Apple secretly working on a MacBook Air with an iPad A5 chipset?
On the very first episode of TiPb TVt we joked about the 11 inch MacBook Air being more like an iPad pro, but deep inside Apple's secret labs they might be working on making it exactly that according to Japanese blog Macotakara
Few weeks ago, DigiTimes told that Apple to launch MacBook Air with Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt in June-July. And additionally, an anonymous source told more information, Apple already made test equipment of Thunderbolt MacBook Air driven by A5 processor.
According to this source who saw live A5 MacBook Air actually, this test machine performed better than expected.
While Apple has been big on taking iPad ideas "back to the Mac" this year, if true it would have to be a proof of concept. Because, as much as I love my iPad 2 for things like Infinity Blade, I quickly run back to my 11 inch MacBook Air to run Photoshop and other intensive apps. Having all that power in a tiny portable is still too good to give up, even if an Apple A5 MacBook Air would have 48 hours of battery life and other benefits.
That's assuming it would be running Mac OS X Lion, which they no doubt have experimented with on A5 (just as they experimented with earlier versions of Mac OS X on Intel back in the PowerPC days). If it's running iOS 5, then I have to wonder if it would have a touch screen, which is something Apple said they don't think works on a laptop.
What do you think? Do you want to add MacBooks to the A5 family? To the iOS family? Would it be the best of both worlds or the worst?
Senior Editor at iMore and a practicing psychotherapist specializing in stress and anxiety. She speaks everywhere from conferences to corporations, and co-hosts of the iMore show and ZEN and TECH podcasts.
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You are missing the point here. If they get OS X running on a A5 chip what is to stop them from releasing some super Phone. That has both iOS on it and when docked into something like a Macbook Air, runs OS X. Sharing files and applications (where applicable) between the two OSs. Maybe it is crazy talk, but man, I want a Super Phone.
If it is Mac OS X like with 12 hours of battery life and can run Office 2011 heavy applications adequately, it might be worth the pain of not being able to run legacy apps for awhile, or slowly through emulation.
Problem is, a C2D barely runs Office 2011 adequately. You'd need like a 2 GHz dual-core A15 ARM device for that, presuming MS even cross compiles.
"Problem is, a C2D barely runs Office 2011 adequately."
And you've got to wonder why. Office doesn't really do much CPU-taxing calculation (except for maybe the spreadsheet.) Text processing is trivial. Even writing out proprietary .DOC format files should be fast and easy.
But no, Microsoft has bloated Office into a resource hog. Kind of like how Detroit bloated their cars into gas hogs. They make money by charging $50K for really fancy trucks, and the oil companies score record profits due to artificially high demand. Same with Microsoft and Intel. Microsoft adds features and slowness, Intel sells faster and faster chips.
One of the biggest benefits of the development of iOS, for Apple and its developer community, is that Apple and their developers have learned how to write lean, mean code again. Lean, mean code is something that Microsoft simply can't do. Not since Windows 3.1. And that's the real reason they're getting killed in the mobile space. Not because of styluses or Atom's inefficiency.
Yeah, Office 2011 is awesomely bloated. It runs much smoother on Windows, even in a VM running on Mac OS. Keynote is so much better than PPT, even PPT on Windows.
But the roadblock is Excel and Outlook. As bloated as they are, I think they are better than their competitors.
Ok, so us windows users get a better office and you guys get a better itunes.
Yea but will it play Crisis?
gtfo
*Crysis
Why can't apple just make an iPad dock that looks like that?
Gee Apple, at least make the chip a little faster for the CPU!
Applew spent months maybe even a few years on the 2010 MacBook Air line and getting it to work with Core 2 Duos and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. For them to announce and sell so many from then to now means they wouldn't re-release it with an A5 ( a mobile processor ) and iOS. It's a Mac. Not a mobile device, a portable computer. They might test it secretly, but it's not gonna surface.
Inevitable. It's only a matter of time before iOS and Mac OS are unified. One OS on all Apple platforms, one CPU family (ARM) for all platforms. One single App Store. It'll happen within 6 years, I'd guess.
No, a single A5 isn't fast enough to run Snow Leopard (or Lion) on a MacBook Air. Yes, two or more A5s would be fast enough now. And yes, a quad-core A6/A7/future-multi-core-ARM design would easily be fast enough in the future.
Maybe a quad core A5.
They should make it a hybrid tablet, that would be awesome.
What an awesome idea. Wouldn't it be great if that MacBook Air ran a version of OS X adapted for ARM processors, saving weight and battery in the process? And since none of the applications would work, they could start from scratch... Maybe they could even add a fancy touchscreen to replace the keyboard and mouse, make the device lighter and more portable... Maybe it could have just one button! I think a device like this would sell millions of units.
Hahahaha I like this! Very funny.
I don't know why people seem to forget that iOS is ALL OSX code. It's been stripped a little of unnecessary things, and adapted for a whole new interface. iOS is for touch. OSX is for keyboard & mouse. Simple.
Just love your iPads people. :)
And here I thought Apple wasn't interested in making a "netbook".
They just won't call it a "netbook." it's much more magical than that.
Provided it's running OSX, I'm okay with it. Apps may be an issue, but with the AppStore - which is sure to be the number one way to get OSX Apps sooner rather than later, Apple can force developers to make ARM apps much easier than in the past.
Can't see this within 12months though, this is a longer term project IMO. However, it WILL happen. Perhaps A7 or A8.
They are always "secretly" making things. The experiment. Don't get ur hopes up
If the 11 inch MBA could be both -iOS so that it runs iPad apps and OSX so it runs computer programs -then they would have something really unbeatable.
Sounds to me like a updated version of the eMate. It might be an interesting option for education.
I wonder if this is apple trying to get evrything inhouse. They like to design eerything in there products, that's why they bought their own chip maker to their mobile products and im sure they would like that same type of control over their computer products instead of having to rely on intel.