Unlike the other thin member of Apple's Mac lineup, the MacBook Air chassis hasn't changed over the past three years. Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0 and faster SSDs are all on the menu this year. From the outside not a lot has changed, but that doesn't mean there's any less to talk about. The 11-inch model still starts at $999, but the 13-inch version is only $200 more. Today the MacBook Air is even more affordable. It was a bold move but one that was very forward looking. Apple took an ultraportable and made it its mainstream notebook. The very first MacBook Air, by comparison, retailed for $1800. And the 13-inch would only cost $300 more. The new 11-inch model would start at just $999. In 2010 Apple changed the expectations of cost with the MacBook Air.
I spent years in pursuit of the perfect ultraportable in college over a decade ago (30 is the new 20 right?), and generally came away disappointed and empty handed. Ultraportables prior to the MacBook Air's arrival in 2008 typically sacrificed in one or more of the above areas. The MacBook Air continues to be one of them.ĭespite the recent Ultrabook frenzy, the MacBook Air was one of the first (if not the first) to marry performance with usability, screen size/resolution, portability and battery life. Until then, there are going to be a lot of different form factors, all with very compelling features. Maybe it wasn't just convenient rhetoric.
If your tablet uses smartphone hardware, and can dock into a notebook or Thunderbolt itself into a desktop, is all of this a lot of confusion before client computing moves entirely to smartphones? NVIDIA said it would happen publicly (even Intel did so privately a few years ago). Nearly every single Microsoft partner is mixing tablets and Ultrabooks. Take a step away from the Mac world and you'll see the rest of the market is going through its own confusing period.
And thanks to Turbo Boost, you do get similar performance in lightly threaded workloads. Users who were once forced into Pro territory because of RAM and storage requirements can now happily live with an Air. You can now order a MacBook Air with up to 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, for the first time in MacBook Air history. The MacBook Air doesn't help in the clarity department. It's not bad, in fact it's quite amazing, but it confuses the general order of things. It's a thicker, faster MacBook Air (with an awesome display). Add a Retina Display and now it's just tons of power. The MacBook Pro once stood for tons of power plus upgradability.
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