Do we get a new MacBook Air or two?
All the signs are starting to point to the MacBook Air as playing a big part in the event that Apple has scheduled for Wednesday, and it may include systems in more than one size.
There are enough rumors, and supposed “confirmations,” that Steve Jobs will introduce at least one new MacBook Air this week that the story may well be true. The latest voice added to the story comes from a Cult of Mac article, in which they say they have “independent confirmation” of their information. Of course, they do not even hint at where is confirmation comes from, so all we still have is a rumor.
It is interesting, though, that this rumor has Jobs introducing a two Air sizes on Wednesday, a redesigned 13.3-inch model and a smaller 11.6-inch machine. It is clear that the smaller of these computers is getting into the territory of the iPad in terms of size, but will of course be running OS X. That’s an interesting thing to think about for the future of the iPad. Imagine two lines of iPads: one iOS4 and the other OS X. They will have to figure out a way to cool the larger processor needed by OS X in an iPad format first, though.
The rest of the rumor says that we’re getting a battery that lasts longer (8-10 hours of life), a lighter weight than the current air (which comes in at 3 pounds), and an enclosure that is more straight lines than curves. The crystal ball gazers see us getting more ports, a faster boot, and SD card slot, upgradable RAM, MacBook video, and two CPUs over 2 GHz, a nice improvement over the current 1.86 GHz. Pricing rumors suggest that the larger model will be around $1,400 and the smaller around $1,100.
Even with all of this, the most enticing conjecture is that they can pack all of this into a size that is not that much larger than the iPad. It makes you thing that we may be getting very close already to an iPad that would run OS X. Sure, there are some technological barriers, like heat dissipation, but that’s what Apple has all those engineers for.
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