Apple Reportedly Sourcing Thinner Components for 2013 MacBook Air and
MacBook Pro
Wednesday September 26, 2012 11:49 am PDT by Eric Slivka
While Apple's MacBook Air is already extremely thin and the new Retina
MacBook Pro has reduced the thickness of the company's flagship notebook by
25%, work naturally continues on new ways to shave even more thickness from
future versions of Apple's notebooks.
Digitimes reports that Apple is working with suppliers on a new process that
will enable the company to shave 0.15 mm from the thickness of the light
guide used to distribute lighting for the company's illuminated keyboard in
the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.
Apple will reduce the thickness of light guide plates for the illuminated
keyboards in its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models from 0.4mm currently to
0.25mm in 2013, according to sources in Apple's supply chain.
Since the current injection process for the production of 0.4mm light guide
plates has been optimized to its limit, makers utilizing extrusion processes
are likely to win orders for 0.25mm light guide plates, the sources
indicated.
A difference of 0.15mm seems a negligible reduction in thickness that would
by itself be essentially imperceptible by users if it were even to translate
to slightly thinner overall profiles for the machines, but the company is
likely pursuing the reduction for some purpose. Apple is unlikely to
significantly alter the overall form factor of next year's MacBook Pro and
MacBook Air, but combining small reductions in thickness for multiple
components would pave the way for more significant overall reductions down
the road.
Kyle Wiens from iFixIt speculates that the added thinness for the keyboard
may help prevent the keyboard leaving residual marks on the screen when the
laptop is closed.
