Opinions on new MacBook Air

Spit · 10 Jul 2013 at 14:49

The Airs insane SSD speed is due to it accessing the PCI Express bus directly. I am sure the iMac and rMBP will also have this once the Haswell versions arrive.

Scythe · 10 Jul 2013 at 18:54

covenantuk said:
Finals year? No brainer, get the laptop. Always best to make things easy for yourself in the final year, settled accommodation, no cash worries etc.

That is true, I am pushing in the final year. Already got the accommodation settled and paid off, so less money worries.

Hopefully Mavericks will be out before 5 September, that will be a nice icing on the cake. It's meant to be even better battery life with Mavericks.

theheyes · 10 Jul 2013 at 20:37

I love the way local storage gets super rapid right after everyone dumps everything into the cloud. Where was this stuff 5 years ago.

J1nxy · 10 Jul 2013 at 23:17

I just picked up the new 13.3 with 1.7 8GB 512GB to replace my couple of year old 13.3. Really pleased with it, is lighter than the Mac Book Pro 13 and finally has enough memory and storage to make using VMs on it doable.

Logsi · 11 Jul 2013 at 11:27

J1nxy said:
I just picked up the new 13.3 with 1.7 8GB 512GB to replace my couple of year old 13.3. Really pleased with it, is lighter than the Mac Book Pro 13 and finally has enough memory and storage to make using VMs on it doable.

I got the same…just wish there was a 16GB option...

J1nxy · 11 Jul 2013 at 11:54

Logsi said:
I got the same…just wish there was a 16GB option...

Me too, but then I looked at the retina 15" with 16GB and thats silly money, but I can just about get away with 8GB as long as I don't launch too many VMs. Also might try Hyper-V under win 8 as that has the dynamic memory option that might help with the overall number I can spin up at one time.

londonbairn · 12 Jul 2013 at 18:51

Just opened mines (been waiting for me for a few days as was away on business). Love it, barely gets hot versus the Macbook Air 2012 one stolen by the ex!!

londonbairn · 12 Jul 2013 at 18:52

What should I spend this 70 quid on? Tempted to use it for ipad apps instead

londonbairn · 12 Jul 2013 at 21:25

To add further, been using it non stop and it's not even warm! Love it so much

WeedRamen · 13 Jul 2013 at 17:21

The resolution is fine for me personally but I just wish they'd get a more decent panel in there.

londonbairn · 15 Jul 2013 at 11:52

The battery life is amazing and it has never got warm with me, though I use it mainly for web, RDP/VPN work, Spotify and Office.

Screen is fine. Still have this £70 store credit burning and unsure what to get!!

Rilot · 15 Jul 2013 at 14:08

Well, I caved and bought a new 13" MBA yesterday. I wish I hadn't.
Wifi refuses to connect or maintain a stable connection with the vast majority of APs I use. My home one works fine but all 3 at work connect, then transfer no data before disconnecting. It flatly refuses to connect to my Android wifi AP with "connection timeout".

Also, the thing has a screw or something loose inside which I can hear rattling around when I move the MBA around.

J1nxy · 15 Jul 2013 at 14:13

Rilot said:
Well, I caved and bought a new 13" MBA yesterday. I wish I hadn't.
Wifi refuses to connect or maintain a stable connection with the vast majority of APs I use. My home one works fine but all 3 at work connect, then transfer no data before disconnecting. It flatly refuses to connect to my Android wifi AP with "connection timeout".

Also, the thing has a screw or something loose inside which I can hear rattling around when I move the MBA around.

Sounds like you've got a dud, take it back and swap it. Mine is connected to my HTC writing this message now and its connected to 10-15 different AP's fine since I've had it.

Rilot · 15 Jul 2013 at 14:29

Yeah, I think so too. It just takes all the fun of getting a new device out of it.
I can't get to town again until Saturday. Kind of annoying.

BTW, I bought it from a retailer that wasn't Apple. Shall I just take it back there or should I take it to the Apple store? I read somewhere that Apple were flagging up MBAs that had wifi issues.

Ryan-3 · 15 Jul 2013 at 16:19

Mines a definite arrival on the 22nd.

Hopefully I'm lucky like I was with the HTC One and don't get the horrid wifi trouble.

I'd take it back to where you bought it, and tell them you want it exchanged for a working one.

theheyes · 15 Jul 2013 at 16:36

Wireless issues with Apple stuff isn't uncommon, but the thing shouldn't rattle.

Ryan-3 · 15 Jul 2013 at 16:52

When I checked tracking yesterday morning, it said it was in Shanghai. It is now in London. Here's hoping on early delivery (but not expecting it.)

Rattling is certainly not wanted for any product, especially when its brand new. Last time I had rattling on arrival, it was a smashed up cable. It didn't work.

passey89 · 15 Jul 2013 at 17:06

Wifes just ordered the basic one for work. £750 not bad tbh.

JHeaton · 15 Jul 2013 at 17:49

How good is the 1.3GHz i5 in the base model? Obviously, I know that it would be just fine for most of what I want to do (browsing, office applications, some programming (Ruby)), but I'd also like to play the odd game on there and was wondering just how far the i5 would get. Most of what I play at the moment is stuff like FTL, Gratuitous Space Battles, Osmos and so on, but anything more I can get going on there would be a bonus. The other thing I'd be interested in is how it would handle running a single Linux or Windows virtual machine, as I may need to do that from time to time.

Cheers.

Ryan-3 · 15 Jul 2013 at 17:55

Here is a comparison between the two models.

I personally don't know what it requires to run any of that, so hopefully there is some useful info in there.