Wish List For The June 2011 MacBook Air – What Are The Likelihoods?

ZNet’s Jason D. O’Grady says he uses his 11″ MacBook Air almost as much as his workhorse 15-inch MacBook Pro and he’s been waiting for a next-generation model to replace it, widely rumored to be coming in June with Intel Sandy Bridge Core “i” processor silicon and Thunderbolt I/O support. In addition to the Core “i” CPU and T-Bolt upgrades, which in my estimation are a given, the two other items on Jason’s MacBook Air wish list are:

• A backlit keyboard.
I’ll second that. I’ve had one Mac laptop with a backlit keyboard (a 17″ PowerBook), and the current freestanding keyboard I use with my MacBook is an iRocks Illuminated Keyboard. It’s not a deal maker/breaker feature for me, but it’s sure nice to have, especially on a machine like the MacBook Air that will likely be used in a variety of environments, including poorly-lighted ones. I would rate the likelihood of Apple adding keyboard backlighting in the next Air freshening at about 40/60.

• Upgradable, socketed RAM
This is a biggie, for me much more important than the keyboard backlighting. One of the current MacBook Air’s most serious shortcomings is that users are locked-in to whatever memory spec. was installed at time of manufacture, with the default being a not-really-adequate in this day and age 2 GB. Jason is hoping for removable, socketed RAM instead of having it soldered to the logic board. That would involve major re-engineering, so I would rate the chances of it happening this time at about 10 percent likely, but the least Apple should to with the Core “i” upgrade is increase the standard RAM spec. to more sensible and realistic 4 GB — the same as the 13″ MacBook Pro — and make 8 GB optional. I’m more optimisitic about this one, since it would require no major engineering changes.

Hopefully we’ll know by summer.