The New MacBook Airs Have Arrived

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tipb.com/2011/07/20/apple-introduces-macbook-airs-stuff/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheIphoneBlog+(TiPb:+iPhone,+iPad,+iPod)' target='_blank'>http://www.tipb.com/2011/07/20/appl...ne,+iPad,+iPod)</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"To coincide with the release of Mac OS X Lion, Apple has also released a new generation of MacBook Airs, Mac Minis, and LED displays (now dubbed Thunderbolt displays). The most interesting to us, of course, is the MacBook Air, particularly the 11-inch version which is a real - if more expensive - rival to the iPad."</em></p><p><img height="363" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1311173207.usr105634.jpg" width="560" /></p><p>The big news of the day, new MacBook Airs. And with some nice additions, namely:</p><ul><li>Intel Cor i5 or i7</li><li>Thunderbolt I/O Port</li><li>Backlit Keyboard (thank you Apple).</li></ul><p>OS X Lion was also released today [<a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=VoxLcfp5Si4&amp;subid=&amp;offerid=146261.1&amp;type=10&amp;tmpid=3909&amp;RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-lion/id444303913?mt=12" target="_blank">affiliate link</a>] and will work very nicely with these new versions of the MacBook Air, especially with the new gesture controls via trackpad. But I'm still impressed by my 11-inch MacBook Air, so I don't think I will be upgrading just yet (hardware wise, I am going to upgrade to Lion). How about you, are you going to pony up and get one of the new versions?</p>

[Jason Dunn]

There's a lot to like about the new Air, but I'm disappointed to see that Apple isn't offering more than 4 GB of RAM. For anyone running virtual machines, 4 GB isn't going to cut it. Otherwise though, these are very impressive machines.

[Dyvim]

Agree with Jason about the RAM. Why not offer 8 GB as BTO option?
I could probably get by with the top-end 11" Air as a dev machine if it had 8 GB. 4 GB is not a lot for the max on a brand new machine with a brand new OS.

In other news, I was glad to see the return of the $599 mini. Those can be configured to 8 GB and even a quad core processor in the server model plus there are SSD options. Would love to upgrade my 2 y.o. mini.

[Jason Dunn]

In other news, I was glad to see the return of the $599 mini. Those can be configured to 8 GB and even a quad core processor in the server model plus there are SSD options. Would love to upgrade my 2 y.o. mini.

Yeah, it seems like Apple finally took the leash off the Mini and is allowing it to become a more serious computer. Anyone using it as an HTPC with DVDs though will be irked to see them remove the optical drive. It wasn't a shocking move though, Apple likes doing that sort of thing. :)

[humayunl]

For anyone running virtual machines, 4 GB isn't going to cut it. Otherwise though, these are very impressive machines.

That would be me. I was looking to get the new 13" with a 256GB SSD and install parallels on it to use Win7 on it alongside OSX. I know 8 GB would be ideal but is 4GB really a bad idea? My uses are simple just outlook and office mostly.

With the 4GB RAM limitation, should I just drop the idea of an MBA and look for either a MBP with 8GB or a windows laptop or will it still be usable with 4gb and 8GB is just a 'nice to have'?

I'm glad you brought this up because now I can ask and make a more informed decision. I need to run both OSs.

[Jason Dunn]

That would be me. I was looking to get the new 13" with a 256GB SSD and install parallels on it to use Win7 on it alongside OSX. I know 8 GB would be ideal but is 4GB really a bad idea? My uses are simple just outlook and office mostly.

I've never run Parallels - does it dynamically use RAM, or do you have to allocate it to the VM 100% when it's running? When I use Microsoft's Virtual PC software and I allocate 2 GB of RAM to the VM, I shave 2 GB off the main system's use when the VM is running. I'm comfortable with that because I have 8 GB of RAM in the system. It might be workable with 4 GB, but only if I gave the VM 1 GB.

Ultimately, it will work, but the performance might not be great...unless Parallels does something smart with RAM allocation (and maybe it does).

[humayunl]

I've never run Parallels - does it dynamically use RAM, or do you have to allocate it to the VM 100% when it's running?

