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/,
The Chromebook is not in the same league as an Air .. they perform two different functions. If you don't have an internet connection then the Chromebook is somewhat crippled, whereas the Air is stand alone.
this low resolution laptop so electronics is not cutting it. no wonder Apple have had drops of 22%; 2; and 7% over the last three quarters...and the reason they are not selling is not the iPad which is down -14%.
I'm not disagreeing that Apple needs to pick up the pace, however those drops can be explained by commoditizing of the market, not that Apples products are suddenly inferior.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I got the 2012 Air when it was released. Since then, my parents each bought one, plus an iMac.
When I got mine, they did the usual "oh, it's so light" bit and I thought that was the end of it. A few months later, I find out they bought the machines and got everything set up by themselves, including migrating data from their old computers.
Fuck off, troll.
The myth of the "apple tax" or "mac premium" has always been based on pretending that the largest distinguishing feature (the operating system) doesn't exist, or isn't worth anything to people in the market for a new computer. Windows 7 closed the gap a bit, but OS X is still less virus-prone, has better backup integration, doesn't use a registry, and benefits from less platform diversity / hardware+OS from the same vendor.
It also ignores the fact that for years, whenever PC magazines have tested Macs, they've consistently found them to be amongst the best-performing machines money can buy at time-of-release. Boot Camp changed things dramatically, in the sense that suddenly PC magazines could directly compare them to PC hardware with the same benchmark tools.
Apple is reaping the benefit of in-house design (instead of "show me what you got that we can slap our label on"), top-notch system architects, and aggressively securing rights with suppliers for major components to get the best stuff before everyone else.
Please help metamoderate.
The Mac Air has 56% marketshare in the ultraportable segment as of July 1st (http://bgr.com/2013/07/01/macbook-air-market-share/). So while you claim that "nobody is buying these", sales figures instead prove that "most people are buying these".
Losing 7% sales when global PC sales are down 12% is a net market share gain - and they are doing it all at the high end. I'm not sure that's a bad story.
Windows has its own problems with Windows 8. Saying others are doing worse...does not make Apple better. especially when its tablet sales are also taking a massive 14% drop.
Ironically the fasting growing point of the PC market is the sub $300 with chromebook...Linux is quietly gaining converts too.
If nobody was buying, then the sales drop-off would be MUCH steeper. I think the issue is that they didn't have any significant updates/upgrades released this quarter (the new Mac Pro was announced, but not actually released yet).
The rest of the drop is probably due to most of the market that was going to switch, already has... Apple Computers require replacement by the average consumer far less often than PC's from places like Dell. For example, my parents have had the same iMac since 2007. It has never needed to go into the Apple Store for service and still receives regular software updates (originally ran 10.5, currently running 10.6, but a direct upgrade to 10.8 is available should they ever need/want it.. not sure if 10.9 will be available for it or not). Given that it's now 2013, this is a 6-year-old machine. In the 6 years prior to this iMac they went through 2 different Dell Desktops and an HP Laptop (which each cost nearly as much as the iMac did in 2007). This kind of product longevity will lead to an eventual drop in sales as their market share begins to stabilize (ie: isn't seeing "start-up-like" growth). This at least explains the drop-off in their Mac sales; people expect a mid-year update sometime in the next quarter or two and are willing to either wait for the new model or for the sell-off price-drop that always precedes them. That or maybe they waited for the "Back-To-School" sales that typically start after the 2nd quarter ends.
When it comes to the decline in Mobile Sales... Not all their customers upgrade annually. Personally, I go for every-other release (effectively every 2 years) to maximize my carrier subsidy and get the most "bang" for my $. A lot of consumers will also hold off upgrading iOS devices if they expect a new model will be released soon, considering that September seems to be iOS Device Release/Announcement Month... that would explain a drop in sales both in the last quarter and in the current.
Wow, I wish my business strategy were failing as successfully as theirs.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Have I gone through the looking glass? This crappy Apple product, that costs a whopping $1100 dollars and has a really crappy screen is 'good' because now you can do light Internet browsing and video watching with something approaching the efficiency of a tablet that costs $250 dollars, and has a vastly better screen?
