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General discussion

New MacBook Air Refresh to come this June?!

Apr 16, 2011 10:39AM PDT

Okay so according to http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20031434-64.html?tag=mncol;txt and many other insinuations around the web, the Macbook Airs will get a processor update coming June to the new Intel processors.

Are these rumors usually accurate? Will this update most likely happen? I am about to purchase a MBA, but hearing about the processor update would make waiting worth it as the i-Series from Intel is faster than the Core Duos.

Would the update be for both 11 and 13 inch models? I read from a certain website that only the 13 inch model will see the new chip. May this be true? I want to buy the 11 inch MBA, and it would be a shame if only the 13" will get the Sandy Bridge.

Any clarification on this? Thanks!

Discussion is locked

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No one knows
Apr 16, 2011 11:38AM PDT

For the upteenth million time someone has asked a question like this the answer is always the same: NO ONE KNOWS!

Apple likes to be a secretive company, and whether you like that or hate it isn't going to make anyone have any more concrete information. So no one knows for sure until there's an official announcement. Until then it's just a rumor, and rumors regarding Apple products tend to be wrong as often as they're right. I clearly remember people being convinced that the iPad would be called the iSlate, and released months before it actually was. Then there were rumors about features that would be in the iPad 2 which were nowhere near accurate. Some of them were more or less spot on, but there's no real way to discern between the two until after the fact.

And you don't buy a MBAir because you want processing speed, you buy an Air because you want the portability and long battery life. If you're looking to get an Air because it's fast, look elsewhere. The SSD lets it boot rather quickly, but when you get down to it, it's considerably slower than it's MacBook and MacBook Pro siblings. Even if Apple puts a sandy bridge CPU in an Air refresh, it's going to be a low end dual core model because, again, the Air is designed for portability and battery life, not performance. You want performance, get a MacBook Pro.

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No one?
Apr 16, 2011 11:43AM PDT

I wonder if they keep it so secret that nobody knows until the minutes before release.

"I don't know what it is, but it's green."

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thanks
Apr 16, 2011 11:55AM PDT

I will take the article, written by your very own, with just a grain of salt then.

Maybe you should tell Mr. Brooke Crothers exactly what you told me?

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I don't work for Cnet
Apr 16, 2011 1:42PM PDT

I don't work for Cnet, or it's parent company CBS, nor do most of the people on these forums. So what they say is on them, and for better or worse, like most online publications, the goal is to get eyeballs on ads to generate revenue. If that happens by putting up an article about some rumor regarding a release of some new Apple product, that's what they'll do. You can agree or disagree with that general policy all you like, same as Apple's policy of strict secrecy, but both are a legitimate business strategy.

Personally, I rather doubt this rumor. Historically, Apple only updates the Air line about once a year, and the last update was only a couple of months ago, and it was a pretty radical redesign of the entire system. A mid-2011 refresh date would probably be the earliest they would update it, but I still doubt they'd push out another update that quickly. In September or August, maybe, probably not June. A more plausible idea is that they will be announcing a refresh of the iMac line with the sandy bridge Core i3/5/7s. The last refresh on those was around July of last year. I would also not be surprised if there was a publicly available beta of 10.7, since they've made the unusual move of providing developer preview releases to more than just a very select few partner companies. Pure speculation on my part, and I guess the difference is I'll own up to that fact. I have nothing at all to base that on but my own profile of how the company operates having had a professional interest in this for about the past two years I've been working for one AASP or another as a repair tech. I could be way off base, or I could be spot on. Probably the former over the latter though.

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Buy what you want when you want
Apr 23, 2011 12:40AM PDT

I recently faced the same question that you are now facing, musicman01. When I looked into all of the articles suggesting that the MacBook Air would be updated in June, every article referred back to the CNET rumor. I could not find any other site that independently verified this report. Since I was after portability and the superior screen resolution compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, I went ahead and bought the 13-inch MBA a couple of weeks ago. I am very happy with my new machine and get to enjoy using it (and carrying very little weight) while others are waiting for the next Apple update.

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Fretting?
Apr 16, 2011 11:41AM PDT

After hearing such things I finally found a great answer to this problem. Ready?

Wait for the update and then buy. That's the only way to minimize that awful feeling you are one-upped by others in a few months.
Bob