Items tagged with MacBook Air
Apple just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to the keyboards on its MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro family of laptops. Even though the company is currently on the third-generation of its “butterfly key” keyboard design, customers are still complaining of premature failures. With that being said, the process of replacing a defective keyboard is not a simple one, and requires removing the whole top panel of the notebook (which includes the integrated battery). Not only is it time extensive – currently requiring a few business days for the machine to be shipped off-site, repaired, and then sent back – but it is an expensive repair (for Apple) as it’s...
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Keyboards aren’t an unknown quantity in the PC realm; we’ve been using them to input data into our computers for decades, and Apple seemingly was at the top of its game with keyboard design for its notebooks – that is until the 2015 MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro redesigns occurred. A new report from The Wall Street Journal’sJoanna Stern indicates that Apple still has not exorcised its keyboard demons. Stern is already experiencing key failures on her new MacBook Air, which was redesigned late last year. That’s a relatively short span of time to begin seeing hardware failures on a brand-new piece of hardware. Stern rather interestingly highlighted...
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After years of letting its popular MacBook Air languish without any meaningful updates, Apple finally updated the ultra-portable notebook late last month. While the overall wedge-shaped chassis is familiar, the new MacBook Air features a completely redesigned inner layout. Given that the new 2018 MacBook Air is now shipping to customers, it should come as no surprise that the teardown experts at iFixit have put the laptop on the operating table. What they found is that the MacBook Air is using Apple's third-generation butterfly key mechanism for the keyboard. While the keys have far less travel than what traditional MacBook Air users are familiar with, it does at...
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It's only been a few days since Apple unveiled its refreshed MacBook Air notebook keeping the thin profile and sporting a Retina Display, Touch ID, and 8th generation Intel Core i5 processors among other tweaks. A few days later the first benchmarks for the 2018 MacBook Air have turned up on Geekbench giving us an idea of what the updated hardware inside the machine means for performance. The Air in these benchmarks is called out as having a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8210Y CPU and 16GB of RAM under the hood. The Geekbench scores for the machine show a single-core score of 4248 and a multi-core score of 7828. Those benchmark scores are better than the previous generation MacBook Air could muster...
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The rumors were true; Apple has just unveiled an all new MacBook Air and it looks like well, a MacBook Air. The redesigned model continues with the tapered design of its predecessor, but chunks the old USB ports and DisplayPort connectors in favor of two Thunderbolt 3 ports. In addition, the massive aluminum bezel around the 13.3-inch Retina Display has also been removed; instead, the display glass extends from edge-to-edge and the bezels are now much smaller (50 percent smaller, in fact). While the previous MacBook Air weighed in a 2.96 pounds, Apple has managed to shave even more weight off its successor, which comes in at 2.75 pounds. If you were a fan of the old MacBook Air's keyboard, we've...
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What is Apple brewing up? The company recently sent out invitations to members of the media for their October 30th event in Brooklyn, New York. The media invites featured various Apple logo designs and promised that “there’s more in the making”. The October 30th event will likely feature other Apple products besides iPhones and Apple Watches, which were unveiled last month. There have already been a number of leaks for a new iPad Pro, and it is expected to resemble the iPhone X thanks to the removal of the home button, thinner bezels, and a TrueDepth camera system that will incorporate Face ID. It is also rumored that the iPad Pro will be available in 11- and 12.9-inch display...
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Apple isn't exactly hurting for money with a market cap of a trillion dollars, making it the most valuable company in the world. It still wants more and to get its next trillion dollars in worth, Cupertino is looking to roll out some new products and among those are allegedly AR glasses in 2020 and an Apple Car in 2023. While we aren’t sure if those rumored products will actually launch, a pair of products that have been needing an update for years may finally be getting some new hardware. Rumors are flowing that Apple is set to finally update the long stale and underpowered Mac Mini desktop computer and the MacBook Air. Reports indicate that the new MacBook that is inbound will look similar...
