Items tagged with MacBook Air
Apple might consider itself to be a company that produces premium hardware that is a notch above garden-variety PCs on the market, but the company has had its fair share of high-profile hardware/design failures in recent years. The most embarrassing stain on Apple’s reputation in recent years is no doubt the troublesome butterfly keyboard, which proliferated throughout the company’s entire MacBook family for four years. Now, it appears that Apple is admitting to another design defect with its hardware, and this time it involves the Retina MacBook Air laptops. In this instance, the anti-reflective coating can wear off or “delaminate” from the display. Once this happens,...
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Apple's New, Cheaper MacBook Air Gets Intel Ice Lake Boost, Doubles Storage, And Adds Magic Keyboard
Apple has refreshed its popular 13-inch MacBook Air entry-level laptop, and there's a lot to like about this new model. Apple has seemingly addressed nearly every complaint about the previous generation with some very useful upgrades. For starters, Apple has tossed the unreliable and hated (by nearly everyone) butterfly-style keyboard mechanism in favor of the Magic Keyboard found in the 16-inch MacBook Pro (which uses a scissor-style mechanism). Not only does this result in longer key travel, but it should also make the keyboard more reliable in the long run. Apple also upgraded the hardware inside, equipping the new 2020 MacBook Air family with 10th generation Intel Ice Lake processors....
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Slowly but surely, Apple is moving on from using keyboards with a flawed butterfly mechanism, and outfitting new products with scissor switches like the ones it used on MacBook Pro models prior to the 2015 redesign. As such, it's expected that a couple of upcoming products—a new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air—will implement a so-called "Magic Keyboard" as well. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo outlined his predictions in a research note to investors. According to his note, Apple will release new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models in the second quarter of 2020, both with Magic Keyboards, which is how Apple dubs the return to scissor switches (it has a better ring to it, we suppose). His prediction...
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The hits just keep coming for Apple and its butterfly keyboard design that debuted back with the 2015 MacBook. A U.S. District judge nixed Apple's request to have a class action lawsuit brought against it over keyboard issues dismissed. As we have discussed on numerous occasions, the keyboards have been plagued with reliability issues, including keys that become stuck or fail completely after regular use. In some cases, a single speck of dust is enough to "kill" a key, resulting in an expensive keyboard replacement. Over the years, Apple has made refinements to the keyboard -- including the use of a silicone membrane to prevent debris from entering the key mechanism...
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It has been a crazy week so far, thanks to Amazon's 48-hour Prime Day sales event that spurred other retailers to follow suit with discounts of their own. As the dust settles, you can still score a deal on a 2019 model MacBook Air. Should you, though? That depends on how you feel about the downgraded SSD speeds in the newest models. The refreshed MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch display with a 2560x1600 resolution, and is powered by an Intel Core i5-8210Y, a 1.6GHz dual-core Amber Lake CPU with integrated UHD Graphics 617. It also comes standard with 8GB of LPDDR3-2133 RAM and 128GB or 256GB of SSD storage, as it pertains to the models that are on sale. Here is how they are priced on Amazon......
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After letting its entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro languish for the past two years without any major updates, Apple is finally "making it rain". Just in time for Back to School season, the base 13-inch MacBook Pro is gaining a number of features previously reserved for its more expensive siblings. Standard equipment now includes a True Tone display, the T2 security chip and the Touch Bar (which includes Touch ID). The last addition might be sad news for those Apple fans that hate the Touch Bar (admittedly, it's more of a gimmick than actually being useful) and love the traditional function keys on the top row. Apple has also updated the internal hardware, as the previous "old hat" 7th generation...
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Apple may be getting rid of a pain point for laptop buyers by doing away with the problematic butterfly keyboard found on its MacBook models, starting with the MacBook Air. Nothing is set in stone, but if Apple does ditch the butterfly keyboard, it could ease the frustration for both buyers and Apple store employees, who have been tasked with performing accelerated next-day repairs. The butterfly key mechanism found its way to MacBook models starting in 2015. Some customers reported premature failures, ultimately sparking a petition for a recall in 2018, followed by a class-action lawsuit. While Apple has maintained that only a small number of MacBooks have been affected, the lawsuit alleges...
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Good news if your 2018 model MacBook Air is giving you trouble—Apple has discovered an issue with the logic board and has instructed to employees at Apple Store locations as well Authorized Service Providers to fix affected units at no charge. If you own an affected model, you should receive an email from the company. That is not a guarantee, of course, but Apple is sending out emails to customers who own a potentially affected MacBook Air. According to Apple, the issue with the logic board is present on "a very small number" of 2018 MacBook Air models. It is not clear what the exact problem is or what the symptoms might be, only that an issue exists, according to an internal document that...
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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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