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Old 11-08-2010, 02:29 PM
Omega Omega is offline
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I'd imagine their choice of CPU was dictated by a combination of one or more of: price (i.e. profit margin--cheaper/older CPU means more room for markup), power (both battery use and heat generated), and physical size/form factor. The SU9400 in the 11" MBA is an ULV (Ultra-Low Voltage) SFF (Small Form Factor) chip that weighs in at only 10W TDP, whereas the lightest-weight Core i3 (330UM) is ULV, but not SFF, and has a TDP of 18W--nearly double that of the chip they chose.

Is it possible they could've used the i3 in the MBA? Possibly. But it strikes me as a much harder sell to the target demographic to explain the performance benefits of an i3 over a c2d and explain away why it only gets 2 hours of battery life than it does to just gloss over the CPU choice and boast 5 hours of battery life.

It's all standard Apple fare, as far as I can see. Non-upgradable RAM is a dream for them, since they can show the "low" price for the low-spec model, but know that nearly everyone will pay tons to upgrade to the model with reasonable RAM. It's possible it was even necessary to fit into the space constraints. You might also find people claiming that the new onboard flash is somehow different (better!) than SSD, but of course it's still going to speak SATA, just using a different physical connector--mainly goes to fuel the "think different" (i.e. "Apple is better!") mantra they like to push.

Do I want one? No. Will tons of people buy it? Of course.
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