Not having standard ports would be pretty annoying -- at most offices, there are lots of power adapters left in common areas (I think at CloudFlare it's all MagSafe w/ MagSafe2 adapters, or MagSafe 2, and I've tried to make sure they're all 85W; outside of tech, I've seen Lenovo 20V the same way).<p>Having HDMI out built-in on the rMBP15, vs. needing to carry a mdp/tb2 to whatever dongle all the time, is a plus too.<p>USB 3 A ports are probably a minimum for me.<p>If I wanted no ports at all, I'd just use the iPad.<p>I don't think I could deal with OS X 10.10 on less than 16GB, either.
I'm actually looking to go the other way; I want a desktop replacement. I dont care about size or weight, I just want a big screen and a huge battery. My current 17" MBP is just about perfect. The only downside is that the screen is not Retina and they aren't making them anymore.<p>As the laptop offerings get smaller and smaller my frustration grows larger and larger. Sure, I can use my big monitor at work, but what about when I travel, or work from "home"? I'm willing to lug around a huge laptop if it means that I can see the screen and get actual work done.
For any of the Apple adverse, Samsung has already been showing off their 12.2" notebook at CES [0,1]. Dell also has an interesting small-bezel XPS 13 starting at $800, but I'm sure that will end up a bit thicker than the MBA 12" [2].<p>✓ Fanless.<p>✓ 700 nit low-glare 2560×1600 display.<p>✓ Ports (μHDMI and SD reader is better than nothing).<p>✓ Apple-esque price tag.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347" rel="nofollow">http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ</a> (Brad Linder's hands on)<p>[2]: <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-edition-announced-at-ces-2015" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-xps-13-2015-ed...</a>
What might be most interesting about the USB3 connector will be the opportunity for compromising such machines. People might be cautious about plugging in unknown or unexpected hardware and flash drives to their machines, etc, but they'll always recognise what looks like a charger and won't think for a minute that it might be doing anything other than supplying power.<p>Could be very interesting, especially in office locations where charger sharing goes on. Or even at home, how do you know that /your/ charger isn't the special version that not only powers the MacBook while also appearing as a bus device that's backdooring your machine and radiating your secrets back over your mains cables to an adversary?<p>Lots and lots of fun to be had there.
It's a recurring pattern that Apple has to re-invent the entry level laptops every once in a while because they've become so powerful and versatile the target audience for the "pro" laptops starts to prefer them over the heavier, more expensive and overly powerful high-end alternatives.<p>Personally I have found myself continuously switching between the "pro" and "regular" offerings ever since the days of Powerbook and iBook, and if a 12" Air would be nothing more than a newer, better Air with a retina screen I would probably pick it over the 13" Pro I currently use.<p>Apple regularly moves the goalposts to avoid cannibalizing the high-end line.
As a former 12" Powerbook owner/lover and current 11" Macbook Air owner, I want my 4:3 aspect ratio back. Screen real estate is at a premium on a machine this small, so I want more pixels (more area). And carrying a elongated rectangle around is no easier than carrying a more squarish rectangle. (iPad and Chromebook figured this out.)
As a frequent traveler, I regret replacing my 3-year-old 4GB + 128SSD with a 13" rMBP. I like the rMPB, but I should have kept my Air and gotten a quad-core 15" rMBP. The point? I'll pay a lot, in terms of cash and power, for portability and battery life.<p>I've been eager to move off of OSX for some years [1], but with this rumored laptop, they'll probably sink their teeth in me for another 3 years.<p>[1] If anyone knows of a laptop that is portable, that supports 16GB of RAM and works well with Linux, please let me know. Even the newly announced X1 and XPS13 are limited to 8GB (and I assume they get relatively poor battery life on Linux)
So, you can't charge this supposed new laptop while you are at a desk with it attached to an external monitor? What will Apple do, make you buy a special Apple monitor that allows you to connect more peripherals?
Something that hardly ever gets mentioned, yet makes a huge difference to how productive I can be on a given system, is whether it has proper cursor keys or not.<p>Nearly all PC laptops, even many otherwise high-end ones, have had this horrendous cursor key arrangement for a few years now: a compromised design for a lower cost, one-piece, rectangular keyboard. It's one of the reasons I switched.<p>I really hope this isn't the start of a trend for Apple. At the very least, I hope sensible key layout can be a differentiator for the Pro line.
As a heavy vim user, I immediately thought "hopefully Apple would <i>never</i> do something so ridiculous as moving the power key to the upper left, right above the ESC key." Right?
I'm thinking more a Thunderbolt 3 connector - not USB type C.<p>TB3 allows for 100W power transmission. Your Thunderbolt Display can then plug into your laptop with a single cable, including charging needs.<p>Additionally, TB3 comes with a new connector - which is smaller vertically. Perfect for a new thinner MBA.
I have a 2012 MBA. I find myself taking my iPad on my shorter trips, especially since I can work from Dropbox or Evernote. I do not see this new MBA as replacing my current one. I feel I have already won my chase for "thin and light."
It looks like the folks at Apple insist on misinterpreting the "less is more" principle. Apple is becoming more each day a dictatorship company who thinks that whatever product it launches, they will be loved as they were in 2000's.