There's a bit of sleight of hand on their Thunderbolt Display page [1]. The first image is of a MacBook Air hooked up to one of the new displays, but when they talk about "The ultimate docking station" they show a MacBook Pro.<p>This is because the Thunderbolt and power ports are next to one another on the MBP, but on the Air they're on different sides of the machine, which is going to make it a lot less elegant.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.apple.com/uk/displays/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/uk/displays/</a>
Now the questions are:<p>* how warm will the MacBook Air get with the Thunderbolt in use / not in use? Will the fan kick in more often?<p>* what effect has the i5 or i7 wrt. to heat?<p>* will the average battery runtime be better or worse? Are the Apple numbers realistic?<p>From what I hear, the Thunderbolt MacBook Pros are using the fans to cool the machine more often.
I'm going to be purchasing the 13" MBA, and I'm trying to decide between the baseline version and the maxed out version. I would pay the $100 to upgrade to the i7, but one can only do so by also paying $300 for the 256GB of memory.<p>Honestly, the 256GB memory vs 128GB isn't important to me (most of my stuff is small files or in the cloud), so I'm finding it hard to justify $400 for the better processor.<p>Any advice from those with MBA in the wild? This is replacing a 3 year old MB I use as my primary machine, and my laptops tend to last me at least 2 years.
I'm really not a fan of their non-US pricing, it rarely works out well for international buyers.<p>For example the $1,199 model costs £999 in the UK. $1,199 is equal to £744. So to buy it from the UK store you're paying 34% more?<p>For the cheapest option, $999 in US store, the UK price is 37% more. And I'm too lazy to work out the 13" price differences.
Also, new Mac Mini:<p><a href="http://www.apple.com/macmini/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/macmini/</a><p>NO Optical Drive!<p>Includes Thunderbolt.<p>Supports an SSD plus a regular hard drive.<p>HDMI port.<p>I really have no idea how much of this is new features, though.
For anyone else confused by the lack of DisplayPort:<p><a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20043524-263.html" rel="nofollow">http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20043524-263.html</a>
Still no Gigabit Ethernet adapter ?!? Even with the thunderbolt port ? Come on Apple, you can do better ....<p>Apart from that slight pet peeve of mine, those looks like really great replacement for my now aging MacBook unibody.
This is surely a nice update. But I _really_ miss configuration options.
The only option seems to be<p>1.7GHz i5 -> 1.8GHz i7<p>No choice of flash no choice of ram :/
I love my current air. It's a really nice piece of engineering but even
4GB of ram are sometimes full. With an more powerful CPU more RAM would
be a nice choice...<p>TB, Backlit KB and a faster CPU are very nice though.
Does anyone use an Air for a lot of Photoshop work? My wife does photography on the side and is looking for a laptop to go with her iMac. Seems like the screen would be too small?
While I'm sure this is nice, I don't have a compelling reason to upgrade from my existing MBA (and I really wanted to!). I'd have loved to have seen 8GB RAM as an option.
Space constraints or not, the 4GB limitation is annoying. I'm using a two month old 13" MBA, which will go to replace the wife's 2007 white MacBook once I get to the Apple Store, and the dashed hope of getting 8GB has dampened my enthusiasm. But not cancelled it completely ;)
One interesting thing to note is almost all the Mac's now have ATI cards, some Intel, and no NVIDIA. <a href="http://www.apple.com/mac/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/mac/</a><p>When did this change happen? What would this mean for someone developing cuda apps, then?
A maxed out 11" MBA (which unfortunately comes to a mere $50 less than the comparable 13") with a 27" Cinema Display sounds like my dream rig - complete flexibility between portability and comfort/expandability (when connected to the spacious and port-packed display).
I had been eyeing up a Samsung series 9 laptop, but the Air now has a faster processor, larger ssd drive and a lower price.<p>Competitors are going to be VERY hard pressed to compete with this device I think.
D'oh. We just received three new MacBook Airs on Monday that we ordered last week. We haven't even deployed them yet. I wonder if Apple offers any ability to ship these back and get the new faster ones.
I just bought the maxed out 13 inch air in October, and it's been a great dev machine (rails, ios) someone please talk me out getting the newest shiniest for no good reason
Any good recommendations for a sleeve or messenger bag that is good for the 13" MBA and is form fitting so it doesn't slide around inside the bag/sleeve?
I am about to embark on a 18-month long data mining project, where I'll be developing Python NLP software for recognizing patterns in textual data.<p>Will the MBA be a good machine for this? Ideally I should get something with more horsepower, but if the MBA suffices, then I feel its portability will really increase my productivity.
Great specs to go along with the great looks. I'm still disappointed that the smaller model uses a squished 16:9 ratio screen, it's useless for writing anything longer than a tweet.<p>Also, I hope the now backlit keyboards see some improvement in tactile feel, I thought these were a weak point on the previous generation.
Isn't the Intel HD 3000 a downgrade from the previous-gen MBA's Nvidia GeForce 320?<p><a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-3000.37948.0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-3000.37948.0....</a>
<a href="http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-320M.28701.0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-320M.28701.0.htm...</a>