Ultimately, it will work, but the performance might not be great...unless Parallels does something smart with RAM allocation (and maybe it does).

I've never used it either so I don't know... maybe other readers who've done this can shed light on this. I think Parallels give you both options (dynamic allocation of RAM or static) but I am not sure.

[Dyvim]

There's also the Bootcamp option: just boot straight in to Windows instead of using a VM. With Parallels you can actually do both- run your Bootcamp partition as a VM from within OS X, or skip Parallels and boot directly into that partition.

I own Parallels but rarely use it- I just boot into Windows instead, so I can't answer your question about whether it can use dynamic RAM. I know that by default it wants to allocate a fixed amount (e.g. 1 or 2 GB) to the VM.

If it's just Outlook and Office you're after, you could just get those for Mac (it's an option anyway).

[humayunl]

There's also the Bootcamp option: just boot straight in to Windows instead of using a VM.

If it's just Outlook and Office you're after, you could just get those for Mac (it's an option anyway).

Yes I will prefer not having to use the dual OS approach if I can avoid it but with Zune (I am not giving up WP7) and maybe other sutff I haven't thought of yet, I think I will need to keep windows alive somewhere.

But I don't want to use bootcamp and boot exclusively into windows because then I know I will get lazy and never spend the time to boot into OSX and start to learn my way around it.

So the question is, will the 4GB do or is the performance going to be a noticeable restriction? or is the only way to reasonably do this is to do it mutually exclusively i.e. use bootcamp and boot into either os ?

[Dyvim]

So the question is, will the 4GB do or is the performance going to be a noticeable restriction? or is the only way to reasonably do this is to do it mutually exclusively i.e. use bootcamp and boot into either os ?
For sure Parallels will work under 4 GB. That's what I have on my MacBook Pro and I know it worked even back when I had just a Core 2 Duo on my previous MBP (the new Air out-performs that handily).

But will it be fast enough for you? That's a more personal question, which I can't answer. One person's painfully slow is ok for another. It might be a good idea to wait a few weeks and see if you can find reports of folks running Parallels on the new MBA's and what they think about it.

Certainly Parallels would run faster on a comparably equipped 8 GB machine. But then you'd lose out on the light weight and small footprint (if you were considering the 11") of the Air.

[Deslock]

I was looking to get the new 13" with a 256GB SSD and install parallels on it to use Win7 on it alongside OSX. I know 8 GB would be ideal but is 4GB really a bad idea? My uses are simple just outlook and office mostly.
Where I work, we run VMs (VMWare, VirtualBox) for Ubuntu and XP with 4GB on the OSX host and it's fine. Obviously Win7 needs more than XP, but for things like Outlook and Office, you should be OK (if you had a large MS SQL Server DB running on a VM, then having only 4GB could be more of a constraint).

On a side note, FYI you can get Outlook and Office for OSX, though some of the apps don't exist (MS Access, for instance).

I definitely would not get 13" MBPs because the screen resolution sucks. IMHO, if you're looking at Apple laptops, the 13" MBA or 15" MBP with the 1680x1050 option are the ones to get (EDIT: On second thought, the 11" MBA is worth considering too).

Either way, I dunno if Parallels allows this, but FYI VMWare ($39 at my local university store) recognizes and loads Boot Camp partitions virtualized. That way you can run the OSes concurrently, or for those times that you only need Windows and want to maximize performance, you can boot it up natively. It provides the best of both worlds.

[humayunl]

For sure Parallels will work under 4 GB.

But will it be fast enough for you? That's a more personal question, which I can't answer.

Certainly Parallels would run faster on a comparably equipped 8 GB machine. But then you'd lose out on the light weight and small footprint (if you were considering the 11") of the Air.

Good points. I would still want reasonably high performance i.e. if I get a brand new MBA i wouldn't want to sit there waiting listening to it crunch while i wait for a context menu to pop up in windows.

I am considering hte 13" not the 11" but I think they're both restricted to 4GB.

