Apple working on an even thinner, even lighter, higher-end MacBook Air model that will include the return of the MagSafe charger.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
The new computer is planned to be released during the second half of this year at the earliest or in 2022. It will include Apple’s MagSafe charging technology and a next-generation version of the company’s in-house Mac processors. Apple has discussed making the laptop smaller by shrinking the border around the screen, which will remain 13-inches. The new laptop is destined to be a higher-end version of the current MacBook Air, which is expected to remain in the company’s lineup as an entry-level offering.
In addition to the new MacBook Air, Apple is planning its biggest update to the MacBook Pro since 2016, the first redesign of the iMac in nearly a decade, a new Intel-based Mac Pro, and a half-sized Mac Pro desktop with in-house chips.
The upcoming MacBook Pro is an example of Apple’s renewed focus on Mac loyalists. The company is planning to bring back an SD card slot for the next MacBook Pros. The heavily criticized Touch Bar, the current model’s touchscreen function row, is also going.
MacDailyNews Note: Gurman also notes that Face ID won’t be coming to iMac when it graduates to Apple Silicon this year, but that Apple still plans to bring Face ID to the Mac at some point.
Reduced weight is more important to me than thickness.
Leave Face ID please, and return TouchID to my next iPhone.
NOT what she said….
I want the headphone jack back.
All Macbooks still have headphone jacks.
sounds like a return of the 12 inch MacBook
The 12 inch MacBook would have been a perfect machine if it had included two USB-C ports. With one, it was an iPad with a built in keyboard/stand. (Love ours, but it was more trouble than it was worth.)
I love my 12” MacBook. It’s really light and a great travel laptop. Don’t like only one port though. You need to use a hub to expand its usefulness.
There’s a lot of hubbub about using a hub. Just get a hub, they’re the rub.
As a photographer and serial owner/user of MacBook Pros, I applaud the return of the SD card slot! Adding back some version of MagSafe for the charge cord will be good, as long as it is not limited to just one side of the computer. I have also become addicted to having access to 2 USB-C ports on each side of the computer, so I look forward to the new models retaining that feature. I have gotten used to the Touch Bar, but it isn’t a make-or-break feature.
SD cards that were fairly flush to the body were also how some people around the low amount of internal storage that was expensive to upgrade. Sure it was blazing fast but most don’t need that speed, they need storage without having to carry around dongles.
It was smart of Apple to keep familiar appearance of existing Mac models in place for initial round of Apple Silicon Macs. The next phase in the transition (starting with new iMac) will be a spectacle.
I am dancing in the street at the good news that the Touch Bar is going away! Now if only Apple could make a good Apple TV remote with buttons, raised high enough to be detectable by touch, so I know whether it is upside down, whether I am pointing it at the TV, and so I don’t scroll through TV shows by accident, losing my place.
Or they could make two Apple Remotes, so we could choose the one that lets us operate the Apple TV by accident or the one that lets us operate the Apple TV on purpose.
Apple is in a circular joke now. On the 13 inch M1 model they feverishly and stupidly brainstormed about how they must take away standard functionality because of the speed gain on the silicon. I can see these utter idiots sitting around a table bitching at each other ” no, no, you all wrong. We have to TAKE AWAY 2 ports to the EXACT SAME F*CKING MODEL as the Intel Mac”. And the absolutely loved and proven mag safe power connecter …. boy, you are complete and utter dumbasses to have ever dropped that. And not ONE SINGLE OTHER MEANS to take media, ohhh, but now these lost jackals want to return it to the next model of Air. Idiots.
Those of us who stick our heads out of our caves more often just than on cloudy February Seconds noticed that the EXACT SAME MODEL OF THE INTEL MAC (the entry-level MacBook Air and MacBook Pro) had the same number of ports (2) and Magsafe power connectors (0) as the M1 model that replaced it. To get more ports, you had to buy the upscale Pro model. To get Magsafe, you had to buy an older computer.
The MacBook Air (like the MacBook) was created to provide an ultraportable for those who desire or require one. It was not designed to serve as an IT professional’s only computer. Consequently, it does not have features that most of its intended audience would never use. External SD card readers are really cheap and not very inconvenient for those who need them. Internal card readers, DVD drives, and huge hard drives add weight, size, and expense for everyone, even those who do not need them.
Looks as though Apple will have a notebook product line of 13.3 inch MacBook Air, 14 inch MacBook Pro, and 16 inch MacBook Pro. The question is, will keep the current 13.3 inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air around for awhile as lower cost entry level machines?
The lowest and cheapest M1 is better than any Intel Mac that Apple has ever sold.
Nearly unlimited possibilities with a super-ultra-thin, with some already embedded within clothes fabric, which would also give it the ability to be rolled into scrolls in the manner of ancient ME scrolls so that my Rabbi could use it as a Torah Scroll but, not only would the text be in Hebrew, the iTorah would have to be coded by a “kosher” Sofer Setam as is proscribed for writing a traditional parchment scroll.