Reports Outline Claimed 12-Inch Macbook Air Design Details

Blogger Jack March says that according to information he’s received from an anonymous “source familiar with Apple’s plans,” the next-generation MacBook Air will launch in mid-2015 and be available in Space Grey, Gold, and Silver livery.

He says the source describes the 12-inch Macbook Air as having a “noticeably thinner design,” which may result in sacrificing standard USB ports and a move to reversible USB Type C ports introduced last month by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group exclusively with this product, and Apple presumed to include an adapter in the box to facilitate backwards compatibility. The MagSafe port in its familiar configuration is also rumored be sacrificed at the altar of extreme thinness, although the source wasn’t positive as to whether this had been finalised or not.

What he or she is confident about is that these new laptops will be completely fanless which has also been helpful toward the objective of ultra-thinness, with Intel’s power saving Broadwell processor family expected to help because of its ability to allow high performance while maintaining low temperatures without a heat sink.

Display bezels are predicted to be significantly thinner a la the current MacBook Pro Retina’s. And the keyboard correspondingly having almost no marginal area at the sides, with the (monaural?) loudspeaker located above the keyboard and visible.

9to5Mac’s Jordan Kahn reports that he has reason to believe March has accurate knowledge of Apple’s upcoming MacBook Airs plans, and that if Apple switches to USB Type C only on the new MacBook, it could support the new DisplayPort Alternate Mode allowing USB Type C to offer DisplayPort functionality for high-quality audio and video. Kahn also speculates that Apple would have to provide a new Lightning to USB Type C cable or adaptor for older cables in order to continue allowing iOS users to charge off the new MacBooks.