
Report: Apple Orders 380K Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs - Semteksam
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/report_apple_orders_380k_sandy_bridge_macbook_airs/
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ghshephard
As a longtime user of Dell Latitudes and HP Pavilions, I promise you that the
MBAir will blow you away. I always pooh poohed "Light and Thin" - until I had
a light and thin laptop, with SSDs, and a 1440x900 13.3" display, with
Terminal.App (which is 50%+ of the reason I love OS X) and insanely addictive
(and useful) touch pad).

The only major downside of the MBAir is that it is so competitive a form
factor for an iPad, it becomes hard(er) to justify getting the iPad - the
MBair does 90% of the stuff that I use my iPad for, resulting in much less
usage of the iPad, therefore, to some degree, you can say that purchasing a
MBair will result in those people who own an iPad from getting less value from
that iPad.

Back handed compliment I guess.

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benihana
The touchpad on my Mac laptops are the reason I'll never buy another non-Mac
laptop again. Best tactile surface I've ever felt.

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fuzionmonkey
I agree. I won't even consider a Windows laptop because of this.

Though it is a shame that Apple has a gimped touchpad driver in Windows. The
touchpad in OS X and Windows isn't even comparable.

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r00fus
I am likely going to fall for a larger MB Air... if they sell a 15" model,
I'll be the first in line.

However, I'm still not sure if I like the non-discrete video. Anyone with an
MBP'11 that only has Intel HD video care to tell me if it's any good for
gaming?

At least the current MB Air has discrete video.

~~~
mestudent
Depends on what kind of gaming you want to do, playing some passive wow (I
hear raids take up a lot) would probably do ok, or most of the simpler games
out there. But even something like hl2 will still have trouble with intel
graphics, not really for gamers.

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fingerprinter
I am genuinely intrigued by the MBA, but I can't seem to get my head around
getting that instead of a MBP 13" (I would be getting a MBA 13", 11" is too
small for me).

Aside from weight, which isn't a real concern for me in a MBP 13", if I decked
out a MBP 13" w/ an SSD, is there a compelling reason to still go with an MBA?
One of my main concerns is that the MBA can only go to 4GB of ram while the
MBP can theoretically go to 16GB. Seems more future proofing etc.

Just so you know, I do mostly iOS, Android, and Web dev (Ruby, Python, JS and
Erlang).

I also have several Ubuntu instances up at all times if I'm doing iOS or I run
Ubuntu the majority of the time if I'm doing other stuff (Ubuntu is still a
better dev environment, IMO, but that is for a different post :) )

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ddemchuk
my main machine is a 4gb 13" MBA, I do heavy web development with music
playing and photoshop open all day long, along with skype, and the thing never
skips a beat. 6 hours of battery even after 9 months, weighs less than 3
pounds.

It's the best computer I've ever owned. And it's my first Mac, I'm not much of
a fanboy.

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joebadmo
These things keep getting harder to resist, and I'm a Windows user.

Can anyone tell me if it's true that Windows on boot camp doesn't take
advantage of all of the power saving features, and so doesn't last as long?
And if so, how big is the difference?

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markkanof
Paul Thurrott did a review of running Windows on a Macbook Air and seems to
indicate that the battery life is in the same general time as Apple estimates
for OS X.

[http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-
wi...](http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-
windows-7-part-imperfect-storm-135952)

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potatolicious
I've been waiting for this - my MBP15 is long in the tooth and desperately
needs a refresh. I don't need nearly the same amount of raw power I used to,
so a MBA is going to be a blessing on my back!

~~~
pk2200
You may not need the power, but you're going to get it. :) The new MBA will be
much faster than your old MBP.

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dmorre
A nicely integrated GSM SIM-port would be appriciated

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jaydz
Sweet built-in DRM!

~~~
albemuth
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Other_details> Sounds like quite a
big turn off, I wonder how bad this will be in practice

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drivebyacct2
Why? I don't mind Netflix securing their content that they deliver to my
device. It doesn't force me to use it by any means. As for the "vPro"
technology, that has been available in many modern Intel computers and is
obviously only used if intentionally utilized by a corporate IT environment.

I don't see anything there that would prevent me from easily choose Sandy
Bridge, despite not really liking the idea of DRM.

I don't know why people are surprised by this. I try to explain how the DRM
components of Netflix work and why they're able to be used in Linux devices
with hardware security. Android has DRM providers that are backed all the way
to hardware, I'm assuming this Netflix Chrome extension will leverage some new
DRM framework that will be part of Chrome (maybe, maybe not Chromium). And
really, in terms of everything, I think it's reasonable.

~~~
jodrellblank
"Why? I don't mind Netflix securing their content that they deliver to my
device."

DRM is like those websites which forbid you from right clicking on a picture,
and incidentally break tabbed browsing. It's a stupid idea in principle to
give someone else control over my computer so they can forbid me from doing
something.

I understand why _they_ want it, I don't understand why _I_ want it.

Consider the present: text arrives on your computer, you can copy it, paste
it, edit it. Unless you have Microsoft Office DRM modules, then the document
author decides what you can do with it and to whom you can email it. Consider
the future: Every email, document, website, video stream becomes an extension
of the sender or author and your computer is reduced to a dumb view-only
device.

Also, there's the argument that the current state is (people who pay, who are
hassled by DRM) and (people who don't pay, who avoid the DRM
hassles).Criminals get the better experience, people who pay get things they
practically can't backup and use on other devices or sample to quote, even in
jurisdictions where they have those rights.

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Devilboy
One of those will me mine. I've never purchased a computer or laptop from
Apple before but I can't resist the temptation any more.

