MacBook Air

Apple will launch a 15-in. MacBook Air in the first quarter of 2012, according to a report from a Taiwanese publication that cited unnamed sources in the component supply channel.

The shutdown of production at a Chinese manufacturer may affect inventories of Apple's popular MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks, an analyst said.

Intel released design specifications for a "MacAir" killer last spring, and have been trying to convince hardware manufacturers to jump onboard. One way? A $300 million fund to help vendors get rolling making a small light laptop for under $1,000 to fight tablet sales growth

Online retailers are showing signs that a MacBook Air refresh may be imminent. Best Buy recently stopped shipping all four models of the latest Air lineup through its online store. Shoppers looking for Apple's ultraportable laptop from Best Buy will have to pick it up at the big box chain's physical locations instead. There are also reports of constrained MacBook Air inventories in some of Amazon's international stores (although not the U.S. store), according to 9-to-5 Mac.

Owners of last year's MacBook Air models who've been running into problems with iTunes got some relief Wednesday in the form of an Apple software update. The catchily-named Mac OS X v10.6.7 Supplemental Update for 13" MacBook Air (Late 2010)--or "update" for short--tackles an issue where Apple's ultra-thin laptop became unresponsive when using iTunes.

Samsung's launch on Thursday of the the ultra-thin, ultra-light, and premium-design 9 Series laptop puts it head-to-head now with Apple's MacBook Air - and so begins the war of the sleek laptops.

Feeling a bit of MacBook Air envy, Acer, Asus and Lenovo may soon offer alternatives to Apple's ultra-thin computer, according to Digitimes.

Recently, after testing two MacBook Air models running Windows 7, we published results that showed the thin and light Apple laptops outperformed most Windows-based netbooks and ultraportable notebooks. Hundreds of readers commented on the article, with many of the comments going something like this: "The MacBook Air costs far more than many of the laptops you've compared it against. How does it do against similarly priced notebooks?"

Consumer Reports may not like the iPhone 4 much, but it loves loves loves the MacBook Air.

Ditching Adobe Flash on your Apple MacBook Air can extend your battery life by two hours, according to reports. Chris Foresman at Ars Technica discovered battery life in the new MacBook Airs is 33 percent longer without the Flash plugin installed. According to his tests having Flash installed shaved two hours off the laptop's battery life.

It doesn't matter how gorgeous your laptop is if your screen blanks out. Has it happened to you?