Here"s a shocker: Apple has managed to leak its own announcement, hours ahead of the event. We all knew Apple was about to announce a product line refresh, but it"s not every day that they manage to leak some of the information before the event themselves.
According to Engadget, a bunch of eagle eyed Polish folk have managed to craft URLs on the Apple website to reveal some confirming information on the announcement Apple is due to make today. Some of the URLs lead to new discussion forums relating to iMovie "11, iPhoto "11, and GarageBand "11, which are all major parts of the iLife suite, so we"d be safe to assume the entire set will receive a refresh later today.
In addition to this, they"ve managed to uncover a forum called "MBA (Need Official Name)," which obviously stands for MacBook Air. Earlier today, Engadget also received information about the new Air, from a close source that was able to get a hands on with an actual working unit and discovered the following features:
- Smaller 11.6-inch display.
- 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (with a 2.33GHz option possible).
- 2GB of memory in the base configuration.
- No optical drive, naturally.
- Mini DisplayPort, USB, and SD card reader along the left-hand side and USB and power on the right (that"s 2x USB).
- The trackpad has been updated to match that of the new MacBook Pros.
- Although smaller due to the 11.6-inch display, it"s still about the same thickness as the current MacBook Air.
- A black power key now sits immediately to the right of a smaller eject key on the MBA"s keyboard; the round aluminum power button is gone. A design decision that might support the MBA"s rumored instant-on capabilities though our source didn"t see this functionality exhibited (possibly because it was running OS X 10.6.4).
There are some great improvements here, and many MacBook Air fans will be pleased with the update. Obviously, this could all be incorrect, but we"ll know officially in a few hours at the Apple "Back to Mac" event.