MacBook Air updates imminent?
Via "a well-placed source familiar with Apple inventory levels and product refreshes," the Australian version of Macworld has discovered that MacBook Air updates may arrive as early as this week. Their source found a new product number in Apple's database, MC516LL/A K87 BETTER BTR-USA. Macworld notes that the "BETTER" portion of the product code means it's likely to be a new Mac, rather than the 27-inch displays that have also been rumored recently.
The MacBook Air is long overdue for an update to its hardware, having last been refreshed in June of 2009. Aside from a CPU bump (almost certainly sticking with Core 2 Duo), increase to 4 GB for the base RAM, and an increase in hard drive/SSD capacity, I'd expect to see the glass trackpad make its debut on the MacBook Air as well. Currently, the MacBook Air the only Apple notebook that still has a separate button for the trackpad. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the NVIDIA GeForce 320M replace the previous model's NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, assuming Apple found a way to cram the newer GPU onto the MacBook Air's tiny logic board. One more feature that would be nice, but that I'm not holding my breath for, is a price drop -- since the release of the iPad, the MacBook Air seems like even more of a niche product than it was before.
Several thousand of these units are reportedly on their way to Australia, so you can pretty much bet the farm that you'll be seeing a "Store is Down!" post from us sometime early Tuesday morning.
