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News & Opinion
Best Buy MacBook Pro Price Cuts a Sign of New Models?
DigitalTrends' Jeff Saginor reports that Best Buy is discounting
Apple's current MacBook Pro models, leading to increased speculation
that an update of the company's notebook models will be coming
soon.
Saginor says Best Buy is discounting the MacBook Pro by at least
$100 - and high-end 15.4" models are now offered at nearly $200 off
Apple's seldom-reduced MSRP. From this he deduces that Best Buy (and
Apple?) are clearing the decks for the launch of new models, which
could possibly debut alongside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, iOS 6, and
iCloud updates at the World Wide Developer Conference 2012, which
begins June 11.
If so, that would be the first time in 13 years that Apple debuted
notebook hardware at the WWDC, the last instance being the PowerBook G3
Series Bronze (aka: Pismo) in 1999. Citing more recent precedent,
Saginor notes that last time Best Buy significantly discounted an Apple
product was a $50 dollar iPad 2 price cut back in February, with the
new iPad was released a week later. It bears noting that in hindsight,
that wasn't much of a deal, since the iPad 2 remained available after
the New iPad release at a price of $100 less and with a new, faster,
lower power consumption version of the A5 CPU sweetening the value
further.
Link: MacBook Pro Gets
$100+ Price Cut as Apple Prepares to Ship New Models
Retina Display MacBook Pros Expected to Be a Hit
Despite Higher Price
Macworld UK's Karen Haslam says that the new MacBook Pro may cost
more than the current models due to the cost of the Retina Display
screen Apple is said to be using, but that won't stop fans buying the
new model, noting that responders to an informal Twitter query affirmed
that they would still purchase a new MacBook even if it was priced at
$100 more, according to Mac.Blorge. Haslam also cites Computerworld
blogger Jonny Evans' musings on the iPhone and iPad halo effect,
observing that the faster, better, slimmer new higher-than-HD def Macs
will not be aimed at a 1999 audience of 20 million Mac users, but at a
global audience constituted by users of every iPhone, iPad, or Mac user
on the planet.
Link: Retina Display
MacBook Pro Set to Be a Hit Despite Higher Price
You Might Be Underwhelmed by the Resolution of
Retina Display Macs
Cult of Mac's John Brownlee asks, "How many does pixels does a Mac
really need to qualify as Retina, anyway?" He notes that Macs with
Retina displays are looking increasingly likely, with many expecting an
iPhone or iPad-style resolution doubling. Ergo, the current 15" MacBook
Pro has a 1440 x 900 display so a Retina Display 15" MBP would
purportedly have a 2880 x 1800 display.
However, Brownlee observes that a disconnect in that school of
thought is that there's no benefit to Apple handling a jump to Retina
Display Macs this way, because its current Macs are already almost
Retina quality.
Brownlee suggests resolutions of 1680 x 1050 for 11.6" MacBook Air
and 1920 x 1200 for 13.3" and 15.4" MacBooks, along with 2560 x 1440
for the 21" iMac and 3840 x 2160 for the 27" iMac.
Link: Why You Might Be
Disappointed by the Resolution of Those New Retina Display Macs
Once You Go Mac, Can Dell's XPS 13 Bring You
Back?
Forbes' Brian Caulfield says that ever since back on October 20,
2010 when Steve Jobs introduced the second generation MacBook Air,
he's wanted one badly - resolving that his next personal laptop would
be an Air.
Rather than buy one, he waited. And waited. And then earlier this
year, Dell introduced its
XPS 13 Ultrabook - thin, light, and quick - and while it's not as
flashy as the MacBook Air, Dell's designers have pulled off a number of
clever tricks, e.g.: cramming a 13.3" screen into a ridiculously small
package with a smaller footprint than Apple's 13.3" MacBook Air. Even
more impressive: The Dell is $300 cheaper. It's missing some features
you'll find on the 13" MacBook Air, although he concedes that there's
no Secure Digital Card slot and the screen is lower resolution, but
that said, the Dell, which starts at $999 with a 128 GB SSD, doesn't
feel cheap, and soft touch plastics, metal highlights, and an aluminum
lid give the XPS 13 a higher-end feel than some much pricier Windows
machines.
But at the end of the day, Caulfield finds the XPS 13 doesn't do
enough to lure many people back from Apple, and while his next personal
machine won't necessarily be a MacBook Air, it won't be the XPS 13 he
tried out either.
Link: Once You Go
Mac, Can Dell's XPS 13 Bring You Back?
