14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has ordered shipments of ultra-thin next-generation MacBook Pros in the hundreds of thousands for the coming months, according to Joanne Chien, senior analyst at Digitimes Research.
Rumored to have redesigned, next-generation notebooks on the launchpad, “Apple, which entered into the market of ultra-thin notebooks with its MacBook Air, is [...] planning to adopt ultra-thin designs for its MacBook Pro product line and is set to start mass producing a 15-inch MacBook Pro in mid-April with initial monthly shipments of 200,000 units,” said Joanne Chien, according to hit-and-miss publication DigiTimes.
The company run by Tim Cook will follow with a 13-inch model in June with initial shipments of 300,000-400,000 units per month, Chien added.
Most analysts agree that the MacBook Pro is set to follow the MacBook Air in terms of design. Apple will do away with the optical disc drive in favor of flash-based media and iCloud, the company’s new web-based suite of Internet services and storage.
The notebooks are also expected to arrive with solid state storage options ranging from 64GB to 256GB and perhaps even 512GB, though such high-specced configurations are likely to burn some pockets.
For the 13-inch version, Apple is likely to keep at least one model with traditional platter-based hard disk drives.
However, thanks to the rumored removal of the optical unit, the MacBook Pro will gain an unprecedented amount of free space inside for extra battery cells, as well as a thinner form factor.
Apple has historically enhanced the technical specifications of its computers while keeping an identical pricing for each new iteration. We can expect the Cupertino, Calif. computer giant to act the same this year.