And note, it is not ME highlighting these two great 'improvements', it is Apple, Intel and their tame review sites.
Why would anyone with an interest in these two uses not pick up the Nook HD+ for $150 dollars. Yeah, the laptop can do more, BUT Apple and Intel, of their own free will, choose to emphasis the importance of these two uses.
The fiction of most laptop users needing Intel performance is well and truly over. This new Apple product actually explains to us why tablets using ARM are great.
And to Apple laptop users, are you really going to boast that your new Hawell based MacBook Air, at EIGHT times the cost, with a vastly worse screen, comes close to the experience of a Nook HD+ when doing the two things that Intel and Apple say that matter, light browsing and watching video?
Wow, I wish my business strategy were failing as successfully as theirs.
I have a feeling that Steve cook and you have a different opinion...stockholders already do.
Apple's Strategy has never been Sales Growth (as that's not a sustainable long-term strategy). It has always been to make quality products that customers will pay a premium for. This strategy dug the company out from near bankruptcy and molded it into the industry power-house it is today. They don't need to have more than a 50% Market Share in order to make a ton of money and they don't need their profits to grow every quarter. The fact that they still had a VERY profitable quarter compared to most of their competitors should be evidence enough of that.
Yeah, but he's dead now so it doesn't matter what he thinks.
Kid-proof tablet..
I got a 13", 1.3GHz, 8GB RAM, 256 GB hard disk.
Very impressed with the battery life.
Doing browser and light word processing in Mac Office and Google Docs, I've gone 13 hours and 11 minutes between full charge and needing to recharge or else.
If nobody was buying, then the sales drop-off would be MUCH steeper.
The new reality is people are buying less Apple products all around, what is happening is good old fashioned competition, and I for one have missed it. Apple need to step up, with an innovative product...and I don't mean iTV or iWatch or iwearable...I mean old fashioned reinvent the MAC...and I don't mean making it less upgradable or less compatible.
Chrome OS does not require an internet connection
I said crippled, not dead. And from the link you supplied Storage:
One terabyte Google Drive cloud storage for three years1
32GB solid state drive (64GB on LTE model)2
Once you have no network connection that 32Gb is really going to get you a long way </sarcasm>. The Airs come with a minimum of 128Gb of flash and you can spec them out from Apple all the way up to 512Gb .. so once again .. they are different beasts with different design considerations.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
"Rational Profits" != Exponential Sales Growth over a Sustained Period of Time
They *have* Market Share right now. They're making *rational profits* right now. Sounds like the strategy is working as planned. Once market share stabilizes the number of sales/quarter should start to drop and eventually stabilize at a reasonable level.
Naturally Chromebooks are selling well - they are basically giving them away. If there is any profit on them, it is very slim. I certainly don't want Apple in the "giving away stuff" market.
Why? you a stockholder, I personally want Good value products not companies taking advantage sue to lack of competition. Personally I am tired of the Duopoly and an glad it is being unsettled if very much alive.
So you agree that you're wrong, then. Good. Clearly if 56% of consumers are buying the Mac Air instead of an Ultrabook, they're selling a lot of them.
No I think the market segment is a bit of a failure.
Ultra-hyped ultrabooks ultra-flopped in 2012 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/010713-ultrabooks-265469.html
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/are-ultrabooks-an-epic-failure/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/are-ultrabooks-an-epic-failure/
A year on, Ultrabooks are a worse disaster than most expected http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/02/a-year-on-ultrabooks-are-a-worse-disaster-than-most-expected/
Remember Ultrabooks? Yeah, That Was A Good Time http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/remember-ultrabooks-yeah-that-was-a-good-time/
as I said apples sales are down 22%, 2% and 7%
I got the 2012 Air when it was released. Since then, my parents each bought one, plus an iMac.
>
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q1fy13datasum.pdf
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy13datasum2.pdf
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy13datasum.pdf
Your house is not the whole world....apples business strategy is failing...however successful it is around your house. The fact that its computers are seeing a drop in sales 22%; 2% and 7% shows it needs a new one.
I think you missed a word. Its computers are seeing a drop in sales growth -- when the growth curve is less than the one for inflation, then I'll start wondering about their long-term profitability.
