If you go to buy a MacBook Air today, you have three choices: space grey (grey), silver (shiny grey) or gold (ostentatiously not grey). But it looks like Apple will be mixing things up with next year’s MacBook Air rework, with a veritable clown’s sneeze of colour options set to become available.
That’s according to the Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has the vaguely useful superpower of usually bang on the money when it comes to predicting the company’s future movements. 9to5Mac has seen his latest prophecies, where he claims that the next MacBook Air will arrive “around mid-2022” and feature “several colour options”.
If you had to guess where Apple would go when “grey” or “shiny grey” is taken off the table, then the smart money would be to look at what’s already available with this year’s 24in iMac refresh which also got a colourful makeover. The desktop comes in purple, green, pink, silver (oh), yellow, orange and blue.
It would make sense for the same colours to feature on the MacBook so those getting both could accessorise, but that’s pure speculation on my part. Blue seems likely however, as Jon Prosser’s sources have previously told him that a “blue MacBook prototype… looked absolutely amazing.” Whether you’d have the same reaction depends on your propensity to be blown away by coloured metal, I suppose.
Elsewhere, Kuo reiterates an earlier prediction, saying that the new MacBook Air will feature the same mini-LED screen technology that recently debuted in the 12.9in iPad Pro. The long and short, for those that don’t know, is that that should mean higher brightness and better contrast than what you’re used to in an Apple laptop.
Finally, Kuo says that the MacBook Air will follow the design cues that will be set later this year with the new 14- and 16in MacBook Pros. Which, of course, needs another prediction from Kuo to explain: in short, we’re talking something a bit more angular, similar to Apple’s recent iPad Pros.
The one outstanding question from all of this is what happens to the current M1 MacBook Air when the new models arrive? It could remain as an entry-level option, or it could simply be discontinued.
If Kuo’s prediction about a new look comes to pass, then I’d probably say the latter: I can’t imagine Apple keeping two very different looking products as part of the same line. Then again, I’d think twice before releasing an orange, yellow or purple laptop, so what do I know?
