A Redesigned, Retina MacBook Air
Apple has to release a super-high-res MacBook Air eventually, right? Its thin-and-light lineup is starting to look a little outdated. Apple needs a cheaper, lighter, pixel-dense laptop that’s somewhere between a tablet and an ultra-powerful gaming machine, which many of its competitors have offered for a long time now. It might come Monday: the Wall Street Journal has reported that a 12-inch Retina MacBook will be in stores in just a few months. It might be called Air, it might be called Pro, and it might have almost no ports or connectors whatsoever.
Part of what would enable a laptop like that is Intel’s new Broadwell processors, the ultra-efficient chips that have already made their way into laptops all over the industry. There’s a good chance they’ll eventually wind up in Apple’s other laptops as well. The existing MacBooks Air and Pro probably won’t see giant overhauls, just the standard annual spec bump—and maybe some crazy battery-life stats thanks to Broadwell. This is always true before an Apple gala, but seriously: don’t buy a laptop until after Monday’s event.