Reviews
Sonnet Technologies Echo Pro
Thunderbolt-to-ExpressCard Adapter
Bare Feats' rob-ART Morgan reports that Sonnet has created a unique
Thunderbolt-to-ExpressCard/34 adapter that presents a host of
possibilities for anyone with a Mac sporting a Thunderbolt port. The
product is called the Echo ExpressCard Pro Thunderbolt Adapter, and
Morgan says we should think of it as a "gateway" to storage options
other than an expensive "pure" Thunderbolt enclosure - a way to use,
for example, an eSATA enclosure you already own, and noting that it
performs very well, especially when teamed up with Sonnet's new Tempo
edge SATA Pro 6Gb/s ExpressCard/34 with single eSATA port, and that the
Echo ExpressCard Pro Thunderbolt Adapter with the Edge 6G card supports
booting into OS X, and can be used with any Mac that has a Thunderbolt
port including the iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac mini, and
that for owners of MacBook Pros with an ExpressCard slot the new Sonnet
Tempo edge SATA Pro 6Gb/s ExpressCard/34 inserted in the MacBook Pro's
built-in ExpressCard/34 slot does sequential reads and writes just as
fast as when it is plugged into the Echo Pro - making it the fastest
eSATA ExpressCard available.
Link: Thunderbolt-to-ExpressCard: Sonnet
Technologies Echo Pro Adapter
Tech Trends
Netbooks Not Dead Yet: Acer & Asus to Launch
New Netbooks with Upgraded Atom Processors
DigiTimes' Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai report that with most other
vendors having quit the netbook market and netbook shipments becoming
more stable, Acer and Asus plan to launch new netbook models with
Intel's upgraded dual-core
1.6 GHz Atom N2600 and
1.86 GHz M2800 processors, complete with Hyperthreading and
SpeedStep, adding new function design to improve performance and a
Windows 8-based model set to appear at the end of the third quarter,
according to sources from notebook players.
Chen and Tsai note that while the netbook segment is fizzling in
mainstream markets, demand still remains strong in emerging
markets.
Link: Not Dead Yet: Acer,
Asustek to Launch Netbooks with Upgraded Atom Processor in 3Q12
(subscription required)
Affordable Thin-and-Light Notebooks Won't
Necessarily Be Called 'Ultrabooks'
Tech.pinions' Ben Bajarin predicts looming laptop wars coming - not
between Macs and Windows based notebooks, but intramural rivalry
between Intel-spec'ed Ultrabooks and thin and light non-Ultrabook
designs from PC vendors.
Bajarin says one thing he's learned in 12 years as an industry
analyst it is that OEMs don't generally like being told what they can
and can't do with their hardware designs, and while every OEM wants to
take advantage of the thin-and-light designs driving Ultrabooks, they
may want to vary the CPU capabilities, but if they want to use, say, an
non-Intel chip such as AMD's 2nd-Generation A-Series APU,
codenamed Trinity, in a design that looks exactly like an
Ultrabook, they can't call it an Ultrabook, since the latter is an
Intel trademark with strict guidelines attached.
He notes that HP recently launched a new laptop line called
SleekBooks, and he expects that similar Ultrathins will enter the
market well below the price of Ultrabooks, suggesting that with all of
these options consumers may very well go with price and walk with with
something other than an official Ultrabook - perhaps not even knowing
they didn't purchase a real Ultrabook.
Bajarin also suggests that while Apple's iPad has served as a
supplement to existing notebooks for some users, making it easier to
delay the purchase of a new system, he thinks that pent-up demand for
laptop upgrades is substantial, and whether it's Ultrabooks or generic
thin-and-lights that will look and smell like Ultrabooks but be priced
quite a bit lower, he anticipates at least a short term positive spike
in notebook sales over the next few years.
Link: Affordable
Ultrabooks Are Coming but They Aren't Ultrabooks
Ultrabook Laptops Are More than Just MacBook Air
Clones
PC World's Melanie Pinola notes that PC Ultrabooks are sleek,
super-thin laptops that often feature a sliver, wedge, or tapering
design - just like the Apple MacBook Air. However, she contends that
despite Ultrabooks' design similarities with Apple's ultraportable,
Ultrabooks really are a unique new breed of Windows laptops, offering a
distinct combination of performance, good looks, and features - some of
which not available on the MacBook Air.
Nor are they necessarily copycats. Pinola observes that in 2003 -
five years before Apple introduced the MacBook Air - Sony released a
premium, super-thin, 1.8-pound laptop, The
Vaio X505, whose enclosure tapered down to 0.4" at the front
(thinner than the Air) and had the sleek metallic body found on
Ultrabooks today. She also notes that the HP
Envy Spectre XT, for example, has a magnesium body with a brushed
design and a rubber bottom coating, while the Air uses aluminum with no
pattern or bottom coating, and while even though Ultrabooks do look
exactly like the MacBook Air, often there are significant differences
inside. Besides running Windows, using Intel processors, and meeting
the thinness requirement, laptop makers are free to adapt Intel's
specifications for Ultrabooks as they see fit.
Some Ultrabooks push the dimensions of Ultrabooks with larger
displays, and Ultrabooks tend to offer more I/O ports and expansion
headroom and flexibility than the MacBook Air does, with options for
both SSD and hybrid hard drives, the hybrid alternative increasing
storage capacity in exchange for a bit of a performance hit, and some
models offer discrete Nvidia graphics.
Link: Why Ultrabook
Laptops Aren't Just MacBook Air Clones
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