A Retina Display MacBook Air Is Reportedly Launching Later This Year

The MacBook Air is arguably Apple’s best portable computer. It’s thin, it’s light and it’s powerful enough for the vast majority of people to do everything they could ever want to. But it’s lacking one thing, and it’s the one thing that people want enough to upgrade to a MacBook Pro for, and that’s the Retina display.

Having more pixels than they know what to do with may not initially appeal to some, but Retina is simply one of those technologies that once you’ve tried it, you simply can’t go back. With that in mind, is it only a matter of time before Apple brings its high resolution Retina displays to its diminutive laptop?

According to a new report from the notoriously unreliable DigiTimes, that might be happening relatively soon. Citing sources in the supply chain, DigiTimes says that some Taiwanese supply chain makers are expecting that MacBook production will fall to 10 million units during 2014, while others believe that higher numbers will be achieved thanks to the introduction of new, Retina-equipped MacBook Air models.

However, other Taiwan-based supply chain makers hold the opinion that 2014 MacBook shipments estimates may not be accurate because Apple will launch new models in the second half of 2014. Apple will reportedly launch a MacBook Air with Retina display, the makers said.

A MacBook Air with Retina has been spoken about for a while now, with rumors abound of a new 12-inch MacBook model being introduced. It’s not yet clear whether that would be installed as a new option between the existing 11-inch and 13-inch flavors or whether it would replace one or both of them, but it’s rumored to have a rather tasty 2304 x 1440 resolution display at its core. If that were to be the case, we’d argue that the new 12-inch MacBook Air would be the model to get depending on what it has in the way of horsepower.

DigiTimes has a somewhat sketchy history with things like this, so we won’t be selling our existing MacBook Airs just yet. That being said, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a new MacBook Air within the coming months anyway, with new MacBook Pros coming later this year. Whether there will be new models introduced or whether the existing ones will be refreshed remains to be seen, but we know we’ll be keeping an eye out for something about 12-inches big.

(Source: DigiTimes)

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