MacBook Air Retina Display Release Date: New Ultraportable Laptop Won't Feature Light-Up Logo, Boasts 12" Retina Display, Thinner Frame

For the past two years, Apple fans have been waiting for the company to include Retina technology to its ultraportable MacBook Air lineup. Unfortunately, only the Pro versions have been upgraded in 2013. 

Fortunately, there are now rumors pointing to a release date for the MacBook Air with Retina Display some time this quarter. 

According to a report by TechnoBuffalo, a new rumor claimed that the development of the laptop is already in full swing. An alleged proof of this claim is several leaked images of what appeared to be the lid of a MacBook Air. 

However, in the report by Chinese blog iFanr, the lid will ditch one of the most prominent features of Apple's laptop lineup - the light-up Apple logo. In the leaked pictures, the Apple logo is colored black.

This could mean that Apple will reportedly use the same design features of its iPads and iPhones, which both have black metallic Apple logos.

Other features mentioned in the report include a Retina display on a 12-inch screen, although there are still no exact resolutionThe alleged 12-inch MacBook Air lid is compared to a 13-inch lid from Apple's current generation MacBook Pros. 

Phone Arena cited that the new laptop may see the light of day beginning on Feb. 19, which is the Chinese New Year. While this probable release date may not be in the usual Apple schedule, the manufacturer may also be planning to change its release for laptops especially the Air, which had not seen any major change since it was introduced in 2010. 

Last year, there were reports which claimed that the MacBook Air with Retina Display should have made it during the last quarter if not for the shortage of supplies from Intel's brand new Broadwell chip. 

Like Haswell a couple of years back, Broadwell is tipped to be power-efficient chip. In addition, it does not need a fan in order to work in extreme conditions. This could potentially make the MacBook Air, as well as other ultrabooks much thinner.