When Apple rolled out the 2013 MacBook Air, its big innovation was featuring a battery that lasts "all day," which was a significant upgrade from the previous MacBook Air models. In 2014, Apple inserted "slightly faster" Intel Haswell processors. Then this year's MacBook Air has Intel's latest Broadwell chips as well as a significant speed improvement of the flash storage. Next year, major improvements will be implemented in 2016 MacBook Air. So, what improvements will come?
2016 MacBook Air major improvements
Motley Fool believes that on early 2016, Apple is going to bring major improvements to its MacBook Air products. Apple would still adopt USB-C port for refreshed MacBook Air, and others hope that the company would include a couple of them.
Further, Apple might drop the 2304 x 1440 resolution panel on the MacBook if Apple wants to contain manufacturing costs." However, an IPS display with a resolution greater than 1440 x 900 for the 13-inch version and 1366 x 768 for the 11-inch machine might be included and highly welcomed.
For microprocessors, CPU World was cited by Motley Fool that Intel wants to follow the Broadwell-U chips inside the current MacBook Air with Skylake-based CPUs. Once included, Skylake will improve on Broadwell's performance and power efficiency, and free up some of the power budget for the higher-resolution-more-power-hungry display. Specifically, it is speculated that Apple is going to insert in their MacBook lineup with the Core M-based Skylake processors that will arrive in late 2015. This will result to a sufficient performance and power improvement over the Broadwell-based Core M.
The 28-watt Skylake processors will be launched in Q1 2016. Since Apple intends to use Intel's highest-end 15-watt chips, the reported Skylake launch schedule will result to an early 2016 MacBook Air refresh.
2015 MacBook Air review and specs
So far, Apple's 2015 MacBook Air received a rating of 4 stars out of 5, according to a Macworld UK review. The review pointed "little discernible change in battery life or graphics performance" as its downside. However, MacBook Air's Thunderbolt 2 that enables "4K" display output, and incredible storage performance are noted as advantages.
Some of its specifications are:
- Display: 1366 x 768 resolution (11.6 inch); 1440 x 900 resolution (13.3-inch)
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 6000 processor with up to 1GB LPDDR3 SDRAM shared from main memory
- Processor: 1.6 GHz (i5-5250U) dual-core Intel Core i5 with 3 MB shared L3 cache
- Memory: 4 GB of 1600 MHz LPPDR3 SDRAM
- Secondary Storage: 127 GB or 256 GB PCIe-based SSD (secondary storage)
- Video camera: FaceTime HD (720p)
- Connectivity: Internal 802.11 ac a/b/g/n compatible; Bluetooth 4.0
- OS: OS X 10.10 "Yosemite"
- Battery: 38-watt-hour (11.6-inch); 54-watt-hour (13.3-inch)
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