AppleInsider Staff
Apple will reportedly update the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air product lines in June 2013 with upgraded innards, but no major design changes are expected for either laptop range.
According to the hit-and-miss publication DigiTimes, Taiwanese supply chain sources said Apple recently issued requests for quotations (RFQs) for a number of notebooks, including the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, with the new models slated to reach consumers in June 2013.
Little information was offered regarding the revised MacBook Pro as the publication focused its report on the effect Apple's MacBook Air will have on so-called Ultrabook makers next year. For 2013, Apple's thin-and-light is said to be switching to a new processor platform, most likely Intel's next-generation Haswell architecture.
As for design, sources say no major changes are planned for either product line. While the MacBook Pro line was the recipient of a design overhaul with the Retina display model, non-Retina versions still sport a unibody chassis largely unaltered since its debut in 2008. The MacBook Air's enclosure was revamped in 2010, taking on a more angular look as Apple applied design cues learned from its development of the iPad.
DigiTimes also suggests Apple may cut MacBook Air prices ahead of the June launch, but such a move is unlikely considering the company has no recent history of discounting products prior to a newer version's release. The publication made similar claims in May when it incorrectly predicted that Apple would introduce a $799 version of the laptop in the third quarter of 2012.
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
54 Comments
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/155226/apples-macbook-pro-macbook-air-to-retain-current-designs-in-reported-june-refresh#post_2251684"]Apple will reportedly update the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air product lines in June 2013 with upgraded innards, but no major design changes are expected for either laptop range.[/quote] DigiTimes, you don't say. Hmpf, what do others think about this journalistic website? [URL=http://techland.time.com/2012/05/23/digitimes-on-digitimes-we-know-what-were-doing-and-well-try-to-do-better/]Ah, ok.[/URL] May 23, 2012 [quote] Hi Mr. McCracken, Thank you for writing about us. Digitimes has indeed reported much on Apple, and many of the products that we said would be launched have never been launched, or have had their launches delayed. But that does not mean that we were crying wolf or passing along gossip. In fact, Apple have a lot of its R&D projects and ideas tried out at its supply chain partners in Asia. Many of the prototypes created by the supply chain partners will never make it to the market after Apple’s assessments. This is one of the major reasons why a lot of the information we have disclosed has been seen by others as inaccurate, but is still valuable to our reader base in the supply chain. We understand the risks behind the kind of reporting we have been doing. In the future we will implement even stricter requirements for verification of such stories. We will also add more analyses to such stories to provide readers with more valuable information. Joseph Chen Deputy Managing Editor DIGITIMES WWWatch [/quote]
Over on MacRumors the same article says MBA will get retina in June. I want a MBA and I want retina - just not sure if Apple can do this just yet. Maybe 2014?
This might sound tacky but I want to see white versions of the MacBook Pro to match the white iPad and iPhone.
Will Haswell be available this early?
I'm waiting for the 2nd gen rMBP to come out before I jump in. As it stands, the current model's chips don't seem particularly well optimized for it. So the sooner we see a refresh, the better.
Over on MacRumors the same article says MBA will get retina in June.
I noticed the same thing. I mean, I know it's DigiTimes, but do they really say two different things on the same site?