Apple apparently already has slimmed-down 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros in production. The redesigned cases drop the optical drive, but storage will still be plentiful and CPUs will be more powerful than those in the current MacBook Air lineup, say the rumors.
While we aren’t surprised by this story, the rumors come via Digitimes, possibly the least accurate rumormongers on the planet. Digitimes, you might remember, puts out an article almost every week claiming that Apple is already making 7-inch iPads, so take what you like from this new story.
Digitimes sources go on to say that “shipments to Apple” have already begun, and production begins at 100,000-150,000 units per month.
It’s pretty clear that Apple is completely over the optical drive, and that even spinning hard drives will be dumped as soon as SSDs get big and cheap enough to replace them in pro machines. But thinness isn’t the only great feature of the MacBook Air. Those SSDs really make the thing fly. So as long as we’re trading on quality rumors like those above, let me add one of my own: I predict that the new MacBook Pros will ship with both a hard drive and a small SSD, somehow hidden from the user to avoid confusion.
The SSD contains the boot drive, the HDD keeps all your files. Simple, and a great compromise until the world is ready for a 15-inch MacBook Air Pro.
[Via MacRumors]
