“For months rumors have been swirling about a 12″ something coming from Apple,” E. Werner Reschke writes for TGAAP. “Some thought it would be a 12″ iPad, but since the launch of the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 have come and gone (and sizes remain the same), what about all these rumors?”
“The answer is going to be a 12″ MacBook Air,” Reschke writes. “If you have ever serious looked at the 11″ MacBook Air it is really light and compact. However, if you have ever worked at an 11″ MacBook Air for anytime, without an external monitor, you and the scroll fairy are very good friends.”
“The downside to the 11″ MacBook Air is screen real estate in the vertical direction,” Reschke writes. “A 12″ MacBook Air would allow for more screen size mostly in the vertical direction… An inch may not seem like much, but an even 2/3 of an inch in the vertical direction would make a 12″ MacBook much more attractive to those who do a lot of writing.”
Read more in the full article here.
the 11″ MBA is the perfect portable Mac IMO… I’d rather they increase the resolution than than the size.
Considering I did much work on a 9″ MacPlus, everything looks big enough to me. Almost.
Hmmm, that takes me back. I worked for seven years on a Mac 512 and then a Mac Plus. Clanging keyboards, but great little machines.
Yeah, I still have my Mac 512 that I upgraded to the Plus.
Aaah, nostalgia!
I still have my first Mac, an SE/30 4/40 – and it works, too!
Apple guessers are guessing wrong on this. I am sure Apple will launch the much maligned iToasterFridge, in other words a convertible. All signs point to a removable screen on a 12-inch base. Docked it is OS X. Undocked iOS. Much better executed than the clunky Surface. This is why there is so much confusion over the reported 12.9 screens. Is it a giant iPad? Or is it the 12″ MBAir? Its both.
Exactly! Why not Zoidberg?
… I mean, why not both?
(I mean, yes, an iToasterFridge is an abomination and Apple is well to avoid such things. But if anyone could do it and make it make sense, it’d be Apple.)
Apple has a long history of trashing things right before turning around and doing them.
iPod Video
iPad Mini
Phablet
Netbook form factor (I have an 11″ Air and it is DEFINITELY not a netbook!).
Others I’ve forgotten
I totally agree. Read my post.
I hope they keep it at 13″. Anything smaller is headed toward net-book territory and that’s generally a large bucket full of woe for anyone other than IT doofuses
Exactly.
If they drop the 13.3″ MacBook Air, the replacement/upgrade for my wife’s current 13.3″ MBA is not be another MBA, it will be a rMBP or maybe she’ll just hang onto the current MBA until it dies.
I’d love to see a MacBook Air 12″ that was the same footprint as the 11″ but with less bezel to accommodate the 12″ screen.
There you go ….. Just pick up 1/2 inch in each side and you are there …. With still plenty of bezel left!
My fave Apple computer of all time was my 12″ Power Book. I thought it was the perfect sized laptop for always being on the go.
Shack!
It would be nice that it will be a Surface 3 type device that Apple keeps getting bashed about. Apple has done some R & D on os X running on the iPad/iPhone A class processors. I think Apple is at a point that 10.10 and is 8.1 has cognitively at a point that both could be run on A8X or the upcoming A9. The the meet part is that if you detach the keyboard board or just fold it around you have the iOS environment. When you turn the keyboard back around or attach it back your in OS X mode. Whenever you Start a document in one environment you can continue with it in the other just like now. Let us slap back at Microsoft.
Baldmer and his new puppet-CEO guy patented the flappy keyboard concept. It’s a microsoft exclusive.
I recently moved back from 13″ MB to 15″ MBP. I think I’ll stay at 15″ for good. Just right 4 me.
But I well remember the old 12″ PowerBooks were Big In Japan. When Apple knocked them off, many people were unhappy.
The size and form factor of the 11″ model may be ideal in that it is the smallest that will work with a full-sized keyboard, but there is room to increase the screen size by reducing the width of the bezel surrounding the screen. This may end up requiring a subtle reshaping of the outer shell of the screen lid, with less of a taper and perhaps more of an iPhone 6-esque rounded edge, but that would not necessarily be a bad thing, especially if the lower shell were given a matching design.
The same principles could most likely be applied to fit a 14″ screen into the same basic size and form factor of the current 13″ model. I would be very willing to live with the minimal total volume increases (resulting from the slight extension of the area of maximum screen depth) if they could provide appreciably larger screen sizes within the same basic form factors of the current machines.