You can expect more accessories to become available (e.g. Apple does offer its own Thunderbolt-compatible 27-inch monitor, but this is not exactly what you’d call cheap, at around 900 Euros on average, even if it does simultaneously act as a kind of docking station, giving the Air access to numerous additional ports. One minor snag with the whole exciting story: there is a distinct shortage of compatible equipment for the new Thunderbolt port. The Air has a smaller Thunderbolt controller, which cannot even match the current MacBook Pros in terms of the transfer rates it can achieve (two bi-directional 10 GBit channels and a DisplayPort vs. Despite this, Thunderbolt is supposed to surpass the possible transfer rates of the current USB 2.0 connections by quite some way (10 GBit/s), allowing it to be used as a connection for high-resolution image reproduction devices.īut looking at the details, the performance-orientated user will have to put up with certain limitations with this system in the MacBook Air. For cost reasons, however, they have fallen back on conventional copper wiring for the time being. As the codename suggests, it originally relied on an optical transfer of data. What is Thunderbolt? It is a universal port which was originally developed by Intel and Apple under the codename ‘Light Peak’.
And this is really the only important change in the area of connectivity.
Although not quite, because to be accurate the Thunderbolt functionality has been added to the identical Mini DisplayPort.
#MACBOOK AIR 11 INCH 2011 CPU FULL#
Can the Intel CPU still use its Turbo powers to full effect in this slimline case, particularly as Apple is always at great pains to keep the system noise to an absolute minimum?Īs Apple has not changed anything about the case itself or the input devices (other than minimal adjustments to the labelling for Lion, and restoring the sorely missed keyboard backlighting), we refer you to our existing review of the Apple MacBook Air from autumn 2010. We are interested in how much the new platform will improve performance, and whether it could actually be a step backwards in terms of graphics. Nvidia’s Geforce 320M has been taken out of service and replaced with the Intel HD Graphics 3000, integrated into the CPU. It’s a different story, however, when it comes to the graphics solution. It’s still a dual-core ULV CPU that is being used, but the MacBook Air is now available with two processors from the latest Intel Core i portfolio, which should provide a sizable increase in processor performance. Instead, Apple relied on the Geforce 320M GPU, at the time a relatively powerful graphics card. When the 2010 MacBook Air models were introduced, Apple was bombarded with criticism for sticking with out-of-date Intel Core 2 Duo technology (ULV) while Intel’s brand-new Core processors were already available.
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