[Dyvim]

I definitely would not get 13" MBPs because the screen resolution sucks. IMHO, if you're looking at Apple laptops, the 13" MBA or 15" MBP with the 1680x1050 option are the ones to get.
Interesting perspective because for me it's between the 11" Air or the 13" MBP. I don't really consider the 13" Air because for approx. the same footprint the MBP is more powerful for your money. I guess I don't care about screen resolution or trackpad size because those would only affect me while on the road. Otherwise I'm always using an external display, keyboard, and mouse/trackpad.

The 11" Air might be worth it though because it has a much smaller footprint while also being dramatically lighter.

And the 15" MBP (I have a 2008 model still) is just too big for travel for me. (I had a 17" HP monster laptop for a couple years and don't care to move back in that direction even though I know the 15" isn't nearly that big/heavy.)

[Dyvim]

I dunno if Parallels allows this, but FYI VMWare ($39 at my local university store) recognizes and loads Boot Camp partitions virtualized. That way you can run the OSes concurrently, or for those times that you only need Windows and want to maximize performance, you can boot it up natively.
Parallels allows this.

[Deslock]

Interesting perspective because for me it's between the 11" Air or the 13" MBP. I don't really consider the 13" Air because for approx. the same footprint the MBP is more powerful for your money. I guess I don't care about screen resolution or trackpad size because those would only affect me while on the road. Otherwise I'm always using an external display, keyboard, and mouse/trackpad.

The 11" Air might be worth it though because it has a much smaller footprint while also being dramatically lighter.

And the 15" MBP (I have a 2008 model still) is just too big for travel for me. (I had a 17" HP monster laptop for a couple years and don't care to move back in that direction even though I know the 15" isn't nearly that big/heavy.)

It obviously depends on how you user your computer. For my needs the extra resolution, SSD (which ought to make everything zippy), and instant resume make the MBA more of a MBP than the MBP. If you need more local storage or more RAM, use an optical drive often, or don't mind a heavier laptop, then the MBA isn't a good choice.

[humayunl]

Either way, I dunno if Parallels allows this, but FYI VMWare ($39 at my local university store) recognizes and loads Boot Camp partitions virtualized. That way you can run the OSes concurrently, or for those times that you only need Windows and want to maximize performance, you can boot it up natively. It provides the best of both worlds.

Wow, this is a lot of useful information. Thanks a lot everyone. So if I'm understanding this right, then I think I'm hearing that even if I want to run both OSs in parallel, installing Windows via bootcamp is a better option compared to installing it from within parallels? I didn't know of this option before. I didn't consider it before because I thought if I installed is via bootcamp i'd be 'wasting' that space permanently from my HD and installing it via Parallels i'd only be using up that space when i actually booted up windows within OSX-Parallels. But now that I think about it, even when not using windows, it would still be using that space because it would be installed somewhere right?

I'm sorry if this is all too noob for you guys but i'm new to virtualization.

So any best practices or recommended settings or tweaks when setting up a disk partition for Win7 in bootcamp? disk space, ram allocation etc. To have the best performance balance. Like I said I will be installing very light Win7 installation. Only Office and Zune. Maybe not even office if I can use the OSX version.

thanks a lot. I think i'm gonna order the MBA after the next response... :)

[Deslock]

Wow, this is a lot of useful information. Thanks a lot everyone. So if I'm understanding this right, then I think I'm hearing that even if I want to run both OSs in parallel, installing Windows via bootcamp is a better option compared to installing it from within parallels

Actually not necessarily. I wrote it was the best of both worlds, but only in the context of it letting you run Windows natively (in case you need the extra RAM/performance). There are downsides to pointing VMWare/Parallels to a boot camp partition:
A VM image size is dynamic while a boot camp partition is static. Both take up space, but a VM image will take up less.
Supposedly, resizing an NTFS boot camp partition isn't a simple process (I haven't done it... That's just what I've heard and read).
A boot camp partition isn't as portable as a VM image.
Can't take snapshots of a boot camp partition.
When my MBA comes in, I intend to stick with a Win7 VM image rather than boot camp, despite having only 4GB.

