512 Pixels

image via Apple PR

It seems that more and more, people are clamoring for a MacBook Air with Retina display.

And for good reason. Retina displays are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, but at 3.57 pounds, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is a full 0.61 pounds heavier than the MacBook Air of the same size. At its thickest points, the Air is still thinner than its Retina-equipped cousin.

A thinner, cheaper MacBook Pro with Retina display just seems to fit the bill for most people.

I don’t think we’re going to see a MacBook Air with Retina display next month at WWDC, however.

Announced at Macworld in 2008, the original MacBook Air started at $1,799. A 64GB SSD added another $999. In October 2010 at its “Back to the Mac” event, Apple re-vamped the MacBook Air adding an 11-inch model and re-vamping the 13-inch, which enjoyed a starting price point of $1299, with the 11-inch machine starting at just $999.

This pricing shift, coupled with the company discontinuing the MacBook, position the Air as Apple’s entry-level notebook.

While this was a radical shift from the “premium” product the Air was just two years earlier, customers flocked to the new thin machines.

For a while, the Airs set below the MacBook Pros, but in 2012, Apple added the awfully-named “MacBook Pro with Retina display.” Instead of killing of the non-Retina MacBook Pros, however, Apple kept them around. In fact, you can still buy a MacBook Pro today.

There are several reasons Apple did this, but I think the most important one is price. There is a $300 difference in the base model of 13-inch MacBook Pro and the Retina versions, with the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display selling for $400 more than its non-Retina sibling.

Without the standard MacBook Pro in the middle, there would be a large gap in Apple’s pricing structure. More importantly, however, it’s vital to see that Retina machines simply cost more.

One solution to this would be for Apple to do with the Airs what it did with the Pros: offer a MacBook Air with Retina display and a MacBook Air. Doing so might even allow Apple to kill off the standard MacBook Pro, as it could still offer three groups of pricing.

Even if Apple did that, I still don’t think the MacBook Air with Retina display earns its wings at WWDC.

While the MacBook Pro with Retina display is thinner and lighter than the standard MacBook Pro, it’s still a good bit thicker (and heavier) than the Airs.

This is for several reasons, but the biggest is the battery. Just look at this monster:

image via iFixit

While the MacBook Air’s battery takes up a similar amount of space, it’s much thinner, thanks to the Air’s tapered profile:

image via iFixit

Famously, adding the Retina display to the iPad made it thicker and heavier, and my guess is that Apple’s doesn’t want to repeat that with its notebook line.

While the imminent arrival of Haswell means new machines will surely sip even less power than the Airs of today, I’m not sure it’s a big enough jump for Apple to keep the Air as slim and light as it is today. Like the iPad mini, I just don’t think the math adds up for a MacBook Air with Retina display quite yet.

All it requires is two super old motherboards and shaving your head.

I generally enjoy space movies, but this looks intense.

The update promises “stability fixes for Thunderbolt and Target Disk Mode.” Exciting times.

Jim Dalrymple, in an interview at MacStories about his newly-released The Loop Magazine:

Apple’s Newsstand is the first time since 1994 that I’ve felt another shift in the publishing industry was upon us, so I jumped at it. Apple takes care of distribution, payments and the business side of things, leaving the publisher focus on what they do best – publishing great content.

In some ways, I feel like I’m back in 1994. The traditional magazine outlets are having a hard time wrapping their heads around platforms like Newsstand and the best way to publish content. I’m confident that offering readers exclusive long-form articles in a clean app is the way to go.

Even though it’s been around since iOS 5, it seems that Newsstand has just now started to gain traction. This surely is a combination of just how bad most Newsstand apps are, contrasted with how lightweight and enjoyable things like The Magazine are to use.

I for one am excited to see Jim’s new magazine harness Newsstand, and really think that the service has a much brighter future ahead of it thanks to projects like this. While the technical bits are still a pretty steep cost of entry, services like TypeEngine are making it easier to approach. If publishing to Newsstand were as easy as setting up a WordPress or Squarespace site, just imagine the potential.

This week, Myke and I are joined by a special guest to discuss Iron Man 3.

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The Verge has a great interview with Peter Belanger, the photographer behind many of Apple’s product photos.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop:

“We have decided to cancel CocoaConf Alt 2013. It turns out that it’s not just the hotel that had concerns, but that Apple has a policy of stopping ‘competing’ events in the area,” wrote CocoaConf Alt, Dave Klein. “You know and we know that CocoaConf Alt was not in competition with WWDC, but there just isn’t time to find the right person at Apple to explain that to, nor any guarantee that we could convince them if we found them.”

There was an app like this when I was in college that would suck MP3s out of shared iTunes libraries on the same network.

Four years ago this week, I wrote this:

I never thought I’d be the one to write a mass email like this. People you don’t know write emails like this. People your mother-in-law works with; those people write emails like this.

Needless to say, I’m shocked. But here we are.

Doctors have found a “significant” tumor on the interior of the right side of Josiah’s brain via a CT scan this afternoon. They are unsure what the tumor is at this point in time. The tumor is blocking the drainage system built into the brain, meaning that cranial fluid can’t escape.

The last three weeks of May 2009 would turn out to be the most traumatic 23 days of my life.

I know I’ve written a lot about my son and his battle with cancer here in the past, and I know it’s weird to do it on a tech-centric website like 512.

The reality is that 512 isn’t just a tech site. It’s my site, and I choose to write what I care about. The month of May is burned in to my very DNA and thus gets fleshed out on these pages.

As intrusive as Josiah’s cancer is in his brain, it’s just as intrusive in my mind, heart and very soul. The same is true for my wife, and to a lesser extent, our friends, parents, neighbors, coworkers and more.

That’s what cancer does. It gets in places it shouldn’t be, like tree roots cracking a sidewalk from underneath.

I have my cracks. I have some big ones, actually. While Josiah bears physical scars, they aren’t all that different than the ones I carry. I just feel them more in May than any other time of year.

Dieter Bohn:

With the update, Pebble owners will be able to see their pace and mileage on their watch face, along with the ability to start or stop a workout. Unfortunately, you’ll still need to pull out your phone to get things started — launching the app on your phone automatically launches a companion app on the Pebble, at which point the two begin communicating with each other.

It’s a slow start, but apps are finally coming to the smartwatch.

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