There was a violent attack by Apple leaks from the Bloomberg business publication last week, and the latest goes into more detail about the new MacBook Air design.
Like the others, the report cites anonymous people familiar with Apple’s plans. She claims that a newly redesigned MacBook Air (presumably with Apple’s M1 chip for Macs or a successor to that chip) “will be launched during the second half of this year or in 2022.”
But buried in this MacBook Air report is perhaps equally important news for a certain set of Mac users: it claims that Apple plans to reintroduce the SD card slot in the new MacBook Pros – a detail that has been left out of a story in these computers before this week.
The current M1 MacBook Air will remain on the line, while this new MacBook Air will be a “more sophisticated” alternative that will be sold with it. Why is it sophisticated, you may ask? Well, Bloomberg sources say it will be even thinner and lighter than the model that is available now.
In addition, the laptop’s footprint will be smaller because the settings will be reduced, but the screen will still measure 13 inches. This is a different approach than Apple took before (and is expected to continue to use) with its MacBook Pro line. In November 2019, Apple released a 16-inch MacBook Pro to replace the previous 15-inch model, but the footprint was the same, while the canvas occupied a large part of the space that used to be the frame, increasing the size of the canvas.
The report also says that the new MacBook Air will have MagSafe – something that was stated by the same publication a few days ago about the next MacBook Pro models. MagSafe was a key feature of Apple laptops in the past, but Apple has gradually removed it from product line in recent years before reintroducing it to the iPhone 12 in 2020.
On the Mac, MagSafe is a power port and a cable that connects in a light and magnetic way. The cable is easy to attach, but if pulled, it will come out smoothly instead of pulling the laptop with it. The goal was to avoid situations where the device owner could trip over the cable and accidentally tear the laptop off a desk or table, damaging it.
Finally, today’s Bloomberg report says that Apple “considered” making a MacBook Air with a 15-inch screen, but that plan will not happen in this generation, after all.
Reports earlier this week stated that Apple plans to launch a new iPhone in 2021 with an on-screen fingerprint reader.
They also said that we should expect a 14-inch MacBook Pro with a bigger and better screen to replace the current 13-inch model, as well as faster graphics and CPU performance. A successor to the 16-inch MacBook Pro will also come, which would also have a better screen and would bring Apple’s own silicon to that product.
Finally, the leaks predicted that a new iMac design is coming, with Apple Silicon and a new design, as well as a cheaper alternative to Apple’s ProDisplay XDR consumer-oriented display.