Macbook Air Retina Release Date, Specs & Price: Apple's New Laptop Out by Spring 2015?

Customers who are eyeing the new MacBook Air with Retina display will have to wait until next year as Apple is unlikely to adjust the release of the new product this year, reports said.

University Herald predicts that the new MacBook Air with Retina display will likely be unveiled in spring next year.

In October, Apple Insider reported that the MacBook Air with Retina display will not be unveiled in its special event that month and will not push through this Christmas due to the "short supply of Intel's next-generation 14-nanometer Broadwell chips." These new chips, it noted, will allow the device to have a "fan-less design with power saving advantages."

Earlier this month, BGR reported that Taiwanese site Industrial and Commercial Times said that the redesigned 12-inch Retina MacBook Air may likely be released by the end of the year after Intel was able to ship Broadwell Core M chips to Apple.

But BGR said that it believes that the release of the new MacBook Air will not push through this holiday season. It also confirmed Apple Insider's report that the main reason behind the delay of the new device's launch is the lack of supply of Intel Core M chips. It added that the tablet for the Retina MacBook Air is being made by Quanta Computer which is based in Taiwan. Retina models have since been present in other Apple products such as MacBook Pro, iMac, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPod Touch, iPad, iPad Air, and iPad Mini.

Meanwhile, The Motley Fool just recently revealed that it was announced during Intel's investor meeting that the Broadwell-U processors, which include the low-power Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors, will be launched in spring next year. It cited in its report Intel's PC Client Group general manager Kirk Skaugen who specifically said that it will be out "early spring."

The Motley Fool also speculated that these new Broadwell-U chips will probably replace the also newly-launched Haswell processors which are also present in the 2014 MacBook Airs

"If Intel really does end up ramping its 15-watt and 28-watt Broadwell-U parts as steeply as Skaugen suggested in his presentation, then I expect that most PC designs will transition to Broadwell from Haswell," Ashraf Eassa of The Motley Fool reported.

The report also stressed that the "Broadwell-U parts are socket compatible with the Haswell-U parts" so swapping or shifting chips will be easier.

Engadget meanwhile revealed the reason as to why Apple is having difficulties integrating the Retina display to the MacBook. "You can summarize the biggest problem with two words: battery life. Stuffing more pixels into an LCD typically requires not just stronger backlights (since there's less light reaching each pixel), but also graphics processing powerful enough to draw all that extra content," it reported.