Engadget just posted a picture of what appears to be the inside of the new MacBook Air, the one Apple is going to announce on Wednesday at the “Back to the Mac” event. The picture doesn’t show a 11.6-inch chassis, but a regular 13-inch one with extra room for battery cells and no hard drive. Does this confirm that Apple managed to stuff a SSD somewhere else in the unibody structure?
Posts tagged with "macbook air"
Leaked Picture Of The New MacBook Air?
Thin Air
Steve Jobs, at the iPad announcement in January:
Everybody uses a laptop and a smartphone.
And a question has arisen lately: is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Something that’s between a laptop and a smartphone. And of course we’ve pondered this question for years as well. The bar’s pretty high. In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks.
Better than a laptop. Better than a smartphone.
Now, some people have thought…that’s a netbook. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything. They’re slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software. So, they’re not better than a laptop at anything. They’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops. We don’t think they’re a new category of device.
According to the latest rumors we’re hearing today, Apple is going to announce a new, smaller, thinner MacBook Air on Wednesday. A 11.6-inch MacBook Air. Some people are saying Steve Jobs will revise his position and carry a new shiny netbook on stage. In my opinion, that’s not gonna happen.
By definition, netbooks are small, lightweight and inexpensive laptop computers. By Jobs’ definition, netbooks are slow, low-quality and unusable laptop computers. In Steve Jobs’ mind, inexpensiveness equals cheapness. Lightweight OS equals clunky old software. He doesn’t see the current generation of netbooks as a viable alternative to bigger, more powerful notebooks.
If Apple’s really going to announce a smaller MacBook Air that many people could call “a netbook”, that device is going to be a “smaller, thinner, yet powerful laptop computer” in Jobs’ definition. An even faster, high-quality and lightweight MacBook Air, ultra-portable and super-usable. Something like that.
Apple is not going to release a netbook as we know it. Just like they didn’t release a regular smartphone in 2007. If the rumor’s true, I’m ready to bet on a new way - perhaps more expensive, but classy - to intend small laptop computers.
MacBook Air Shortages Suggest Refresh Coming Next Week?
According to AppleInsider’s daily Mac availability tracking service, most of the retail stores AI tracks have run out of MacBook Air stock. Nearly every retailer has run out of the low-end Air model, and their sources suggest a new model may come as early as next week. Read more
11.6-Inch MacBook Air Coming Later This Year?
Here’s another interesting report this morning: according to DigiTimes, Apple is getting ready to release a new 11.6-inch “MacBook” before the end of the year. Specifically, it appears that Quanta (Apple manufacturing partner) is scheduled to ship 400.000 / 500.000 units of the aforementioned 11.6-inch computer. Read more
The MacBook Air Project: Modder Puts Mac Under Apple Keyboard
This is the reason why I love the modding community: they have no limits. Whether it’s about hardware or jailbreak / graphical modifications, modders always push themselves beyond the limitations and come up with exceptionals, custom creations.
Bart Reardon of The MacBook Air Project decided to try to fit a MacBook Air right under an Apple keyboard and make everything a single piece. Yes, a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM and 80GB hard drive computer inside a standard keyboard. He later thought of putting a Magic Trackpad next to the keyboard, too. He thinks that the device “will be used much beyond internet/email….maybe as an AppleTV replacement.”
Seriously, it’s awesome.
Will the MacBook Air be the First to Embrace a new Design Concept?
Apple’s flagship products consist of their Macs and MacBooks, but nobody really thinks of the MacBook Air as a machine that would showcase new concepts which in turn could be later introduced into the rest of Apple’s product-line. Though I have my own thoughts about why a MacBook Air totally shouldn’t be replaced by an iPad (it’s an amazing machine), Cupertino might be prepping to blow our minds with its next vital update. It’ll no longer be a product that says, “Look what we can do!” Rather, it’ll be a product that implements new technologies and reveals where Apple is planning to take their entire MacBook line.