It's easy to have enormous sales growth year-over-year when you don't have any sales to begin with. The fact that such a mammoth company is still growing their sales never ceases to amaze me. What new markets are they (and all the other device sellers) milking for this continued growth? Or is this just creative accounting?
However, if you CPU render 3D graphics, encode high quality video, or do anything else continuously mid-to-heavy on the CPU, you'll soon notice Haswell gives no improvement over Intel's last few generations of parts.
Which is why you're not going to want to buy an ultralight SSD notebook to do this kind of thing.
Really... that's not the sort of thing you use a laptop for as a dedicated machine (sure, in a pinch) -- if you're into crunching big numbers continuously, you want something that can get the job done well -- this is where traditional tower PCs excel.
Maybe one day it'll be possible in a handheld device, but that time isn't yet.
I've got an iMac, same vintage as yours. I'm running 10.8 on it with only 4GB of RAM and it runs flawlessly. Mind you, I went to the trouble to replacing the original HD with an SSD (highly recommended!). Never been in for repairs either. As much as I love the new Macs I just can't find a good reason to retire the one I have now. It's still a good light to medium use workhorse.
Yeah, they've never needed to upgrade the original HDD. They mostly use it for Internet, E-Mail, and MS Office, so an SSD wouldn't buy them much.
I think you missed a word. Its computers are seeing a drop in sales growth
Those are unit percentages. Its the opposite of growth. The word is decline.
Indeed I am a stockholder, so my focus is on them retaining their margins.
The you must be disappointed as those have shrunk too. Although hilariously perhaps your opinion is less important considering apples market share has crashed 38%. Perhaps shafting their customers is not working.
Honestly, they're doing a better job of this than Google....
The inclusion of thunderbolt is a disadvantage of the Apple PC's USB3 continues to steal Thunderbolt’s thunder. Its why Apple doesn't work with all kinds of peripherals...and has none built in. The Average customer never bought Apple...and those that do buy it less.
Google has growing market-share with its chromebooks. Apple could have gone for Microsoft throat, but contine to think ripping of its customers is best for its profits.
Have a previous generation 11", and not buying another air. Reasons:
- heavy. It looks like it should be light, but it's just as heavy as my 15" vaio.
- no backlit keys. This is pretty much a show stopper. No keyboard should not have backlit keys.
- only two USB ports
- no HDMI out without external adapter
- need an external converter for ethernet
- aluminum is a terrible material for the case. Dings, scratches and cuts.
- low screen resolution
- proprietary SSD
- no way to move remap control key under windows
I have one and it rules.
MBA is a pretty big chuck of apple computer sales, while ultrabooks are currently a curious sideline for the Windows world. It's somewhat of an iconic part of Jobs legacy - they were thin and light when thin and light wasn't cool. That is expected to change this fall as prices to put a Haswell powered ultrabook into the sub $500 territory, and major players really start vying for more sales in the lightweight category.
Though, to be honest, MBA may still end up with the segment mostly to itself - a larger percentage of a shrinking form factor. Many manufacturers are seeing the thin-and-light ultrabook segment as a place to go with convertibles which will act as both laptop and tablet. With W8 being able to function as a touch-centered OS, the tablet functionality adds a second dimension to the device. The move may not be for people to replace their computers with tablets, but for their computers to become tablets and cannibalize the dedicated tablet market. So far, nobody has come up with a really elegant hinge condition that allows this, but I expect it to be just a matter of time. And at the high end of the ultraportable market, the MBA is generally outclassed - though also outpriced - by high end options such as more memory, larger SSDs, higher screen resolutions, and better screen technology (IPS variants). Battery life is in favor of MBA at the moment, but that's primarily due to better - or less configurable - OS performance, and the MBA running Windows in "performance" mode results in much shorter battery life than OSX. Since the hardware is the same, it means that OSX is better at throttling back the system components to perform slower when it feels performance isn't needed. Kudos to Apple for baking that into the OS better, and they can be thankful that MS is (apparently) ignoring much of the power saving abilities since they don't have to worry about selling hardware (Surface excluded, and - lets face it - barely a niche).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's not even at the hardware level of a Haswell 'Ultrabook'.
