Here is the list of Apple products that will be considered to be obsolete starting on March 13th. As usual there will be no more service provided for those devices:
After removing unceremoniously the unibody white MacBook, Apple had to introduce a new laptop for education at a reasonable price (by Apple's standards of course). Times are changing and it is now a MacBook Air.
This model is a hybrid model of MacBook Air: it has a 13" display but all the other specifications correspond to an 11" entry model with a 64 GB SSD, 2 GB of RAM and a Core i5 processor clocked at 1.6 GHz.
It is priced at $999 (like the white MacBook), the price of the 11" model for regular customers.
The only disappointment about this model is the RAM capacity. Out of 2 GB, 256 MB are dedicated exclusively to Intel's integrated graphics. Once the OS is running there is only a little over 1 GB left, which will cause the little SSD to start swapping pretty fast.
The last version of Asus Zenbook is an ultrabook, and as illustrated below, a copy of Apple MacBook Air. Overall, if you change the logo, you will have hard time to see difference at the first glance.
Such similarities did not please Apple, and the company asked Pegatron, its manufacturing partner, to stop assembling the Asus ultrabook, in other words to choose between Apple or ASUS, as reported by Chinatimes.
Pegatron quickly reacted and has been transferring assembling of ASUS notebook to a competitor. considering that Pegatron is also assembling parts of iPhone and soon iPad models, stopping working for Apple would have had a strong impact.
This is also understandable from Apple, as the company is transferring know-how and process to manufacturing partners, and is probably not keen of seeing a partner manufacture a copy of one of its products for a competitor. Other people will most likely think that Apple is trying to kill competition, but when competition is copying Apple as sign of their inability to bring innovation, Apple has the right to limit such practice and find ways to protect its intellectual properties
It could be an excellent deal for Apple. With the growing success of the iPad among flight companies, it could also seduce the US Air Force for replacing the large and heavy documentations present in all planes. The goal would be the replace the 20 kg books and folders by an iPad. Weight and search function would of course be of strong interest for the crew and pilots.
However, it is unlikely that pilots will get the authorization to install apps on such iPad to play games and kill time during long distance flight on auto-pilot mode...
In a press release, Apple announced that the Fair Labor Association, a third party and independent organization, will be auditing Foxconn's facilities in China. The FLS will conduct this investigation at Apple's request.
Apple today announced that the Fair Labor Association will conduct special voluntary audits of Apple’s final assembly suppliers, including Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, at Apple’s request. A team of labor rights experts led by FLA president Auret van Heerden began the first inspections Monday morning at the facility in Shenzhen known as Foxconn City.
“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The inspections now underway are unprecedented in the electronics industry, both in scale and scope, and we appreciate the FLA agreeing to take the unusual step of identifying the factories in their reports.
With such strategy, Apple intends to give proofs that the company is indeed concerned by the reported problems and issues regarding Foxconn's employees working conditions. In addition to the internal audit conducted few months ago, Apple decided that having an independent organization running such audit will provide reliable conclusions and would not lead to suspicions of biased reports as currently reported in the news networks. The first preliminary reports of this audit will be released early next month and other Apple's manufacturing partners, Quanta and Pegatron, will also be audited in Spring.
Our news yesterday related to the rumor on a MacBook Air-like MacBook Pro forthcoming model has been generating quite some reactions, and most of them driven by the fear of seeing Apple moving to an entirely closed system.
As we mention it yesterday there might be the option of having the space left for a 2.5" HD in addition to the default SSD default modules. In addition Thunderbolt would also open up the access to other peripherals. So if the MacBook Pro with a "Air style" would be light and powerful, it could benefit from a docking station via Thunderbolt to get access numerous peripherals, without requiring the need for multiple additional ports on the enclosure. So, the notebook would only need, power port, Ethernet, 2x USB3 and 1x Thunderbolt.
One aspect that the rumor did not mention is the CPU. Indeed, current MacBook Air uses the "Ultra Low Voltage" (ULV) version of Intel mobile CPUs, so it is quite clear that Apple will have hard time to reach the same performance level as the MBP are usually loaded with high-end powerful units, meaning higher TDP and power consumption. With some engineering, Apple might not be using the ULV CPU in such MBP and have found a way to dramatically improve cooling. In addition, MBP have a discrete GPU, and not the Intel graphical chipset, so again we would need dedicated cooling system too. It will be had to cool down so many CPU/GPU at once, especially if the Thunderbolt is used as the "universal" connection point.
So, if Apple wants to move to a SuperDive-free MBP, for sure the enclosure will be thinner, but most likely not as thin as the MacBook Air to be able to accommodate a cooling system. The other option is that this 15" MBP "Air style" will indeed be a MacBook Air wit ha 15" display, hosting the fastest CPU and the Intel graphical chipset. A design specifically dedicated for corporate usage, where 2D graphics, text, long battery lifetime and large display are indeed, beyond high 3D and CPU performance.
