Apple will refresh its popular MacBook Air line of ultra-thin notebooks in June or July, a Taiwanese publication said today, citing unnamed Asian supplier sources.
According to DigiTimes, the MacBook Airs will feature processors from Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture, and boast Thunderbolt connectivity, two moves Apple made in February when it launched new MacBook Pro models.
The current MacBook Air line relies on Intel's Core 2 Duo processors, making it one of the last two Apple systems to use that aged CPU: So far this year, Apple has transitioned both the MacBook Pro and iMac to the dual- and quad-core Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors with the Sandy Bridge architecture.
Moving the MacBook Air to the same CPUs -- likely to a dual-core to match the entry-level 13-in. MacBook Pro -- would be a natural step for Apple, which typically rolls out processor upgrades in successive lines.
Current MacBook Air 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch models are equipped with three-year-old Intel Core 2 Duo processors and USB. In April, Apple quietly began replacing the solid state drives (SSD) in the smaller MacBook Air models with faster ones.
Meanwhile, current MacBook Pros, which launched in February, feature Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor (four to five times faster than the Core 2 Duo L9400 found in current, larger MacBook Airs, according to PCMag lab tests), and Thunderbolt transfer technology that's roughly 21 times the speed of normal USB.
Despite all this, the MacBook Air is one of Apple's most popular Mac products. Another Concord Securities analyst recently estimated that Apple shipped 1.1 million MacBook Airs in the last three months of 2010, making it Apple's most successful Mac product launch to date, the analyst qualified.
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