Edible Apple

Out with the old and in with the new. Just a few days after Apple put its entry level white MacBook up for retirement only to be replaced with a base model MacBook Air comes a report via MacRumors that Apple is already in the final testing stages of a brand new 15-inch ultra thin MacBook.

While initial reports were uncertain as to whether or not this new 15-incher would fall under the purview of the Air or Pro family, TUAW chimes in, citing their own sources, and claiming that the 15-inch slenderized notebook will in fact be part of the MacBook Pro line.

But because the MacBook Pro line was just refreshed this past February, we’ll probably have to wait a good few months before we see new models hit store shelves. Tantalizingly, though, TUAW notes that we may luck out and see them in time for the holiday shopping season.

Indeed, the success of the MacBook Air clearly demonstrates consumers gravitate towards thin. It therefore stands to reason that if Apple has ultra-thin MacBook Pros in the pipeline, it’ll want to release them in time to take advantage of the busiest shopping season of the year.

Many now expect that Apple’s design choices in the Air will eventually make their way to the MacBook Pro product, with the use of integrated SSD and lack of optical drive being the most notable changes allowing for such a thin design. While we don’t know for a fact, we expect that any future “ultra thin” laptop from Apple will also dispense with a built-in optical drive. As evidenced by its recent release of the optical drive-less Mac mini, Apple has no problem leaving physical media behind.

Very true, but a MacBook Pro sans an optical drive just seems very, how shall we put this, non professional – but SSD storage and LightPeak transfer speeds should more than make up for that.