15-inch Macbook Air in the making?

According to recent news from a Japanese site Mac otakara a new 15-inch model of Apple has entered the test phase. Although it is still not clear, if the tablet will be an addition to MacBook Air series or to the MacBook Pro series. It will be the first for MacBook Air of 15inch as the earlier models are of 11 and 13inches.

One tech site has even claimed that 15-inch model would be part of the MacBook Pro line, back in July. Macrumors, also supports the MacBook Pro theory, and had originally reported about an ultrathin MacBook.

As these Mac laptops are very thin as Air so presumably it will not have any optical drive, like the Ultrabooks that are now hitting the market. It will be further interesting if they extended Air like design to a 17inch screen. The latest Ultrabooks from Intel are also mostly of 11 and 13 inches, but they also have 15inch and 17inch as an option.

Although most of the thing about this model is unclear but most important question that arises in our mind might the processor it will be equipped with. As the new Ivy Bridge chips are on their way to the market and are to get launched by the first quarter or early second quarter. Will Apple wait for that long or are they going to use the Sandy Bridge like other models currently in the market?

Ivy Bridge will have a built in graphics processor which is expected to be compliant with OpenCL, a technology that provides effort for gaming and multimedia operations. It will also support USB 3.0. 

Source(s)