New Technology Reviews!.: macbookair

Apple using smaller, cheaper Thunderbolt controller in MacBook Airs

Apple using smaller, cheaper Thunderbolt controller in MacBook Airs

Like their big brothers, the new MacBook Air models now include a Thunderbolt port. Though it looks the same on the outside, internally...

Hackintosh repaired at Apple Genius Bar

Hackintosh repaired at Apple Genius Bar

So, you're in Shanghai, China with your fake MacBook Air when it suddenly stops working. What do you do? Make an appointment at the...

Apple's flash-buying clout seen as huge advantage

Apple's flash-buying clout seen as huge advantage

Apple is not only winning the tablet wars, it's already poised to beat out Intel's new Ultrabook line of tablet-inspired notebo...

Macworld benchmarks i5 MacBook Airs

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After one week on the market, the first good benchmarks of the new MacBook Air models are beginning to show up. Macworld ran benchmarks of the i5-based 11.6" and 13" MBAs and found them to be quite fast in everyday operations. The Macworld lab is in the process of fine-tuning their SpeedMark benchmark for Lion, so the tests were performed by timing tasks like duplicating, zipping, and unzipping folders, importing and exporting files from Pages and iMovie, and so on.</div>
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Not surprisingly, the tests showed that the new MacBook Airs were faster than the last generation models and the final generation of the MacBook. The MBAs beat even the current 13" i5 MacBook Pro in the file duplicate and zip tests. Strangely enough, though, the previous model 13" Core 2 Duo MacBook Air bested all comers for importing a movie archive to iMovie '09, had the best results with the Cinebench R11.5 graphics benchmark, and the highest framerate while playing Call of Duty 4.</div>
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If you do a lot of AAC to MP3 encoding in iTunes 10, then the 13" i5 MacBook Air is going to be your best friend. It was faster than even the latest 13" i5 MacBook Pro, although not by much. The bottom line is that these new MBAs are fast, due in part to the SSDs used for storage, but slower than their predecessors in some graphics operations.</div>
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Why? The previous MacBook Air models used Nvidia GeForce 320M integrated graphics, while the new models use the Intel HD Graphics 3000 capability embedded into the silicon of the i5 processor. The Nvidia graphics chip was faster, but the i5 with graphics is less expensive than the Core 2 Duo / Nvidia combo used before.</div>
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With the specs of the MacBook Air approaching those of the MacBook Pro line and rumors of a 15" Air-like Apple laptop on the horizon, it's interesting to conjecture that Apple may eventually get to one line of MacBooks -- the MacBook Airs.</div>
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Macworld plans on running more tests in the future using various configure-to-order options of the MacBook Air, and we'll be waiting to see what they find.</div>
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Macworld benchmarks i5 MacBook Airs

After one week on the market, the first good benchmarks of the new MacBook Air models are beginning to show up. Macworld ran benchmarks...

2010 in review: Rise of iOS

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Here, in no particular order, are some of the top stories we saw in 2010. The year was packed with Apple announcements, some planned and one unplanned. The real standout this year was iOS coming into its own. This year's WWDC was all about iOS, for example. The Apple TV now runs iOS. iOS 4.2 breathed new life into the already-new iPad, another major story of the year (a wildly successful one at that).<br />
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Even OS X 10.7 "Lion" has some iOS-inspired elements from what little we've seen. But it's looking like 2011 will be a return to the Mac side. In 2010 we saw the new MacBook Air, which Steve Jobs called the "future of notebooks." What surprises does Apple have for us on the Macintosh side of the house? 2011 will be an interesting year (again) to watch!<br />
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<h3>iPad</h3><br />
In 2010 the iPad was revealed and the netbook industry felt the impact. The tablet industry has awakened. We expect 2011's CES to have an enormous range of tablet computers. iOS 4.2 was released months later, giving the iPad features like multitasking which should have been there to begin with. Still, with paltry RAM, no front-facing camera and still not enough storage, the iPad has plenty of room to grow in 2011.<br />
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Apps on the iPad made news in themselves, with some apps being available for both iPads and iPhones, some costing more for "HD" versions (a term Apple doesn't endorse, by the way) and some only available for iPad. The new realm of a tablet format opened up possibilities for developers and we continue to see innovation from them on Apple's latest product.<br />
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Still, the publishing world was a little dismayed to see the iPad not take off as an e-reader on its own. Digital magazines are falling flat (in part due to Apple's lack of a proper subscription model) and the iBookstore has had its own problems.<br />
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<h3>iPhone 4</h3><br />
We all knew the iPhone 4 was coming thanks to a forgetful Apple employee and some poorly executed shenanigans from Gizmodo. If only they had tested the antenna!<br />
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The iPhone 4 introduced the high-resolution Retina Display, plus a sleek new form factor that brought about "antennagate" and a subsequent press conference to address the issue. iPhone 4 cases were given away and the problem was mitigated by a clever Apple marketing/communications team. <br />
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The iPhone 4 also heralded FaceTime as a video calling service (and potential open standard, although we hear inside Apple there is little impetus to release the open portions needed to bring the service to other platforms). The iPhone 4 introduced a front-facing camera to facilitate video calling. <br />
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The iPhone 4's addition of an LED flash introduced another wrinkle into the app approval process in that developers quickly started writing flashlight apps which took advantage of the powerful (but battery-killing) light source. Guess what? Apple finally woke up and wrote some clear but open-ended app approval guidelines that addressed many of the previously-unknown guidelines surrounding app approvals.<br />
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2010 in review: Rise of iOS

Here, in no particular order, are some of the top stories we saw in 2010. The year was packed with Apple announcements, some planned and on...