“Last month, Japanese blog Mac Otakara reported that Apple plans to announce new MacBook Air models featuring USB-C ports based on the Thunderbolt 3 protocol by the end of June, and begin shipping the notebooks to retailers in August,” Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors. “It is now seven weeks later, however, and the rumor has yet to materialize.”
“But if a new report from Taiwanese website DigiTimes is to believed, Apple still has plans to release a new MacBook Air with USB-C ports after all,” Rossignol reports. “The report does not provide a launch timeframe for the updated notebooks, but the secondary rumor suggests Mac Otakara may have been off on timing only.”
Currently, Apple has decided to adopt the USB Type-C interface for its MacBook Air, while Asustek Computer and Hewlett-Packard (HP) are upgrading one of their notebooks’ regular USB port to the Type-C. Lenovo, Acer and Dell are still evaluating the option. – DigiTimes
Rossignol reports, “It is possible that DigiTimes is misinterpreting a thinner MacBook Pro with USB-C ports as a MacBook Air.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Perhaps this was Apple’s plan all along, but we’re so ready for new road Macs, we’re ready to buy basically whatever ends up being the lightest, most-compact Mac they offer this year (performance is not a concern on the road; the slowest Mac offered today is more than capable enough for what we do on-the-go). Size and weight are the utmost concerns.
Fingers ready for that “Buy” button whenever it appears, Apple!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Take my money apple. Please be a new MacBook Pro with kaby lake chips, pcie 3.0 x8 storage, thunderbolt 3, r9 m495x/gtx 970/980m graphics, and weighing less than 3.5 pounds. The perfect machine. Please please please. Agree with mdn here, fingers are already on the buy button for this.
Amen. MBPros ought to be kept up more often and made as powerful & versitile as reasonably possible.
MBPros last a LONG time and thus, when I pay near $5000 given just the hardware bought with a MBPro, I want the best.
Unfortunately, with soldered SSDs, it is necessary to buy multiple external SSDs to do clones and backups to a much greater degree than in the past. When the day comes the MBP gets damaged, I need to be ready to clone a backup MBPro in less than an hour.
At this point the internal SSDs are probably more reliable than all the rest of the MBPro components, but you can’t just remove the SSD, so …
Let’s be realistic.
You WILL NOT see Kaby Lake based Macs in the near future. Intel isn’t even sampling those chips yet. (Yes, there are some prototypes floating about, but even sample quantities of final, production chips are NOT to be had at this time. And, it’s often six months or more from first sampling of a chip until full production for which Apple will wait before shipping any product based on that chip.)
Apple CEO Cook: We’re innovating like crazy
Innovating MacBook Pro is not releasing a machine with vintage technology, and limited performance and functionality. Of course, Tim Cook, would consider these limitations secondary to shaving off a few grams of weight and which appeals to his fondness of the “thinness” aesthetic. If the new MacBook Pro is thinner and less useful this model would surely be accepted by limp waisted pansy ass fanboys.
I agreed with you until you threw in the anti-gay shit.
You shoot your own posted crap down in flames every time with your juvenile homophobic & imagined fanboy-obsessed rhetoric. Grow up junior, if possible. (I’m pessimistic in the extreme on that.)
No. I’m convinced the MBA is in the process of being replaced by the MacBook.
It (MacBook Air) still has a role in the lineup. Because it’s display is not “Retina,” the price can be lower. It’s currently $400 less than MacBook, at the low end for each. And Apple could easily drop the low-end price for the Air by another $100.
It also has more ports, including regular USB ports that don’t need converting, the SDXC card slot (which I value), and a Thunderbolt 2 port for connecting external high-speed storage and display (which I also value). The user can have it connected to power while connecting to peripherals. MacBook Pro has those capabilities, but costs A LOT more.
MacBook is certainly the more elegant choice, if you want to pay more for less overall functionality.
In Jobs name – YES PLEASE. Agree with MDN. Desperate to buy a new Mac but not purchase 2 year old tech. Writing this on a 2011 MBA, with a full HD, sad battery, and 3 dead pixels. Come on give me a 14″ Macbook, Retina Display,, 512SsD, 2x USB-C ports, and 8G of ram thats ALL I’m asking for! (Wouldn’t complain if it had 16G but I’ll take 8).
I’ll think about it when Apple offers a new one but for the time being my 13″ Mid-2012 MBP has 2-1TB SSDs and 16GB ram. It’s fast enough for what I do including Final Cut Pro work. A light, fast road machine is very enticing, indeed. But then there’s the potential 9″ iPad Pro I’ll most likely be getting so I can pass along my current 4th Gen iPad to my son in the Army (he currently has a 1st gen iPad and a 13″ MBP). Decisions, decisions…
” we’re [sic] ready to buy basically whatever ends up being the lightest, most-compact Mac they offer this year (performance is not a concern on the road; the slowest Mac offered today is more than capable enough for what we do on-the-go). Size and weight are the utmost concerns.”
Maybe for you portability is absolutely paramount. So just get a MacBook. Carry around lots and lots of dongles and be done with it.
For many of us we MUST have more processing capability. I’ve had Keynote and PPT presentations and live simulations run “OK” on just the maxed out rMBP but when hooked up to a UHD screen playing the presentation or running a simulation live for a large group the rMBP struggles (and in one case just gave up). Some of us must have as much portable compute & graphics capability & screen real estate as we can possibly get our hands on — AND we prefer Macs over any other platform.
Yes, there are those of you who believe ultra light and small(ish) Macs are the be all, end all of the Mac world. That’s great for you. However, many of us need something more robust.
As for the article itself…
Apple moving to the USB-C connector is a “no brainer”. Anyone who believes otherwise is not working with more than one functioning brain cell. To predict that Apple will go to USB-C connectors is like saying the sun will set this evening.
The only question is what will those connectors support? The USB-C connector can support, depending upon the chipsets behind them, everything from 10 Gbps USB to 40 Gbps TB 3.0 to 100 W of power to DisplayPort to MHL to much, much more. Will Apple choose to support the full suite? If not, what subset of that full suite will Apple support? Only time will tell.
Last Monty I bought a MacBook Pro 15 loaded, I returnere it arter one week. I was disappointed with the outdated specs, looks and weight. Apple needs to do better than this, the Mac is the soul of Apple. I instead am using my new iPad Pro 12.9 with smart keyboard for mobile needs and my iMac 21 i7 for office needs. Its the perfect combination and I love using my iPad more and more. It really is the future of mobile computing. Nevertheless, Apple need to put out the best laptops, desktops for macOS on the planet. There can be no substitute for perfection, quality and want.