AppleInsider Staff
One day after the latest MacBook Air model debuted, images of the 11-inch version with its bottom cover removed reveal that, just as the 2012 model, no changes were made to the laptop's interior layout.
When Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller announced the newest iterations of the MacBook Air on Monday at WWDC, the first feature he noted was the thin-and-light's extended battery life.
According to Schiller, the 11-inch model will go from an advertised 5 hours of battery life to 9 hours, while the latest 13-inch version lasts up to 12 hours, up from 7 hours. It appears the energy savings can be fully attributed to the switch to Intel's power-sipping Haswell ULT CPU and corresponding OS tweaks.
From what can be gleaned by the superficial teardown, provided by Other World Computing, the 11-inch model has gone largely untouched, with a battery and component layout identical to last year's version.
The lack of change is to be expected as Apple's product page notes no change to the 35-watt-hour battery, which in the case of the 11-inch MacBook Air is a six-cell design. The recently announced 13-inch version has not yet been torn down, though its internals are likely similar to last year's model, which featured a four-cell layout thanks to the additional space allowed by a larger chassis.
Also seen in the images is the new solid state drive Apple is using, which features a PCIe controller for faster transfer speeds.
Heat spreader and SSD module.A report earlier on Tuesday noted that Intel's Haswell processor provides the most gains in terms of battery life, while the PCIe flash memory solution brings major improvements in speed.
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14 Comments
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Except that something has to be done with the displays. Better panel (not TN) and higher pixel density, please. I thought it would happen this generation, but I guess we have to wait until next.
You almost had me there, then I got it. Clever! (Typing this on a late 2011 MBA 13" that is still good enough really, proving your point.) Only reason I need to upgrade is that I have filled the 256GB SSD, and like all my content with me, so it's not a matter of just moving files elsewhere. So, a fully loaded 512GB 2013 13" MBA is on the shopping list.
Except that something has to be done with the displays. Better panel (not TN) and higher pixel density, please. I thought it would happen this generation, but I guess we have to wait until next.
This was discussed thoroughly on Leo LaPort's MacBreak Weekly last week. Those who actually know how things work were not expecting a Retina MacBook Air because of.... ta da... battery life. Until Apple can cram a more powerful battery into that little form the pixel density will have to wait. Apple has made the decision that battery life is the paramount driver for the Air. They're not going to sacrifice run times for just any feature.
This was discussed thoroughly on Leo LaPort's MacBreak Weekly last week. Those who actually know how things work were not expecting a Retina MacBook Air because of.... ta da... battery life. Until Apple can cram a more powerful battery into that little form the pixel density will have to wait. Apple has made the decision that battery life is the paramount driver for the Air. They're not going to sacrifice run times for just any feature.
Fair enough, but I thought (or had hoped) that this generation of the Intel platform (Haswell) would be enough to power a Retina (or at least higher than now) pixel density display. But I guess this isn't the case then. However, I know that there are laptops from Samsung (their 9 series) that has a PNL panel display with 1080p on a 13.3 inch display. And that isn't even on Haswell, it's still on Ivy Bridge (at least the one I read about). The battery time on that when playing video was 5 hours in a test, but I can imagine that would have been better if it was based on the Intel Haswell platform.
Anyway, I can understand if Apple thinks battery life is more important. Maybe they could have offered a MacBook Air with better screen (but lower battery life) as an option? But I guess options isn't really something Apple is into. :)
Anyway, let's hope for the next generation MBA's to come with better displays.