Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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".
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.
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?
Sounds like you need a 13". Thunderbolt, and an SD Card make the USB ports go pretty far. Battery life is amazing.
Backlit keyboard is now standard.
I find myself doing more wirelessly, between AppleTV and wifi-attached NAS devices. I had gripes with my 2010 Air, but this is a whole new ball game.