Apple preps 15-inch MacBook Air, but new 12-inch MacBook no longer in near-term plans

Apple has taken resources from several hardware and software engineering departments to get the new “RealityOne” mixed-reality headset ready to ship later this year, and that means other projects, including Macs, and especially the 12-inch MacBook, have taken a hit.

Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:

The new MacBook Pros, coming in the first half of this year, will have the same designs and features as the current 14-inch and 16-inch models, but include M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. Those are marginal leaps from today’s MacBook Pro processors.

A high-end configuration of the Mac Pro, a model with 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores, has been canceled. Instead, Apple plans to release a version with the M2 Ultra, making it unclear — beyond the machine’s expandability — why most users would buy it over the cheaper and smaller Mac Studio. In another disappointment, the new Mac Pro will look identical to the 2019 model. It will also lack one key feature from the Intel version: user-upgradeable RAM. That’s because the memory is tied directly to the M2 Ultra’s motherboard. Still, there are two SSD storage slots and for graphics, media and networking cards.

If there’s any major saving grace for the Mac lineup in 2023, it’s a planned 15-inch MacBook Air. A new 12-inch MacBook is no longer on Apple’s near-term road map however.

MacDailyNews Take: We had our collective eye on that 12-inch MacBook to be our road machines as we go back to the desktop Mac for the office and the lightest / longest battery life Mac Apple makes for the road.

Sigh.

Back to considering the 13.6-inch MacBook Air which is not really a letdown at all (despite the 11-inch MacBook Air remaining our favorite road Mac models ever).

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