Buyers hoping to buy the new budget version of Apple’s MacBook Air may have to wait a little longer, it appears. Quoting some of the supply chain sources of the Cupertino based tech giant’s, reports say that Apple has pushed the production of MacBook Air to the latter part of the year, though the earlier information was that these may be released in the first quarter of 2018 itself.
There are also reports claiming that Apple has deferred volume production on other products such as iPhone, HomePod and MacBook Air. However, there is no clear reason stated.
Analysts have been reporting for some time that Apple has been reviewing its policy across product segments and drop the ‘premium only’ approach and add a model or two in all product lines in what is loosely known in the trade as the ‘budget’ segment. It has done this with the iPhones and has dropped prices of iPads and next the MacBook Air was to have hit the shelves at price tags in the $799 or $899 range at the starting point down from the current $999.
In terms of the hardware, the new device was expected to sport retina high resolution screens with a resolution of 2560x1600pixels and the processor would be a latest version Intel CPU. In fact, the sources giving out this piece of information have indicated that it is the processor supply that is behind the delay, though there is no official confirmation from Apple yet.
This project of Apple’s to launch the MacBook Air 2018 has definitely seen a couple of postponements. Initially it was expected to happen in the first quarter; then there were indications that it might happen in June, close to the end of the second quarter of the year. If the above reports are to be trusted, it may not happen till the last quarter.