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Apple's original MacBook Air was one of the progenitors of the "ultrabook" movement and doubled down on the use of SSDs (albeit at an enormous price premium). The second-generation model debuted in late 2010 and became a model for lightweight design while at the same time making SSDs standard across the board. Unfortunately, not much has changed with regards to the MacBook Air's design in the past 7 years, while its competitors have upped their game considerably. According to a new report, volume production of a true next-generation MacBook Air will have to wait until the second half of 2018 instead of the second quarter. The delay means that the MacBook Air could be ready into time for...
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Early this month notable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo published an investor note that claimed Apple was at work on a new lower cost MacBook Air. Analyst Jim Hsiao has now published research that says Apple will ship a large number of the new entry-level notebooks this year, but they won't be lower cost. Hsiao says that Apple will move 4 million units of the new MacBook Air in 2018. While Kuo didn’t offer any pricing details in his previous note, Hsiao believes that the new MacBook Air will sell for the same price as the current entry-level Air, or perhaps even a bit more. This means we are looking at a refreshed entry-level machine, not necessarily a lower cost notebook. The price remaining...
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There's a lot of buzz about Apple's upcoming media event in which it's expected the company will introduce the next generation of its iPhone line, presumably the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and perhaps another Apple Watch as well. Ah, but handsets and wearables aren't the only devices on tap. Apple is said to refreshing its other products too, including its iPad and MacBook systems.Though the tablet gold rush is now a thing of the past, Apple is working on software and hardware upgrades to its and iPad Pro slates. Apple's looking to reverse a trend of nine straight quarters of declining iPad sales, and part of that will include making improvements to its Apple Pencil, a stylus-like tool for iPad...
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It seems as though officials at the Maine Department of Education are finally coming to terms with something that many in the tech community have been saying for years: tablets can often be a poor substitute for full-fledged computers in the classroom, especially in higher grades. Instead of being used as educational tools to help supplement traditional classroom lessons and aide in completing assignments, iPads in the classroom are being used for gaming while at the same time serving as a poor replacement for laptops when it comes to productivity. The Auburn School Department decided to survey its students and teachers to see if the district should continue using the iPads or opt for more traditional...
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More of the same After all the harping and complaining about the single USB-C port on the 2015 MacBook by both the press and Apple fans for the past year, you would expect that Apple would add in a second USB-C port for the 2016 model. Surely the folks in Cupertino had heard the calls for change. Well, those calls fell on deaf ears, because here we are with the 2016 MacBook and still, it has a single USB-C port. Sure, Apple has upgraded the MacBook to Intel's Skylake Core m3, m5, and m7 processor platform, squeezed an extra hour out of the battery and added Rose Gold to color mix (big whoop), but we’re still staring at that single USB-C port. It’s unfortunate that Apple is sticking to its guns...
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Hewlett-Packed is ready to take on Apple in regard thin and light notebook designs, and it wants to be a design leader that other OEMs aspire to emulate. Hence we have today’s introduction of the HP Spectre, which is claimed to be the world’s thinnest laptop. So how thin is it? According to HP, the partially aluminum chassis measures just 10.4mm, or about the same thickness of a AAA battery. A carbon fiber bottom aids in the the Spectre’s thinness and light frame, and adds to its durability. And speaking of lightness, the 13.3-inch class notebook weighs in at a feathery 2.45 pounds — undercutting the 13-inch MacBook Air by half a pound. HP has managed to include a number of innovative touches...
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First it was the floppy drive that, for the most part, has gone the way of the dodo bird, and then the optical drive, which is now the exception instead of the rule on laptop devices. Are I/O ports next? The current rumor is that Apple is building a brand new MacBook Air model that's going to be so thin, it won't have room for luxuries such as full-size USB ports.According to 9to5Mac and its sources, Apple's working on a 12-inch MacBook Air model that will be smaller than its current 13-inch laptops, and also narrower than the 11-inch SKU by about a quarter of an inch. It will also be about a quarter of an inch taller to fit the larger size display, which will have reduced bezels on all sides....
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