
The 12” MacBook Air: Back to Basics? - r0h1n
http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/01/the-macbook-air-returning-to-its-roots/
======
rdl
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).

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.

USB 3 A ports are probably a minimum for me.

If I wanted no ports at all, I'd just use the iPad.

I don't think I could deal with OS X 10.10 on less than 16GB, either.

~~~
krat0sprakhar
Just out of curiosity, what do you do with 16GB of RAM? I'm running OS X 10.10
on 4GB Macbook Air and I have faced no issues whatsoever. My general usage
includes Chrome with ~20 tabs open, a Vagrant VM, terminal and text editor.

~~~
HashNuke
When away from a power socket, I use Safari instead of Chrome. Saves battery a
LOT. Was able to run 11" Air with 19 tabs on Safari and with vim (on iTerm).
2hrs later still had 95% battery left.

~~~
npongratz
> _When away from a power socket, I use Safari instead of Chrome. Saves
> battery a LOT._

Were you comparing Safari with 0 extensions vs. Chrome with 0 extensions? Or
does each have a different extension load?

I will often fall back to Safari if a page doesn't render properly in Chrome,
but that's because I installed a bunch of extensions on Chrome and have
consciously left Safari pure as the driven snow. It's a different problem
domain, but I know certain extensions can use resources in surprising ways.

~~~
schrodinger
One factor is that I believe chrome has flash by default, and Safari does not

~~~
STRML
It's not just that. I see nearly 2x better battery life using Safari over
Chrome on a 15" rMBP, and I have plugins turned off (click to play). It just
uses a lot less CPU, full stop. I don't know what the real difference is, but
I suspect Safari just does a better job of idling than Chrome does.

~~~
rmckayfleming
When you click the battery dropdown on the top right, Chrome is consistently
listed as an "Apps Using Significant Energy". On previous releases of OS X I
also noticed that by default it would use my dedicated GPU at all times,
whereas Safari would not (not sure if this is still true).

~~~
STRML
This is no longer true, but it still does request the dGPU on certain pages,
such as the Chrome Web Store.

What's especially obnoxious about that behavior is that if you disable the
dGPU, it works just fine. So what's the point?

Also, one would expect Chrome's own Web Store to work well in Chrome... but
Google's attitude toward long-standing bugs is anything but exemplary.

------
Corrado
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.

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.

~~~
gambiting
Then may I perhaps interest you in this monstrosity?

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-
keyb...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7495073/msi-mechanical-keyboard-
gt80-titan-laptop-ces)

This is a laptop with a full mechanical keyboard, 2x graphics cards and a 350W
power brick.

But if that is not insane enough, there is a company called Eurocom, which
will build you this monster:
[http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec](http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure%281,234,0%29ec)

It can be configured with a 12-core(24 thread) Xeon CPU + 2 GPUs + 4 hard
drives. It needs TWO 300W power bricks to function, and is supposed to be used
as a mobile server.

~~~
Corrado
Wow, I think those are a bit more than I bargained for. :) I would still like
to stay in the OS X family; the hardware/software combination is just too good
to pass up. Thanks for the alternative view though.

~~~
arm
Depending on the hardware combination, you may be able to make some of those
Eurocom laptops into usable Hackintoshes though.

------
trynumber9
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].

✓ Fanless.

✓ 700 nit low-glare 2560×1600 display.

✓ Ports (μHDMI and SD reader is better than nothing).

✓ Apple-esque price tag.

[0]:
[http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347](http://www.samsung.com/us/news/24347)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2vYob7rzQ)
(Brad Linder's hands on)

[2]: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-
xps-13-2015-ed...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/6/7501385/dell-
xps-13-2015-edition-announced-at-ces-2015)

~~~
gambiting
>>2560×1600 display.

What is Samsung doing to make sure that this resolution is usable at this
size?

~~~
exprL
They are probably expecting their OS of choice (that is, Windows) to do it's
job, since it is marketed as being usable on such combination. For the most
part and by itself it probably is, but many desktop applications still have
problems, or so I've heard to this date.