Trouble is there are facts available.
What a shame you chose not to avail yourself of them!
The first is that Apple charges for the OS so you don't need to pretend it's value is greater than it is.
Not for new systems, and for upgrades it's usually around $20. You are totally missing the point of word "value" of course, you took it literally but the original poster was referring to usability over other systems, and of course things like AV software not being a mandatory full-time process.
Second is that Apple uses commodity hardware and has since the switch to Intel...Third is that Apple uses less "in-house" design than at any time in their history.
Here's where you really left the fact train and wandered off into the wilderness. It seems that at first jump to Intel that they used mostly commodity hardware, but over time that has been *less* the case. Stuff like very custom fans, power supplies, batteries, motherboard, keyboards, storage chips in place of SSD... etc. etc. Why on earth do you think Apple has *less* custom stuff now than before?
Apple refuses to even offer products that would have significant demand, like a midrange desktop that's not an all-in-one for instance.
And yet Apple's computer market share is holding steady while the market share of all those offering such systems is in decline. HMM...
More often they can't be bothered to get the best stuff ever, like the aging Mac Pro for instance.
And here your argument plummets to the earth in a giant fireball of nonsense, oh the humanity!
You say that Apple hardly does any custom PC stuff anymore. You say Apple doesn't really get the best stuff much. Well then, we have the Mac Pro to laugh at you with a fully custom design, many custom components and very high end memory chips, buses, IO ports and so on. I mean, come on!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy13datasum.pdf
I notice you are too cowardly to point out sales number for ANY other PC maker over the same quarters by comparison...
There is apparently no Apple victory you cannot spin into a tale of woe! But long ago everyone learned of your lies, so why do you still bother? You play to an empty house my friend, and are obviously starting to bore even yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"So... you can buy twice the amount of ram at -retail- for 30% less than Apple will charge you just to upgrade. THAT is the 'mac premium'."
Odd then, that Dell, Lenovo, and HP all charge this "mac premium" on their computers.
Seriously, you do realize *all* vendors do this, right? They're taking advantage of people who a)don't know they can get it cheaper elsewhere, or don't want to be bothered with the hassle of ordering, don't know how to install the component, or don't have the time b)don't want to be hassled with fingerpointing when something breaks c)are financing the purchase and thus want it all rolled into one d)are purchasing for non-personal use and are limited in terms of suppliers and whatnot.
Please help metamoderate.
I notice you are too cowardly to point out sales number for ANY other PC maker over the same quarters by comparison...
Perhaps you should google it, and use it reinforce your point. Personally I'm made up with Googles 70Million tablet activations. For PC shipments International Data Corporation and Gartner, both industry analyst firms have figures out. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/lenovo-is-top-supplier-as-global-pc-sales-fall/?_r=0 "Apple’s Mac computers were third, with 1.8 million units sold, a drop of 0.5 percent. Lenovo had a sales increase of 19.6 percent, to 1.5 million units, I.D.C. said. The Gartner numbers were roughly similar, though Gartner recorded a sharper sales drop for Apple."
Don't forget their cheapest desktop that can hold two hard drives and an optical drive is the Mac Pro.
The operative word being "holds". With USB and Thunderbolt, there is *zero* reason to have more than one hard drive slot inside a Mac.
The next Mac Pro doesn't have *any* internal drive bays. None of the creative pros, whom the machines are targeted at, are complaining. They're happily going to connect multi-terabyte RAID arrays to it via any of its six thunderbolt 2 ports, each of which offers more bandwidth than a multilane 6Gbps SAS port.
Please help metamoderate.
> The 54Wh battery looks it improves the portability a bit.
A bit? A lot. I went from a late 2010 13" Air to a 2013 13" Air, and it's amazing. I basically don't worry about battery life any more. At all. Charges in an hour or so, goes all damn day. I don't know what the performance is like for heavy 3D games, but I can take it out to the park and sit in the shade on a bright sunny day, with the display fighting a lot of ambient light for a couple of hours of drawing, and still have tons of power left.
egypt urnash minimal art.