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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.]
“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.”
Did they mean to say netbook instead of notebook? How does shrinking the screen so significantly make it more of a mainstream notebook? Unless the new MBA has one hell of a distracting bezel around the display, you’re going to need to shrink the body of the MBA which means a smaller keyboard for starters.
I thought the ‘revolutionary’ iPad was all anybody would ever need. Why would Apple continue to sell a MBA or, more mystifying, why would they ‘upgrade’ the thing?
Answer: because, for some reason, you will buy it, that’s why.
My educated guess tells me, the new killer feature is a built in universal 3G/4G Modem with support for UMTS, CDMA, LTE and even WiMax as well as two form factors with high resolution displays. The new 11 inch modell will offer the same resolution als the old 13,3 MBA and the new 13,3 will offer the same 1440 x 900 pixel resolution as the 15´´ MBP. Together with 8 to 9 h of battery life this will be true ultralight wireless mobile devices.
When do they deploy the new FireWire and USB?
Look at this apple patent
http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c013485974513970c-pi
could it not be a dual boot, OS X in the notebook factor, boots into IOS in the iPad form?
I don´t understand, why everybody want to have many plugs in a mobile device. Think about wireless technology and battery life, these are the important features.
The chance for a dedicated firewire port is lower then zero, but maybe firewire will have a comeback with lightpeak in the next years 2011 model.
@ Stephen
> Isn’t the main selling points of the MBA it’s full sized keyboard & 13.3″ screen?
The difference between 13.3 and 11.6 is not that much, if Apple follows its current tendency to go to 16:9 aspect ratio for displays instead of 16:10. That would make the likely resolution of a 11.6-inch display “720p” or 1280×720. That’s about 127 PPI (pixels per inch), which is about the same pixel density as a 17-inch MacBook Pro (1920×1200).
Such a 11.6-inch diagonal display would be 10.1 inches wide. Add a half-inch to both sides, and you have about 11 inches to work with. The current Apple wireless keyboard is 11 inches wide. Seems just about perfect to me.
So this rumor sounds reasonable to me. A more “mainstream” (less expensive) MacBook Air would be very popular. No need to mix Mac OS X and iOS. Macs are optimized for keyboard and mouse/trackpad input. iPads are optimized for touch input. Apple is not going to kludge the two together.
Add 3G wireless access, and this would become a perfect road machine.
@sixvodkas,
@HotinPlaya,
I’ve been thinking the same after seeing that patent a while back. I think the MBA is going to get a HUGE makeover this fall that will (almost) take all the hype away from the iPad.
Fred! Fred! That’s ridicoolous!
I’m using a 2006 Mac book right now. I never plug anything into it, and the optical disk died a year ago. I’m ready for this new MBA, or maybe a huge discount on the older model…..
I’m using a 2006 Mac book right now. I never plug anything into it, and the optical disk died a year ago. I’m ready for this new MBA, then again maybe a huge discount on the older model would work for me for another 4 years….
@ grognard
The main problem with the current model is 2GB of built-in RAM that is not upgradable. For basic use, 2GB of RAM is adequate. But to be “future-proof” for the next 4 years, it should have at least 4GB.
The wife gave up her MBP for a MBA and has never regretted it. She thinks it is the perfect computer. I mentioned that there may be a new model with a smaller screen. She is not sure she likes that idea. The 13 inch form factor is near perfect in her estimation. Perhaps they will have two models, …doubt it though.
You’d wonder why they’d bother…MBA was waaay overpriced and waaay underspeced. Waste of time.