The 11.6" is interesting, note it's 720p exactly (1366x768). Note also he said he sees it as the "future of the macbook", and the future of the macbook has no obviously removable/upgradable HDD (it's like RAM on the motherboard, so maybe it will somehow be upgradable).
People who didn't like Apple products yesterday aren't going to like them today either, but it's interesting stuff...
edit:
Flash storage ranges from 64 gigs to 256 gigs (depending on size/choices).
"I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone." --pg, http://paul.graham.usesthis.com/
On another note, the 2 GB of RAM on the Air worries me--that's not a large amount anymore, and I'm dubious on swapping a lot to the flash memory--it'll be faster than swapping to HD, but swapping--especially if it happens a lot, as it would with only 2 GB of RAM--is a use case that puts a lot of wear on flash memory.
4GB is $100 more. At some point apple stopped overcharging for RAM. They now charge more than the minimum you can find it for from fly by night places (As they do with everything) But in line with market prices.
I really (honestly) can't wait to see how they do in the market, because the prices are so steep compared to the metrics that other people look at when shopping for laptops (display size, storage, speed). I don't even think Apple is gouging here; the unibody construction and flash storage are both pretty expensive.
So, Apple is pretty much saying, "Yeah, price, we're really not gonna compete on that" ... if that ends up working out well for them, that could be an interesting signal to other companies.
I think higher pricing is actually an advantage for Apple. It sets them to be somewhat "luxury" products. Not "signal I am rich" luxury, but to the point that they are more desirable for it. If they were priced the same as other laptops, and were as ubiquitous, I think they would those some of their appeal to some people.
Apple is growing Mac sales at significantly higher rates than the rest of the PC market. Apple has been competitive with others on prices for about 20 years.
Apple doesn't compete on the low end of the market. The people who think Apple is expensive are the people who compare an ATOM internet pad to a Macbook Pro and think they are both the same value because they are both "laptops".
It totally is. You express anything that goes against the rigid leftist freetard ideology and you get voted down and people start putting words in your mouth, like you just did. (If you read my actual post, I never said you said that.)
Yeah, I mentioned RAM only because it looked like a "stick", and hopefully attached like RAM (meaning removable and not with some kind of proprietary connection).
I didn't spot anything that looked like a drive controller on-board. Form factor is much closer to RAM, too ... not that it matters much, it's just an interesting design decision.
Keep in mind that Apple uses the slowest SSDs available; they're so slow that stores like NewEgg don't carry them. The performance difference also depends on the workload; 2x is reasonable for sequential access.
I don't think they changed it. There is probably just not enough room for the glass pane. I expect future larger MacBooks to be shipped with the black bezel as before.
720p is a video standard that specifies a resolution of 1280x720 in progressive format (hence the name "720p") Apple, fortunately, seems to be sizing their screens based on HD formats, but giving some extra space for UI chrome.
Ah, good point. HD TVs are often (usually?) 1366x768. I guess they just picked that to provide room for chrome as you suggest? Seems an odd reason to go with 1366 and not 1360, and for video you'd think they'd promote using fullscreen anyway...
People assume apple wants absolute control. They don't. They want absolutely great user experiences. Personal Computers are a different category from mobile devices. Apple keeps your mobile device safe, but lets you browse any website you want, because the damage is minimal. On your computer, apple lets you do whatever you want.
They are a different class of product. I would not be surprised for apple to allow a parental control to lock a given mac down to just appstore apps. This is a nice feature.
Since steve jobs explicitly said this is not going to be the only way to install software, all this speculation is dishonest.
The funny thing is, he shouldn't have had to say that. You should know apple well enough (Rather than listen to the nonsense from the nondevelopers who are bosting page views by bashing apple) to know that apple would never force people to only buy mac software via the appstore.
EDIT: Looks more or less like iTunes. No word on the submission or approval process. Steve said something (can't remember what exactly) that indicated that this wasn't going to be the only way to get apps.
But they are still 'floating' in space (rather than top-aligned), and there appears to be no discrete 'title bar' area... I'm not too hot on this particular design myself.
On that note, I am interested to see how long it takes for open source projects to get onto the Apple sanctioned store, but also for someone to create a clone of it (like Cydia, somewhat)
But 1.4G? Really? I love how they keep saying "fast processor" in the presentation, where "fast processor" is apparently two steps backwards in CPU technology. :-) The GPU is decent, however.
Is it me, or does anyone else see the point? I hope this isn't the "future of notebooks", because that future would seem to be anemic performance.
