Many people ask the question.. “Does the 11″ MacBook Air actually have a fan?”. Well, as if a teardown wasn’t enough to prove that it has. I had to find out the scary way, and this is exactly what happened!

Woke up this morning having left my MacBook open and downloading all night. Got ready for work, shut the MacBook lid and slipped it into my Waterfield sleeve (snug fit). Come lunchtime (aprrox 5hrs later), I go to get it out to practice a bit of coding only to find the back of my rucksack to be VERY warm (to say the least). At first I thought maybe there was a hot water pipe running where my bag was stowed. Wrong. Take the sleeve out and it too was hot hot. The poor Air was suffocating inside, the fan immediately coming on full blast. For some reason (unknown to me), it hadn’t gone into sleep mode when I shut the lid. The poor bastard had been stuck in my bag all morning running as hot as a the sun.

My immediate concern, after five hours in the material oven, was whether my pride and joy was now just a paperweight. I let it cool down then turned it on….. nothing. Held down the power button down for 10 seconds, then retried the power…. BOOOOOM. That reassuring tone. It was all working fine, but for the fact it had only 4% battery left. So I got no coding done after all. Goodnight.

If it’s true and Apple do introduce an all new Aluminum MacBook, it will consolidate their notebooks into one product range of all Aluminum models. These will only be split by product specs, but then what happens with their backlit keyboards? Does that mean the new MacBooks will now sport the highly desirable Apple feature? With the introduction of the MacBook Air, Apple brought the feature to a model other than their Pro line for the very first time. If the MacBook uses the same type of keyboard as the Air, will they bring the backlit keyboard over? I certainly hope so. I can see the MacBook also inheriting the Multi-Touch Trackpad introduced by the Air.

Backlit Keyboard coming to all MacBooks?

So what about the rumors of a cheaper, more affordable Apple notebook? That would certainly go down well in the current economic crisis. Will they lower the price of the existing MacBook design and sell it for $400? Or have they got an ASUS eeePc killer that nobody has seen yet? I’d love to see the latter myself, but there has been no evidence of it’s existence.

Do Apple have an eeePC killer?

Onto the MacBook Air and I think the main upgrade will be the 120GB slim hard drive that Apple are using in the new iPod Classic. We may also see a processor boost, with the 1.8GHz model becoming the base revision, minus the 64GB SSD. Will we see the rumored NVIDIA mGPU also appearing on the Air? Or will they stick to the Intel GMA due to heat restrictions? Only time will tell.

MacBook Air internals to receive a boost?

Then the MacBook Pro, there’s nothing drastic they can really do to the Pro, other than using the new Air styling and a speed bump. It already has the Air’s gesture based trackpad, and the spec isn’t too shabby. Maybe Apple have something up their sleeves though? Could we see the touch dock? I highly doubt it. One thing they need to add though is a magnetic latch.

MacBook Pro needs a makeover

Finally, is there a chance Apple will release a totally new product? What about the long rumored ‘Tablet’ Mac? Does it exist, and will we see it? There have been no signs of it’s existence, no manufacturing hints, no mockups, nothing. I think something this big would be the type of product introduced at MacWorld in January.

So to summarise my predictions..

• MacBook – All new Alumuminum case design, NVIDIA mGPU, Multi-Touch Trackpad, Backlit Keyboard.
• MacBook Air – 120GB slimline Hard drive (up from 80GB), mild Processor boost, NVIDIA mGPU (maybe clocked down compared to MacBook). Cheaper SSD model.
• MacBook Pro – Styling brought into line with range, black keyboard etc. Speed bump including better NVIDIA dedicated GPU’s. Much bigger Multi-Touch Trackpad and finally a Magnetic lid latch.