A new rumor is suggesting that Apple will abandon the current design of the MacBook Pro this year in favor of a new Air-like design. According to a rumor sourced by AppleInsider from the dreaded ‘people familiar with the Apple roadmap’, the current design of the Pro will be discontinued and a design that is based on the thin, and highly popular, MacBook Air will be introduced in its place. The new models will apparently lose the optical drive that is currently in the MacBook Pro but not in the Air, and will be introduced initially in 15 and 17 inch models.
The new MacBook Pro would likely retain the aluminum unibody that has proven so popular among Apple laptop users, and has certainly been a regular feature in the rumor mill for the past couple of years, particularly since the launch of the updated MacBook Air design. Certainly the loss of an optical drive would be a reasonable assumption given the fact that Apple has discontinued offering its products by that medium. It only seemed to be a matter of time.
The site reports that the new models would likely be introduced at the end of 2012 but the article doesn’t seem to offer any new information other than was rumored last year from multiple sources.
The 15 and 17 inch models of the curent MacBook Pro are certainly popular among MacBook users and the equivalent sizes in a MacBook Air-like form would be guaranteed top sellers. If the current design of the MacBook Pro was indeed phased out to be replaced with a unified Air-type design across the line-up, then the 2012 line-up of the MacBook could look significantly different from the current offerings.
Slim…