The rumour of the day, as it regards Apple hardware, is that by the end of the year, all of its Macbook lines — which with the phasing out of the education Macbook basically just means the Macbook Air and Pro lines — will look like the Air.
This certainly isn’t a new rumour, but Apple Insider reports on the apparent current plan, which will apparently revolve around a 15 inch model running on an Intel Ivy Bridge processor within a shell that essentially resembles the Macbook Air. Optical drives would be out due to the thin and light form factor, as you’d expect.
It’s not always wise to predict what Apple will do, and it’s clear that the Macbook Air has been a very popular product for Apple, but I’ve got my doubts. If you strip a Macbook Pro down to Air size, you’re limiting its ports, expansion, and probably even the kinds of innards you could throw in there in order to stop the whole mess melting the skin off your lap. What it would amount to would be Apple having, in essence, a single laptop line — the Macbook Air. [Apple Insider]