Neil Hughes
The latest rumor on Apple's anticipated redesign of the MacBook Air casts a particularly wide net, suggesting that a thinner model could launch either this fall, or it could miss the holiday shopping season and debut at some point in 2015.
The alleged details, attributed to Taiwan-based supply chain makers, were reported on Wednesday by DigiTimes, which is known for an unreliable track record in predicting Apple's future product plans. The sources that spoke with the publication expressed uncertainty about the launch window for the new MacBook Air, saying Apple plans to launch the thinner model "possibly at the end of 2014 or in 2015," not even narrowing down a potential timeframe for next year.
With what is essentially a 15-month launch window, the rumor leaves considerable room for error. Wednesday's report also claimed that production of components for the new notebook has begun in "small volumes."
No other details on the device were included, and the report did not make note of the anticipated addition of a 12-inch Retina display. To date, rumors have consistently pegged the new MacBook Air as having an even thinner design and a high-resolution Retina display in the 12-inch range.
Apple's next-generation ultra-portable notebook has also been rumored to sport a fan-less quiet design — Â something that could be possible with Intel's next-generation Broadwell chips. The first Broadwell chips, intended for ultra-low-power notebooks, are scheduled to arrive in limited quantities beginning this fall, before a wider launch of the platform in 2015.
Finally, Wednesday's report also claims that Apple's legacy 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with CD/DVD SuperDrive is "expected to be retired by the end of 2014," or just four months from now. The notebook currently remains a part of Apple's notebook lineup, and was given a $100 price cut in July when the Retina display models were updated with newer chips.
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40 Comments
Unusual for DigiTimes to be vague, their wild guesses are usually pretty specific. ;)
This is one overhyped machine. At the end of the day it will still be a vastly underpowered Mac for doing any real work on OS X.
Apple's designers seem to be confusing laptops with bread knives. I could care less about a thinner MacBook Air. In a case, it'll be protected by the same necessarily thick layers of foam as my current MacBook, and thus just as bulky. On a desk, a small difference in thickness matters not. I'm not writing while locked like Houdini in a suitcase barely larger than I am. The universe is huge. I have lots of room. I remember well how this absurd obsession with thinness began. It started with a Motorola phone called the RAZR, which was quite the rage for a time. I even had one and, while it was pretty, I loathed it. The UI was so-so and the developers were so clueless, it did not even include a simple note-taking feature. An obsession about one detail, thinness, can mean failure elsewhere. The RAZR fad faded into nothing. The time and effort to creating absurd levels of thinness distracts from what the next MacBook Air really needs. In addition to the obvious (a Retina screen), that includes: 1. A really compact and light-weight power supply built like the Finsix "Dart." It's ridiculous to have a featherweight laptop that uses a chunky white brick for power. And while Apple is creating that new power supply, why not build a USB power connector into it, so users can charge their iPhones and iPads without pulling out their laptop? 2. A MagSafe-like replacement for what is by far the worst connector in computerdom, that giant, ugly, clumsy ethernet connector left over from thirty years ago. WiFi is not suitable for every location or for fields where privacy matters like banking, law, and medicine. Doing that would win the praise of the world. 3. Touch ID for the power button. Power-on and log-in with one quick motion would be a great timesaver. 4. GPS location sharing. Make it possible for one GPS-equipped Apple device, say an iPhone, to share its location with other devices via Bluetooth, say an iPad or MBA. That'd make location services far more useful. Those four improvements would do more to make MBAs sell like hotcakes than a few millimeters of reduction in its thickness.
[quote name="pmz" url="/t/181996/apples-12-inch-retina-macbook-air-given-vague-15-month-launch-window-by-digitimes#post_2584976"]This is one overhyped machine. At the end of the day it will still be a vastly underpowered Mac for doing any real work on OS X.[/quote] Overhyped machine by who? We don't even know that this (or the rumored 12.9" iPad) exist. Of course rumor sites starved for Apple news will report on this because they need something to fill their pages and generate ad revenue.
You hit the bullseye there. Any computer with a power profile to be fanless won't be a Mac with the expected performance profile. Essentially yo end up with a single tasking machine. This is why I often wonder if these rumors are really about an IOS based device. My experience with iPad tells me that iOS and the associated hardware can deliver a nice "laptop" experience if the expectations are low. Low in this case meaning single tasking interface for the most part. It wouldn't be suitable for current Mac uses though. Atleast not someone that runs several substantial apps at the same time. In the end I don't see Broadwell delivering the performance per watt to even replace today's Air models in a fan less machine. [quote name="pmz" url="/t/181996/apples-12-inch-retina-macbook-air-given-vague-15-month-launch-window-by-digitimes/0_40#post_2584976"]This is one overhyped machine. At the end of the day it will still be a vastly underpowered Mac for doing any real work on OS X.[/quote]