“Apple updated its MacBook Air family on Tuesday, but let’s cut to the chase—we all want to know what’s actually different,” Dave Smith reports for ReadWrite.
Here are the three key ways Apple has updated the MacBook Air:
1. It’s Cheaper: Apple basically took the four major configurations of the 2013 MacBook Air and reduced each of their prices by $100
2. (Slightly) More Powerful
3. Longer Battery Life: All models feature the same average battery life, but Apple said it has added “up to two hours of playbook time.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If, five and a half years ago, we had described the 11-inch MacBook Air to you and told you it’d someday start at $899, you’d have called Bellevue to have us picked up by some men in clean white coats.
Related article:
Apple updates MacBook Air with faster processors and lower prices; now starting at $899 – April 29, 2014
May have been a long time coming, but this will prove to be a well-executed strategy.
Let’s hope there’s no playbook time. Don’t need a Blackberry emulator, thanks!
Apple needs to stop cutting their prices. That is the only way I can compete.
Come on MDN! Just for old times sake…how many times the value of Dell is Apple worth these days?
I really miss that count-up.
Sigh, me too I used to love that bit, however can’t really be done anymore. Dell basically followed his own misguided advice to Steve Jobs and Shut It Down And Gave The Money Back to Sharholders. The company no longer trades so you can’t compare share prices.
Dell didn’t actually shut down, but did give the money back to the shareholders. That was last October. The buy-out amount then was $24.4 Billion
In the half year since then, the company has already shrunken considerably, and the buyout amount was at a premium.
Still, using that as a generous valuation of Dell, Apple would be roughly 21X that. Apple has over 6X the value in cash to buy Dell. Dell’s last publicly released quarterly income was $204 million, which is roughly about 80% of Apple’s “hobby” TV business.
Bob: Because Dell went private, it’s going to be difficult to know what’s it’s worth. But guessing will remain fun.
We all know that feel, bro…
The improvement in the MacBook Air from its initial version with a spinning hard drive, terrible battery life and underwhelming performance to today’s machine, which has relatively few compromises compared with bigger laptops or desktops for most purposes, is impressive.
The original MacBook Air came standard with solid state drives, not “spinning hard drive” components.
No, the SSD was a very expensive option. Most people bought the Spinning Hard Drive version
Yep, hard to believe that the Air didn’t go all solid state until last year. It’s amazing when you think that now it is only SSD, and yet it starts at $899. Truly amazing how quickly things change.
Not only was it a spinning hard drive, but it was a very slow spinning hard drive. It was a 1.8″ drive spinning at 4200 rpm. It only had 2GB of RAM (667 MHz DDR2) and video was only 144MB. Worse, it only had 1 USB port, and no Thunderbolt or SD slot.
All for $1799. If you wanted, you could upgrade to a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo and a 64GB SSD model that sold for $3,098.
Yes, that’s $1,299 extra for a 64GB SSD and a .2GHz cpu upgrade.
It’s really come a long way as a product in a very short time period.
I bought the SSD version of the first generation Air and it still overheated and then slowed to a crawl when running video like Netflix.
Wait until you see the new 12″!!!!
New maxed-out 13″ price: $1,749.00
No retina display? No purchase!