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“Rumors of a new Air have relatively few details, but it’s believed Apple is repositioning the ultraportable as a mainstream notebook,” Electronista reports. “As part of the shift, it would shrink from a 13.3-inch display to 11.6 inches and would use Intel’s newer ultra-low voltage Core iX processors.”
Electronista reports, “The new Air, combined with holiday shipments, is expected to push Apple’s notebook shipments alone to as much as 2.9 million by the end of the ongoing summer quarter. A figure as high raises the possibility of Apple selling over four million Macs in one quarter in light of new iMac updates giving a boost to desktops.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
What would MDN do without Fred Mertz?
USB PLZ
Can you make a huge ramp of Air’s big enough to climb a Stairway to Heaven?
And Patrick?
All MacBook Air’s ever released have USB. All of them. Everywhere.
Firewire, though would be a welcome addition.
Isn’t the main selling points of the MBA it’s full sized keyboard & 13.3″ screen?
Turn it into a net book? Nah!
If only they could announce these before the end of August, they could then still capture some of that back-to-school business.
If any of the above ends up being true, these would be just about the most perfect college laptops. It would be about the ultimate in laptop features and specs: a fast laptop (as opposed to slow netbooks), very lightweight (compared to other laptops similar size), very long battery life (unlike all other laptops), very sturdy (unibody aluminium), and most importantly, ultimate in college coolness!
Then again, even if they miss the back-to-school, they’ll can always kill at the end of the year…
If the Air form-factor becomes more mainstream, I’d like to see the PC makers compete.
With the iPhone, iPad and MacBooks Apple is pushing the size/quality envelope so far out no one can follow them. Not without an expensive, multi-year effort of focused R&D and a serious ramp-up in their machining capacity.
Apple got here in incremental steps, while keeping the lines profitable all the way through. If anyone wants to follow, their product lines are in for some very unprofitable years.
MBA just doesn’t excite me much any more.
MacBook Air was never a really attractive proposition so it is to be hoped the new versions are dealing with bang for the buck.
My wife picked one up at the local store, and said, “Wow, that’s my next computer. Why would anyone want any other?” But we are waiting for more power and less cost. The demo model was slower than Windows Vista
What’s not mainstream about it besides no optical disk? It’s a standard laptop configuration.
I almost got a look at it in Apple’s secret laboratory, but then it just disappeared into thin Air
4GB of RAM and I’m in!!
I always thought the Air was the predecessor to the iPad, at least in form factor. Break off the monitor half and add multi-touch screen on it, and it’ll be a larger iPad. New with bigger trackpad, I guess, but when would Apple add direct touch interface to the screens of all MacBooks? Is it necessary? Is it too soon? Would it compete with the iPad?
I don’t get it. Apple has “mainstream” laptops with the MacBook and MacBook Pro. The Air is nice because the keyboard is full-sized, it can come with a solid state drive, the screen isn’t much of a trade-off, and it’s fast enough for the things I’m likely to do when I get home at night or when I travel. It’s not a work horse. I wouldn’t encode video or render 3D with it. But it’s a solid little computer that doesn’t feel too compromised.
I would like a faster processor and a higher resolution screen. A better design on the USB ports would be nice. It can be difficult to plug in a thumb drive without an extension cable. The glass track pad would be nice. More memory is always welcome, but the 2GB it has works well.
Any chance of a touch screen, (in addition to the keyboard) with dual boot?
OS X , or IOS 4
Don’t see any particular reason for the MBA at all. Heavier than an iPad, not really a workhorse (limited ports, HD capacity and no optical drive). What hole does it fill since the iPad. The anal-ist seems to think Apple is about to produce some sort of a high-end netbook, which seems unlikely, since Apple just killed that genre.
Oh, good. Mainstream. Fantastic.
I hear that an iPhone with a slideout keyboard is coming, too.
Would using 64GB or 128GB of flash memory be cheaper than an SSD? I think that could help bring the cost down.
no – they will not make a device with a screen size in between the ipad and macbook – ridiculous “analysis”
My wife has a MBA and loves it. While not the most powerful computer it’s easy for her to carry – and she complains about the weight of my MBP whenever she picks it up.
If replacing it I wouldn’t go for a smaller display – nor would she. I’d want more power in the CPU as well as more memory. When the price goes down a SSD would be nice.
But the MBA is a very nice notebook for normal use.
It’s cool, but for that price, just get the MacBook pro.
FireWire!!! Dammit!
I wouldn’t call these ignoramuses “analysts:” it’s more like “guessilysts” and not even educated ones. Who pays for these people?
I think we can safely forget about FireWire on these. The interface will remain on desktop and professional portable, but it is clear that the ultra-portables (MB, MBA, iPad) aren’t getting it back. The only reason to put it back would be to support some mainstream functionality that isn’t covered by USB2. Since most camcorders these days no longer use tape (and thus don’t need FW for real-time capturing), and most external drives (and other high-speed data devices) use USB2, the only possible function where USB2 just doesn’t provide alternative would be target disk mode. Outside of the elite circle of us geeks (actually, Mac geeks; Windows geeks don’t have a clue about the Target Disk mode), nobody has use for it, or knows what it is. We simply can’t expect Apple to service a fraction of a one percent of its customer base by providing a port that remaining user population would never use.