The Next MacBook Air Will Be A 12-Inch Beauty With An Edge-To-Edge Keyboard

Apple’s 12-inch MacBook Air has been rumored for a while now, but the computer is very real, according to a new report from 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman. The resourceful and consistently accurate site has revealed specs and renders of a 12-inch MacBook (which is pegged for release anytime between the near future and mid-2015) that pushes the limits in terms of thickness, input and output ports, and overall design.

The 12-inch notebook is almost twice as thin as the existing 11-inch model of the same computer. It has only a very slight taper from its thinnest point to its thickest, unlike the versions shipping now, and it manages to occupy a footprint similar to the current 11-inch Apple notebook, despite the larger display, thanks to the use of a nearly edge-to-edge chiclet-style keyboard, as well as smaller bezels surrounding the 12-inch Air’s screen on all sides.

Apple’s boldest decision with this computer might be that it is apparently dropping almost all physical input and output ports from the computer, save for one 3.5mm audio jack and a single, USB-C connector. The USB-C standard offers a reversible design like the Lightning connector, making it possible to insert compatible cables in any orientation, but more importantly the spec also allows for transfer of power, as well as high-bandwidth video transmission and data up and down. That means that it can act as a single cable solution for docks and hubs that would let MacBook Air owners plug in far more accessories and devices via a single port.

If these reports are accurate (and it’s certain that they are legitimate representations of Apple’s designs at least at this stage of their process, TechCrunch has confirmed), Apple is taking a gamble in that it bets consumers will value extreme portability and minimal design over a bevy of easily accessible ports and I/O. Things are generally handled via wireless in many instances these days, so the minimal port approach doesn’t scare me all that much, especially given what USB-C is capable of, but we’ll have to wait and see if this carries through to an actual shipping computer later this year

Comments

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the document

Clip & Convert Your Video Faster With Quicktime X & The New Handbrake 64-bit [Mac]

Recently a friend of mine asked for my help to find a video of a good presentation to be shown to one of his classes. He also requested for it to be iPod friendly as he would also distribute the video to his students. Three things came to my mind: Steve Jobs, Quicktime and Handbrake . Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote. First step: The Cutting To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard). I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu ( Command + T ). Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position. To increase th

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog