Apple This

It’s hard to hear the name “Apple” and then place the word next to the term “affordable”. This isn’t to bash on Apple, but as the old adage goes, “you get what you pay for”, right? Apple provides excellent products, usually all are very high-end. However, with high-end products come high-end prices. The iMac and even the Macbook aren’t considered the most affordable of tech devices, but they are always seen as some of the best tech you can get your hands on. You would think that with all of the competitors out there offering lower costs, and most succeeding at emulating what Apple can do, they would try to compete themselves and offer lower prices on some of their tech. Well thankfully, that looks to be in some of Apple’s plans this year.

Apple’s product road map for the year of 2014 has pointed out some interesting things. First and foremost in a new ultra slim 12″ Macbook Air. The map revealed more on the iWatch, and new sizes in iPhones, but more so revealed a new low cost iMac as well.

The new Macbook Air seems to be the thing that most everyone is concerned with, in terms of new laptops coming out later this year. The new Air is expects to do away with the two different sizes which its predecessor had. The new Air is rumored to be 12″ instead of offering an 11″ or 13″ model this time around. According to Ming Chi Kuo, a KGI Securities representative who is quite psychic when it comes to Apple rumors, the 12″ model is thought to be a fusion of the two previous Air models. The 12″ model will still offer the portability of the 11″ model while maintaining the efficiency and productivity of the 13″ model as well. Kuo has also predicted that the new Air model will be host to an ultra high definition display as well. It’s rumored that it will, in fact, be a retina display model to match that of the Retina Macbook Pro model. Yet another rumor of the new Macbook Air is that it will actually (somehow) be thinner and lighter than the preceding model was/is. It seems next to impossible to make this happen, but there are a few speculated specs that show how this could be possible.

As with any laptop, there are a few things that must be included within the casing to make it work. However, there is one thing that you may think would be needed in a high end laptop that the new Air will not include: a fan. This will no doubt make the laptop slimmer, but hopefully the notebook will be able to retain high power output without needing to be cooled down by a fan. There is said to also be a buttonless trackpad. The trackpad will now be responsive to pressure instead of the clicking of buttons.

Kuo again talked of the lower cost iMac expected to come out later this year. Obviously no one knows how “low-priced” it will be, but on the roadmap for Apple, it looks to come out halfway through the second quarter of 2014. The new iMac has been lowered in cost to compete with other companies that offer lower prices (funny how I mentioned that same thing at the beginning of this article). The new Macbook Air, however, isn’t expected to be out until late, possibly the end of this year.

Source.