I believe the late 2011 lineup will include a 15" Air.
I believe all 2011 Macs will have a small Air-style SSD for the operating system and applications.
The 13 and 15" MacBook Pros will trade the optical drive for more power and a bigger battery. I think the optical drive will be retained in the 2011 17" model, but be gone in 2012.
I think the desktops will retain their optical drives until the end of 2012 because there's no pressing need to use that space for something else.
As a corporate Mac user I would like to see an Ethernet port on the Air, but I keep a lot of local data so a MBPro with an SSD boot drive and traditional HD for storage makes the most sense for me.
Not sure about timing but I think you are right. Eventually there will just be a single macbook / pro line with the current air features and the pro features morphed into one notebook model only differentiated by screen size, storage options and a port or two. The smaller the screen the more portable. Probably the first generation will have legacy ports and a lightpeek port with subsequent generations just have only lightpeek ports and maybe a usb port and an SD card reader. Maybe the new airport chipset will be truly universal wifi, bluetooth, NFC / RFID , 3G (GSM / CDMA) 4G (all flavors) and maybe even WiMax. The price on cell radios is falling dramatically and multiple combination chips exist already so it won't be a stretch.
I own an air mac 11 inch 1.6 GHz 128Gig. I'm a business analyst, travel a lot, use the air mac as a work computer every day of the week. Actually, it's so good it has quickly become my main pc. My priorities for improvement would be two basic things
Better processor - I've seen it take 2 minutes to open a big, complex spreadsheet
Better storage - at 128 gig I'm already thinking about where I save files
And I am sure these will come when technology can offer affordable options.
I'm with those that want a better synching solution for the whole Apple Ecosystem my family now runs - phones, laptops, desktops, backup services, cloud services. Multiple iTunes accounts and Apple IDs all shared across one family network is very messy.
As for the other peripheral air mac stuff:
Inbuilt 3G - well an inbuilt slot for a SIM card maybe, but no big deal using a USB for this
Ethernet cable - could be good, but would probably prefer 2 USB over 1 USB and 1 ethernet
Mini usb, USB 3, better speakers - all would be nice
I've used remote disc once, to install MS Office. So definitely don't need disc.
Backlit keyboard - I forgot they existed. People say they wont buy one unless it has little lights under their keyboard... weird.
More/less ports - I'm constantly using the USB, so I'm happy it has 2.
As for the wish list: a screen that folds down to become a tablet running iOS... looking forward to buying that when this one is getting old, in 3 years or so
Comments
I believe the late 2011 lineup will include a 15" Air.
I believe all 2011 Macs will have a small Air-style SSD for the operating system and applications.
The 13 and 15" MacBook Pros will trade the optical drive for more power and a bigger battery. I think the optical drive will be retained in the 2011 17" model, but be gone in 2012.
I think the desktops will retain their optical drives until the end of 2012 because there's no pressing need to use that space for something else.
As a corporate Mac user I would like to see an Ethernet port on the Air, but I keep a lot of local data so a MBPro with an SSD boot drive and traditional HD for storage makes the most sense for me.
Not sure about timing but I think you are right. Eventually there will just be a single macbook / pro line with the current air features and the pro features morphed into one notebook model only differentiated by screen size, storage options and a port or two. The smaller the screen the more portable. Probably the first generation will have legacy ports and a lightpeek port with subsequent generations just have only lightpeek ports and maybe a usb port and an SD card reader. Maybe the new airport chipset will be truly universal wifi, bluetooth, NFC / RFID , 3G (GSM / CDMA) 4G (all flavors) and maybe even WiMax. The price on cell radios is falling dramatically and multiple combination chips exist already so it won't be a stretch.
Better processor - I've seen it take 2 minutes to open a big, complex spreadsheet
Better storage - at 128 gig I'm already thinking about where I save files
And I am sure these will come when technology can offer affordable options.
I'm with those that want a better synching solution for the whole Apple Ecosystem my family now runs - phones, laptops, desktops, backup services, cloud services. Multiple iTunes accounts and Apple IDs all shared across one family network is very messy.
As for the other peripheral air mac stuff:
Inbuilt 3G - well an inbuilt slot for a SIM card maybe, but no big deal using a USB for this
Ethernet cable - could be good, but would probably prefer 2 USB over 1 USB and 1 ethernet
Mini usb, USB 3, better speakers - all would be nice
I've used remote disc once, to install MS Office. So definitely don't need disc.
Backlit keyboard - I forgot they existed. People say they wont buy one unless it has little lights under their keyboard... weird.
More/less ports - I'm constantly using the USB, so I'm happy it has 2.
As for the wish list: a screen that folds down to become a tablet running iOS... looking forward to buying that when this one is getting old, in 3 years or so