I don't care about speed as long as I don't notice it. What the MBA has is probably enough for the vast majority of users, only the RAM seems weak to me.
You're going to notice 1.4G. Anyone who has taken more than 1000 photos and has put them in iphoto is going to notice 1.4G, or actually tried to use garageband is going to notice 1.4G.
Which is also why it is not a netbook. Apple haters have it both ways- they complain the processor is too slow compared to a macbook pro, and that the price is too high compared to an atom running netbook.
The bottleneck these days is so rarely CPU, it's disks. Doesn't look like the new Air has particularly speedy Flash storage, but it'll be so much faster than a spinning disk because of it. Keep the gigahertz, give me fast I/O.
Since getting a macbook, I've found the window management in OS X to be terribly confusing (Xmonad is easier to understand IMO), so I'm looking forward to seeing how the new window management features work. Hopefully this will solve my gripes.
Ooh, that's harsh, but I feel your pain. If you like tiling, though, you may want to check this out (although I don't use it): http://www.mizage.com/divvy/
Heh, I tried Chrome for the last event and got the same "check back later" message and though it was too busy. I didn't even see the 'Streaming video requires Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later' message.
But iChat has already done video conferencing on macs for some time, right? (Not to mention skype.) So this is different because it can also connect to iPhones, provided the iPhone user is on WiFi. Doesn't seem too useful to me.
Now, if they announced that Facetime would work over the cell network, at least that would be something new.
> So this is different because it can also connect to iPhones (...)
That's exactly why I think it's a big deal.
There are already techs/apps/whatever that let people video chat and video chat with phones, but Apple has a pretty good track record at exposing this kind of thing in a way such that non-techies actually use it.
I'm speaking in terms of FaceTime as a feature of the iPhone. As an iChat/OSX feature it is not remarkable, but as a iPhone 4 feature, you now have a significant pool of people you can now video chat with that you couldn't before (through Facetime).
All those people can use Skype. Skype is a more well known brand than FaceTime currently. Plus they can Skype their Windows buddies, but they can't FaceTime them.
What was with the multiple references to a "FaceTime Camera" anyway? I'm assuming it's not FaceTime only. I wouldn't call my Macbooks cam a "Skype Camera" either...
It's not really gonna be a big deal, but you gotta consider there's an Apple keynote being broadcasted live right now, that usually means RDF is pulsing at 100%, so my advise is hide and don't question anything!
I downvotted you because I think it's harmful to the discussion to be dismissive of others and their opinions, even if they appear to you to be under some kind of a spell.
FWIW, whatever he said sounded attractive to me, but I think they have painted themselves into a corner having saturated their own high-end market with gadgets, and are now getting into the sub $1k notebook \w keyboard market. As attractive as their offerings are, I have no doubt that it's no match to the stampede of Androids that's gonna run over them; equally speced at half the price.
Of course there will never be an android device that is equally specced but half the price. This is just the kind of lie that apple bashers have been spreading for decades. Falsely comparing the Air to a netbook running atom processors and claiming that Apple is overpriced. Reality is, for the market segments apple competes in, they generally deliver significantly more value for slightly less price. But getting an honest comparison from apple bashers is pointless-- they don't really care, they just hate apple.
You don't get to criticize me about name calling when you did so in the post I was responding to. If you don't want to be called an apple basher, don't say asinine things like "android device with the same specs for half the price."
It will be interesting to see if these 10.7 multitouch features work on my 3 1/2 year old Macbook Pro. Recent multitouch feature additions haven't worked, so I'm not terribly hopeful.
pretty sure multitouch requires hardware support. The last gen non-unibody MBP is the oldest model to support most multitouch gestures (more than just two finger scrolling, which has been around for at least 4 years)
Partly yes. A few months ago I saw the google IO link here, clicked on it and worked (Youtube live stream).
I see this, I click it, and I get a half-broken page telling me I can't view this. I then have the option of fishing for a URL, googling how to use it on my system, follow the advice (installing any codecs or applications if necessary) and finally maybe viewing it.
Now, what does Apple say about user experience again?
Apple has documented HTTP Live Streaming as an Internet-Draft, the first stage in the process of submitting it to the IETF as a proposed Internet standard.
The 11.6" is interesting, note it's 720p exactly (1366x768). Note also he said he sees it as the "future of the macbook", and the future of the macbook has no obviously removable/upgradable HDD (it's like RAM on the motherboard, so maybe it will somehow be upgradable).
People who didn't like Apple products yesterday aren't going to like them today either, but it's interesting stuff...
edit:
Flash storage ranges from 64 gigs to 256 gigs (depending on size/choices).