MacBook Air: Better Battery Life, No Retina Display

All the power you want all day long…but no Retina display!

The new MacBook Air has finally arrived with an incredible change to battery life thanks to the new fourth generation Intel Haswell processor, however, we will still have to wait for the Retina display upgrade.

All of Apple‘s other high end devices (the iPhone 5, the MacBook Pro and the iPod touch) all have the Retina display, so why can’t  we have this wondrous visual feast in the new MacBook Air?  Well it all comes down to this: with the new Haswell chip installed, it was a trade off between extended battery life and the Retina display.  The battery life won, hands down, with the new processor on board, the focus was on battery longevity.  And with such a fantastic display anyway, do you care? The 11-inch MacBook Air’s display measures a mere 4.86 millimetres thin and features a resolution of 1366×768 pixels, while the 13-inch model has a resolution of 1440×900 pixels!  Both sizes have LED backlighting which makes colours bright and vibrant from all viewing angles. The Air comes with a 720p FaceTime HD Camera with Dual microphones and these microphones reduce background noise from behind the notebook, which is useful, say, when you use dictation software as they create an adaptive audio beam that intelligently adjusts to detect your voice, instead of the noise around you.

This new machine is powered by the all-new fourth-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors with ultra efficient architecture, which was designed to use less power and still deliver high performance (this is where your extended battery life comes in) If you put the MacBook Air to sleep for more than 3 hours it enters standby mode to conserve battery life, for up to 30 days and if you enable the Power Nap feature, you’ll continue to receive new email and calendar invitations while your computer is asleep!

Even Faster WiFi

The MacBook Air now supports ultra-fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi. When connected to an 802.11ac basestation which includes the new AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule.

Apple say wireless performance is up to 3x faster than with the previous generation of MacBook Airand your Wi-Fi range improves as well. With Bluetooth technology installed you can connect MacBook Air to Bluetooth-enabled devices.

It’s all about the Flash!

The MacBook Air is designed entirely around flash storage. Not only does this make this notebook much lighter and more portable than traditional notebooks, it also provides a faster access to data and this latest machine comes in capacities up to 512GB.  This next-generation flash storage is up to a staggering 9x faster than a traditional 5400-rpm notebook hard drive. And it’s up to 45% faster than the flash storage in the previous-generation MacBook Air! The 11-inch model now comes as standard with 128GB of storage.  In addition, the new Intel HD Graphics 5000 chip offers up to a massive 40 per cent faster graphics power!

The MacBook Air also comes equipped with a lightning-fast Thunderbolt port and two USB 3 ports, so you can connect the latest USB 3 devices and all your USB 2 devices as well.

So, with an amazing battery life, a new generation processor, a super fast flash HDD, great sound and speakers, Thunderbolt and USB3 connectivity and a crystal clear display (oh and it’s light as a feather!), do you really care that it doesn’t have a Retina display?  I don’t.

The new MacBook Air range is priced at 11-inch from £849 and 13-inch from £949 and are available online and instore now.

SOURCE: http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/]

[Image via simpymac]