According to display industry analyst Ross Young, who has a good track record of predicting future Apple products, the supply chain of Apple has already begun manufacturing the display panels for a new 15.5-inch MacBook Air earlier this month.
Ross Young, who is the CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) and has a history of providing accurate details on unreleased Apple products stated via a tweet that he predicts the launch of the new MacBook Air to be in “early April” since the production of its display has already started. However, it is plausible that an announcement and pre-orders may occur before that date. In the past, Apple has usually held a spring event to unveil new products, as was the case in March 2022 and April 2021.
Presumably, the new 15.5-inch display size option would be offered as an addition to the current 13-inch MacBook Air model, making it the largest display size ever for the MacBook Air. The latest MacBook Air with the M2 chip was launched in July 2022 and is available starting at $1,199. Ross Young did not offer any further information regarding the upcoming model, including whether it would be powered by the M2 chip or the unannounced M3 chip that is expected to be based on the 3nm process.
TSMC, Apple’s chip manufacturing partner, commenced mass production of 3nm chips in December but it remains unknown whether the M3 chip will be ready by April. There has been some discussion about the release of a 15.5-inch MacBook Air with the M2 chip this spring, particularly because there are reports of Apple planning to upgrade the MacBook Air with the M3 chip later this year. If this is the case, there would only be a brief six-to-eight-month interval between these two refreshes.
As the launch of the new MacBook Air models draws closer, additional rumors may emerge to clarify the situation. Ross Young, meanwhile has a history of providing accurate details on unreleased Apple products, such as the inclusion of ProMotion technology in the iPhone 13 Pro and high-end MacBook Pro models, the 8.3-inch display on the sixth-generation iPad mini, and the 13.6-inch screen on the current MacBook Air, among other things.
