MacBook Air to undergo design overhaul at 12-inches

Rumors of a 12-inch MacBook Air, and how Apple would give it a major facelift, have been a hot topic in the Mac community for quite some time already, yet hard proofs that would back these claims are a little hard to come by. But 9to5Mac, which has been in touch with an Apple insider, may shed some light on some of these speculations.

Referred as MacBook Stealth by Apple employees who are involved in the project, the upcoming 12-inch MacBook Air will have significantly thinner and lighter frame compared to the 13-inch MBA, and will even have narrower body than the 11-inch variant despite of its bigger screen.

To achieve this, the tipster claims that Apple had to make radical changes on the overall design of the MBA, including removing the usual ports altogether (MagSafe, SD card slot, Thunderbolt and full-sized USB), shaving a few millimeters off all the bezels around the display, making the trackpad smaller, as well as making a few adjustments on the keyboard layout which includes placing the keys slightly closer to each other (seen below).

It’s still unclear what Apple plans to do with the some of the ports that are believed to be omitted from the flanks of the upcoming MBA 12, but 9to5Mac claims that the Cupertino-based company will use the new USB Type C instead of the standard size USB connector. Apart from having a smaller footprint compared to its predecessor, there are other benefits of using the new USB port which we detailed here.

It’s believed that the redesigned MacBook Air 12 will ship in mid-2015 and will likely to be powered by one of the recently-announced processors under the new 5th Intel Core processor family.

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