Hi, it's HandyAndy Tech Tips here. So the MacBook Air is considered to be one of the
best ultraportable laptops. And now it looks like Apple is going to make it even better.
Because there are rumours circulating about the 2016 version of the MacBook Air. So let's
take a look at some of the rumoured specs. Now, when you think of an ultraportable laptop,
you don't generally think of good graphics performance. But that might be about to change,
because many rumour websites are suggesting that the new Air will have the GeForce GTX
950 from NVIDIA. According to NVIDIA's website, the GTX 950M, which is the mobile version
of the graphics chip, has 640 CUDA cores, plus the ShadowPlay and GameStream features.
But the most interesting thing in my opinion, is that websites like Australia Network News
have said that the 2016 version of the MacBook Pro will also come with the GTX 950! Could
both the 2016 Air and 2016 Pro have the exact same graphics chip? It's one of those rumours
that does seem a bit unlikely, but it would be great if it turned out to be true. Something
which does seem more certain is that the 2016 Air will have the new Skylake-U processor
architecture. This is based on a 14nm manufacturing process, and brings the usual features of
greater performance and less power consumption. According to the VC Post website, it's also
very likely that this CPU will be paired with ultra-fast DDR4 RAM, but since the Skylake-U
supports both DDR3L and DDR4 RAM, we can't know for sure which one it'll use. So the
2016 MacBook Air will have far better specs internally. But the external features are
also set for a shake-up. Probably the coolest new feature is that Force Touch technology
might be included in the trackpad of the new notebook. According to Australia Network News,
it'll probably work in a similar way to 3D Touch on the iPhone 6S. Of course, there's
a lot of new possibilities that hardware like this could open up, so we'll probably see
some exciting changes (probably in an update to OS X El Capitan) that will make the OS
able to really take advantage of Force Touch. Now, talking about changes, the single USB
Type-C connector that we saw on the 2015 MacBook really divided the opinions of quite a lot
of people. According to NeuroGadget, Apple is thinking of including it on the 2016 MacBook
Air as well, but hopefully they'll keep some of the other I/O ports this time. But they
might not need the charging port, with Master Herald reporting that the new Air might even
have wireless charging included! Personally, I think this is a bit unlikely, since Apple
have been filing patents for wireless charging for about ten years now, and they haven't
yet included it in any of their products. But who knows? The company might have refined
the technology enough to justify including it in the new Air. So after reading about
all of the features and specs, I'm convinced that the new Air will be a great laptop. But
what we all want to know is: when will the 2016 MacBook Air be released? Well, I personally
think that we'll have to wait a couple of months. Why? Well, NeuroGadget has suggested
that the recent announcement of the iPad Pro has stolen some of Apple's focus away from
developing the new Air. Also, they claim that the processors that will apparently be used
in the new Air haven't yet reached the production stage. And finally, to really add weight to
the argument, here's a table of the release dates of previous MacBook Air models. You
can see that only in one year - 2008 - did Apple release two versions of the Air. Since
then, the release schedule has only been one model per year, and I think that this pattern
is most likely to continue. So based on all of this information, I'm going to predict
that the release date will be early 2016. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this video, and if
you want to see my rumour video on the 2016 MacBook Pro, then you can click the screen
now. And, as always, please subscribe to my channel if you want more Apple rumour videos.
I'm HandyAndy and thank you so much for watching.