The rumors about a 12-inch MacBook Air continue, this time with a series of photos posted on a Chinese blog. If the images are real, they show a couple of interesting things about what would be a mid-sized addition to Apple’s MacBook line of laptop computers.
Is this the 12-inch MacBook Air?
The photos of the alleged 12-inch MacBook Air were posted on Chinese-language blog iFanr and spotted by 9to5 Mac. Of course there’s no way to verify that the images are real, but the folks at 9to5 Mac pointed out a few interesting things about them.
There’s a series of images that show the alleged mid-sized MacBook Air next to a number of other Apple devices, including the already available members of the MacBook family and also an iPad. One thing of note is that the Apple logo on the back of the lid on the alleged 12-inch MacBook Air looks different than the logos on the back of the other MacBooks.
Clues from Apple’s logo
Instead of sporting the light-up logo that’s on the other MacBook laptops, this one has a polished metal one that looks more like the logo that’s on the iPad. Of course this doesn’t mean that the photos are fake, as it’s possible Apple is indeed shifting in that direction, taking the Apple logo from the iPad and applying it to its other devices.
Changing from the light-up logo could enable Apple to make the MacBook Air even thinner than it is now, a trend the company has been following for some time as it has been making each device more anorexic than the last. Also last year there was a rumor that Apple might go in a different direction with its logo this year, so the different appearance of it in these photos might just make sense.
Rumors about the mid-sized MacBook Air
Supposedly the 12-inch MacBook Air will feature a Retina display, although there haven’t been any indications about what kind of pixel count we might be looking at. It has been rumored, however, that the laptop will be configured with a single port. The photos from iFanr do not show the bottom of the case though, so they neither confirm nor deny this particular rumor.
Other rumors suggest the 12-inch MacBook Air will have a Broadwell Core M processor and maybe skip some of the features other MacBook family members have. However, the laptop is rumored to have a headphone jack, microphones and USB Type-C port.
We’ve heard that Apple may be trying to get the 12-inch MacBook Air onto the market before the end of this quarter, so the company has supposedly been boosting production of the rumored laptop.