As far as tweaks go, I haven't used Parallels in years but there wasn't much to it. If you go with boot camp, 20GB would be the absolute minimum for the Win7 partition, and 40-60GB is probably more realistic (and that's assuming you do not put on many apps/media files).

[Deslock]

Parallels allows this.
Thanks. And color me slightly embarrassed because I now see you had already mentioned that, as well as Outlook/Office being available for the Mac.

[Dyvim]

One thing I just realized about the new MacBook Airs: The 11" and 13" models max out at the same processors and hard-drive space. With the previous generation, if you wanted the fastest processor and/or the largest SSD you had to go with the 13" version. That's no longer the case- and somewhat uncharacteristic for Apple.

Prices are similar- a maxed out 11" Air is $1649 while a maxed out 13" Air is $1699. For $50 you get a larger battery and a higher resolution screen but of course more weight and a larger footprint. But I like the idea that you can get a computer that's just as powerful from a computational point of view in a smaller package.

[Menneisyys]

Agree with Jason about the RAM. Why not offer 8 GB as BTO option?
I could probably get by with the top-end 11" Air as a dev machine if it had 8 GB. 4 GB is not a lot for the max on a brand new machine with a brand new OS.


Agreed. It's a huge omission on Apple's part. I think I'll wait for the next Air (or Apple's introduction of GB BTO configs) as there is some definite differences between a 4GB and 8GB desktop if you run several apps at the same time. I wouldn't return to 4GB on my late 2009 MBP 17".

[Menneisyys]

Actually not necessarily. I wrote it was the best of both worlds, but only in the context of it letting you run Windows natively (in case you need the extra RAM/performance). There are downsides to pointing VMWare/Parallels to a boot camp partition:
A VM image size is dynamic while a boot camp partition is static. Both take up space, but a VM image will take up less.
Supposedly, resizing an NTFS boot camp partition isn't a simple process (I haven't done it... That's just what I've heard and read).
A boot camp partition isn't as portable as a VM image.
Can't take snapshots of a boot camp partition.

also add the changed environment meaning the need to re-register/activate your MS apps. (I haven't bothered registering in the native boot-in and the Parallels-based virtualization not to waste another TechNet serial number on them so I can't comment on whether one serial number suffices or you do need two.)

[Deslock]

Agreed. It's a huge omission on Apple's part. I think I'll wait for the next Air (or Apple's introduction of GB BTO configs) as there is some definite differences between a 4GB and 8GB desktop if you run several apps at the same time. I wouldn't return to 4GB on my late 2009 MBP 17".I dunno if it's an omission or space issue. The teardown (http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Air-13-Inch-Mid-2011-Teardown/6130/1) photos make it look like there's not much room in there:

http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/AGYDHSRpLNrjexrj.huge (memory is circled in red)
http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/2sAFILZWQrMcISoJ.huge (empty space is where SSD goes)

One thing I just realized about the new MacBook Airs: The 11" and 13" models max out at the same processors and hard-drive space. With the previous generation, if you wanted the fastest processor and/or the largest SSD you had to go with the 13" version. That's no longer the case- and somewhat uncharacteristic for Apple.

Prices are similar- a maxed out 11" Air is $1649 while a maxed out 13" Air is $1699. For $50 you get a larger battery and a higher resolution screen but of course more weight and a larger footprint. But I like the idea that you can get a computer that's just as powerful from a computational point of view in a smaller package.Interestingly enough, EDU prices result in a $100 discount for the maxed 11" model and only a $60 discount on the maxed 13" model ($1549 and $1639 respectively) because the 11" SSD upgrade gets an additional price cut.

Anyway, I want to amend my previous statement about the 13" MBA and 15" MBP being the only Apple laptops to get. IMO, that was true last year because the 11" MBA could be noticeably slower than the 13" MBA (the 1.86/2.13 GHz C2D on the 13" were fine, but the 1.4/1.6 C2D on the 11" not so much).

Now that the CPU is up to snuff, I'm going to have to play with one at the Apple store to see how much the smaller trackpad and lower resolution still bother me (the latter might be less of an issue given Lion's more efficient use of pixels).