Apple rumours: Retina Macbook Airs, and oodles of iPad news

Those Apple rumours just keep coming, especially coming up to the iPhone 6′s rumoured launch window, and keeping up with them all is proving to be a difficult task. To keep you up to speed, here is today’s round-up of the biggest Apple rumours and news.

1. The New iPad might come with an anti-glare display

ipad-mini-7

Even with the brightness turned way up it can be a pain to use your iPad outside when it’s sunny. For that very reason, it appears that Apple are introducing an anti-reflection coating on the newest models of the iPad. It’s not 100 per cent clear what this will involve, but Apple has used similar phrasing when referring to displays on the iPhone and iMac.

There are no other details about this just yet and, of course, we have to wait for something official before we believe a word of it. [Bloomberg]

2. New iPads are apparently in production, and will ship later this year

That’s right, it’s not just the iPhone 6 and the iWatch we should be looking forward to. This report again comes from Bloomberg, who quotes two unnamed sources who are supposedly familiar with Apple’s supply chain. Apparently there will be two versions of the iPad as always, a 9.7-inch successor to the iPad Air and a new version of the iPad Mini, both of which are expected to arrive before the end of the year.

There’s almost no information about the new devices except for rumours that they’ll include Apple’s TouchID fingerprint scanners. Maybe we should’ve focussed a little less on the iPhone 6 then? [Bloomberg]

3. There might be a Retina Macbook Air by Christmas

A while back there were some rumours about a new Macbook Air that might not see the light of day because Intel couldn’t get the correct chips produced on time. Well thanks to the unveiling of Intel’s new “Broadwell” chip, that might not come to pass, and we might see a new Macbook Air before the year is up. The chip itself is smaller, thinner, and far more efficient than other Intel chips on the market. They also don’t produce much heat, which could make fanless laptops a true reality.

BGR notes that while Apple isn’t one of the companies outright mentioned by Intel, Apple has had a preference for using Intel hardware in the past and the idea of a thinner chip fits right into Apple’s design plans for its slimline devices. [BGR]

Tom Pritchard