2560×1600 is not a bad choice, however, since at 200 % scaling it has 1280×800
logical pixels, which is perfectly normal for such a monitor. If only Windows
could reliably tell which applications do NOT support higher DPI displays even
though they say they do, they could be just doubled in size and still be
perfectly usable, if a bit blurry (you don't get aliasing effects, though). I
guess Microsoft'll just have to make _yet another_ API for DPI-awareness to
catch the rest of the offenders.

------
jamesbrownuhh
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.

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?

Lots and lots of fun to be had there.

~~~
mikhailt
You can say the same thing about any other port, USB 3 is not the exception.

There's a big bug with both Firewall and TB that can bypass the security and
infect the firmwares and so on.

------
santacluster
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.

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.

Apple regularly moves the goalposts to avoid cannibalizing the high-end line.

~~~
morsch
This time around it's the opposite, the Pro line has been creeping towards the
Air line (from TFA): _" The 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro aren’t that
different—$300 gets you an extra half a pound, a Retina display, and a
processor that’s an awful lot faster."_

------
dottrap
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.)

------
latch
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.

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.

[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)

~~~
aurora72
Have a look at Lenovo's X series.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I was pretty disappointed with the X1, was getting RSI from the trackpoint,
while its touchpad was unusable. I got an rMBP and can't be happier. Hopefully
the precision touchpad in the new XPS 13 really works.

~~~
ngcazz
Got a Dell M3800 expecting a decent trackpad. It's a premium machine and even
sub-$500 Acers bring precision trackpads now, right? Wrong, it's
excruciatingly low-res and persistently jumps by unpredictable distances on
clicking.

------
ZanyProgrammer
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?

~~~
cptskippy
What's stopping the monitor from charging the laptop? The spec affords such
things.

How cool would it be if every monitor in the future used the exact same type
of connector and also doubled as a power supply for anything connected to it?
Same thing goes for ethernet.

------
robert_tweed
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.

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.

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.

~~~
falcolas
Given the space required for proper cursor keys, I wouldn't expect to see them
as much anymore except on external keyboards.

Also, given that Apple's wireless keyboard and all current laptops have the
tiny "T" version, I wouldn't hold my breath for them to change course anytime
soon.

------
wyclif
As a heavy vim user, I immediately thought "hopefully Apple would _never_ do
something so ridiculous as moving the power key to the upper left, right above
the ESC key." Right?

~~~
falcolas
I recommend retraining muscle memory to one of two things. Ctrl-[, which works
a treat with capslocks mapped to control, and/or mapping kj or jj to escape
(can cause problems in a few instances - pasting random text without `:set
paste`, and the Dutch language).

Apple keyboard escape buttons have always been a bit harder to hit (imo), so I
have trained up both of those shortcuts to good effect.

------
BillinghamJ
I'm thinking more a Thunderbolt 3 connector - not USB type C.

TB3 allows for 100W power transmission. Your Thunderbolt Display can then plug
into your laptop with a single cable, including charging needs.

Additionally, TB3 comes with a new connector - which is smaller vertically.
Perfect for a new thinner MBA.

------
rrtulsa
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."

------
mmphosis
√ no fans.

√ retina display.

~~~
f_ff
Those are square root symbols. Here's a check mark: ✔︎

(In case you didn't notice – perhaps because of your font settings.)

~~~
arm
At the risk of being pedantic, in addition to U+2714 (HEAVY CHECK MARK), I’d
like to point out a few other check marks represented in Unicode that could be
used as well:

☑ (U+2611 BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK)

✅ (U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK)

✓ (U+2713 CHECK MARK)

~~~
smackfu
First one renders rather illegibly at this font size here on my Windows
machine in Chrome.

~~~
arm
Yeah, I think characters like that (such as the glyphs for the Emoticons
Unicode block (U+1F600〜4F) that the font Symbola¹ uses) aren’t as legible on
low DPI displays at font sizes like 12pt, which is even worse when you’re
using them in plain text where everything has to be the same size. On 'HiDPI'
or 'Retina' displays though, even in the situations mentioned above, they look
razor sharp.

Here’s an example of how it looks on an iPad Air².

――――――

¹ — [http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/](http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/)

² —
[http://cl.ly/image/0r2d2x3F1P0F/U%2B2611.PNG](http://cl.ly/image/0r2d2x3F1P0F/U%2B2611.PNG)

