Apple's MacBook Air is a thing, light, and rather expensive laptop with a 13.3 inch display. Weighing just 3 pounds and measuring just 0.76 inches thick, it's the thinnest and lightest Mac laptop available… but it hasn't received a significant update in years. That's led to a round of rumors that Apple may be preparing to launch a refreshed MacBook Air at an event scheduled for October 20th.
I've been taking the rumors with a grain of salt, since rumors about Apple products are a dime a dozen and it's awfully easy to get worked up about nothing. But now Engadget has received a photo from an anonymous source which purportedly shows the inside of a new MacBook Air.
While a number of sites had been reporting that the new model would have an 11.6 inch display, the photo seems to show a 13.3 inch model. The photos show extra battery cells, and no hard drive — which is in keeping with a rumor that's been going around suggesting that Apple was developing a new type of solid state drive that uses flash storage without taking up as much space as a traditional hard drive.
That's hardly a brand new idea. Netbook makers have been doing it for years — but usually netbooks with solid state drives ship with slow drives that aren't much faster than an SD card or USB flash drive. I suspect Apple would use something a bit more powerful.
Engadget's tipster says what we're looking at is an early prototype using the same Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400 processor as current MacBook Air models — which is a pretty good indication that this is not the final design. So there's still a chance that Apple has used the months since this photo was taken to shrink the case and screen size or make other modifications.
Or it could all be nothing at all. Maybe Apple isn't working on a new MacBook Air. The photo lends a little more credence to the rumors, but just a little.
Is a new MacBook Air on the way? is a post from: Liliputing
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