15-inch and 17-inch Apple MacBook Airs incoming

Rumours of a small Apple MacBook Air were circulating long before the 11-inch model was introduced, and now it’s looking like Apple could introduce a larger 15-inch or even 17-inch ultra-thin laptop. The MacBook Pro range is already incredibly thin for what it offers, so thinner and lighter machines would be even more impressive.

With laptops already as small as they’re likely to get, manufacturers are now concentrating on making bigger machines that are as thin and light as possible. Apple leads the industry when it comes to thin and light laptops, with the current 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models proving incredibly portable. There could be a few more machines on the way, however.

We’ve heard rumours of both 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Air models, which ditch the optical drive found in the MacBook Pro range and use Solid State Drives (SSD) to keep dimensions as thin as possible.

Whether the new ultra-thin laptops could offer fully-fledged MacBook Pro performance without overheating remains to be seen, but it’s a tantalising prospect for those of us who travel a lot yet still want a big screen.

Would you buy a 15-inch or 17-inch MacBook Air? Or would you rather sacrifice a little bit of portability for the integrated optical drive and larger hard disk? Leave a comment and let us know.