~~~
smackfu
Huh, surprising green checkbox there on the iPad.

~~~
arm
Ah, yeah. It actually shows up like that on my OS X v10.9 computer as well.
This webpage’s stylesheet specifies that comments should use either Verdana,
Geneva, or a sans-serif font. Since neither Verdana or Geneva have a glyph for
U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK, the browser uses font substitution¹ to look for
another font on the system that does have a glyph for that codepoint and use
it instead. (Font substitution is pretty much necessary since it’s currently
impossible for one font to hold Unicode’s repertoire of 110,000+ characters;
even the OpenType format is limited to a maximum of 65,536 glyphs).

Both iOS 5+ and OS X v10.7+ include the font Apple Color Emoji, and that font
does have a glyph for U+2705 (the same glyph you see in my screen shot)², so
OS X and iOS text rendering systems use it. On your Windows computer, I’m
guessing the font that was substituted for Verdana/Geneva there was Segoe UI
Symbol³.

As an aside, I’m pretty interested on how OS X and Windows decide on which
font to use when there are multiple fonts installed containing the required
glyph. For example, I have two other fonts on my OS X system that have a glyph
for U+2705 (Everson Mono and Symbola), but OS X always seems to consistently
pick Apple Color Emoji’s glyph. Maybe OS X’s text rendering system goes
through the fonts in alphabetical order and uses the first one it finds
containing the required glyph? It would be great if end users could have a bit
more control over the font substitution process. I know it’s possible to do in
some text editors like Emacs⁴, but I believe that programs like that use their
own text rendering systems instead of that supplied by the OS (could be wrong
though).

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to add, as for having the glyph be a green box with a white
inner check mark, The Unicode Consortium actually mentions how the glyphs
should look for characters with BLACK or WHITE in the name⁵:

 _“Q: What about characters whose names include WHITE or BLACK?_

 _A: Names of symbols such as BLACK MEDIUM SQUARE or WHITE MEDIUM SQUARE are
not meant to indicate that the corresponding character must be presented in
black or white, respectively; rather, the use of “black” and “white” in the
names is generally just to contrast filled versus outline shapes, or a darker
color fill versus a lighter color fill. Similarly, in other symbols such as
the hands U+261A BLACK LEFT POINTING INDEX and U+261C WHITE LEFT POINTING
INDEX, the words “white” and “black” also refer to outlined versus filled, and
do not indicate skin color.”_

――――――

¹ —
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution)

² —
[http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-di...](http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode#block-2-dingbats)

³ —
[http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsuppor...](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2705/fontsupport.htm)

⁴ — [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-
emacs-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491202/overriding-
emacs-23-font-substitutions)

⁵ —
[http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#6](http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html#6)

------
aurora72
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.

~~~
masklinn
> Apple is becoming more each day a dictatorship company

As the article notes, the original Air was very similar to the purported new
Air. It had a micro-DVI, a single USB port and a headphone jack.

It didn't quite succeed, but I'd guess more because of its anemic performances
(SSD was an expensive option to an already costly machine, the CPU wasn't
exactly a performance star, and let's not talk about the GMA X3100) than its
I/O limitations. And if anything things have gotten better since (more
wireless and "cloud" with less physical connectivity required).

~~~
gambiting
And a separate power connector.

This is the biggest issue with this Air - that if you want to charge this
laptop and use anything, even a USB mouse with it, you will need a usb adapter
with power pass-through. It's just stupid. They should have left Magsafe 2 on
it + USB-C, or at least 2 USB-C ports, so you can use one for charging and
another for video/data.

~~~
masklinn
Not that we know they have removed it, this is a render based on rumours, and
it conflicts with other rumours (such as the removal of F-keys)

