APPLE MIGHT NOT be having the best of times at the moment thanks to the iPhone 4 antenna issues, but it seems like that isn’t stopping the company from working on new products. The latest rumour is of an 11.6-inch MacBook Air and the much rumoured next gen iPod Touch. The new rumours are courtesy of Digitimes and although the Taiwanese outfit has been correct before, we’ll take the MacBook Air rumour with a pinch or two of salt for now.
On the other hand, a new iPod Touch has been rumoured for quite some time and it’s not as much of a secret. It will most likely feature pretty much the same kit internally as the iPhone 4, minus the bits needed for cellular communications. The Digitimes piece mentions a 3Megapixel camera and the Apple A4 SoC, but most oddly it goes on to say that a senior analyst for the outfit by the name of Mingchi Kuo claims that Apple should shift about 17-18 million units of the new iPod Touch this year. Considering that he expects the new iPod Touch to launch in August or September, this would be a pretty mean feat to pull off, even for Apple.
Back to the new MacBook Air, which, apart from the 11.6-inch display, is said to feature a ULV Core iSomethingorOther processor in a slimmer and lighter chassis than the current 13.3-inch MacBook Air. It’s also said to have some new design features that will be filtering out into other MacBook products from Apple. There’s no word on any other features, but Apple is also rumoured to be adding support for USB 3.0 which might be one of the new features. We’d also expect Apple to outfit the MacBook Air with an SSD drive as standard, as there shouldn’t be any reason to put a hard drive in a premium notebook of this type. Then there’s that tiny touch screen that leaked a few days ago, maybe that’s related as well.
Make what you want of these rumours, but the new iPod Touch is pretty much a given, while a new MacBook Air makes sense as the current model is quite outdated by now. We wouldn’t expect any lower prices for either device though and we’d even hazard a guess that Apple will up the price on the new MacBook Air and make it even more of a premium product.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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