New 13 inch Apple Macbook to be announced this fall: last nail in the Macbook Air’s coffin?
The 13 inch Apple MacBook Air is the very last remnant of a legacy of Apple laptops, with specs rarely found in modern devices, due to their defacto obsolescence. The retina display was first introduced in 2012, with the third generation MacBook Pro. That year, Apple retired the 17-inch MacBook Pro, effectively ending the inclusion of hardware such as the optical drive, and USB 1.0, for all future Apple laptops.
Since then, a considerable number of older products have been made obsolete, in favor of more advanced devices. Some, such as the 11-inch MacBook Air, the previous generation Apple TV, and the Mac Pro, have taken longer to retire than others, due to consumer demand. Arguments in favor of market retention for the MacBook Air are its relatively attainable price, and specs, well-suited for students. In fact, the 11 inch MacBook Air has been a fixture in college study halls, ever since its introduction, with very few competitors.
Fast forward to 2018, the 13-inch MacBook Air is the only model still standing the test of time. Speculations of Apple wanting to do away with the Macbook Air line, can be traced back to 2015, when the company introduced the “New MacBook”, a 12 inch laptop with high-end specs, but with an incredibly thin profile, and with different color options matching both the iPhone and the iPad, including White, Silver, Space Grey, Gold, and Rose Gold.
The price tag, however, was far too high for the 12 inch device to compete with the MacBook Air in the classroom. This has been speculated as the primary reason for Apple to hold off on doing away with the MacBook Air for good.
In 2018, things are beginning to change, as well as the demographic. New generations are discovering the power of mobile devices as tools to accomplish things that only ten years ago had to be done on a laptop. Even the iPad Pro is competition to the aging MacBook Air, which, as of the latest iOS updates, has become tough to beat in categories like performance, features, and price.
Word has it that Apple is planning to finally end the MacBook Air, by Fall 2018, which means that something completely new, but just as affordable, might be in the works, and ready to ship before Christmas.
Judging by the features present in existing MacBook models, there are a few hints that Apple might go for a 13-inch version of a completely new MacBook, within a price range similar to the outgoing MacBook Air. Features may include USB Type-C ports as its primary, and perhaps only wired connectivity, aside from the audio jack, and Ethernet port.
Specs can be tricky, on a device expected to be within students budgets, but it’s very possible that its base configuration may include an Intel i5, 8GB of RAM, and a reasonably sized SSD, perhaps in the range of 500GB to 1TB.
We shouldn’t expect fancy features like the Touch Bar, or a fingerprint scanner, but there is a good chance that higher-tier configuration options will be available, with consideration to size, CPU and GPU, carefully planned not to create competition for high-end models of the Macbook Pro.
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If you are looking for the perfect MacBook, PortableOne has you covered with a great selection of Apple MacBooks, as well as the newly unveiled 13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Pro with TouchBar.