Apple last year had problems making its black iPhone 4 white, and now it appears the company has also had issues making it’s lovely silver Macbook Air black.
It’s been rumoured for a while now that the company was prepping a black sleek Air to add to its line up in the next few weeks. This is when the next generation Air is due to be released, complete with a new SandyBridge Intel chipset which increases performance while lowering power consumption.
Image Credit, Colorware.com
Now it appears that the black Air has been pulled after an issue with the machine “soaking up bodily oils”. This apparently was happening around the trackpad and is something that nobody really wants to have to look at.
NeoWin reported an email from an Apple employee which said…
The rumors that the next iteration of the MBA’s will have an optional black finish is grounded in truth.
We tried to powder coat the Air’s (and Pro’s for that matter) in black as a test run. There are more than a few floating around campus.
The coating looks good and holds up well, but it also soaks up body oils, making the palm rest look pretty gross. Ultimately that is the reason that the top brass (Jobs) killed the idea… it was just too easy to make the computer look like crap.
At some point we may offer a black coating, but it won’t be powder coat, and it won’t be anytime soon.
The addition of a black MacBook Air to the range would have been a boon for Apple. I’ve recently reviewed the new Samsung Series 9 ultraportable which is their Air equivalent. It’s a lovely metallic black and utterly gorgeous. It’s a great Air competitor too.
This doesn’t mean we will never see a black Macbook Air though. Apple overcame the problems with the white iPhone where the colouring of the case was causing problems with the camera. We can fully expect to see a black Air appear then but it will probably take another year or two.
No related posts.
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the icons below.
The sad part of this is that this is the only Mac that I found attractive.
Although awesome looking, I had a friend bring round his black macbook 13 the other day for me to fix something (whitescreen of death) and it was a disgusting mess. badly worn keys – trackpad a mess.
I have a white macbook and macbook pro 15 and a unibody machbook pro and none of these suffer from this.
I can see why they didnt release this after all.
Figures. Leave it to Apple to not release something because it “looks like crap”. don’t want apple ruining their image now do we?
Funniest article title ever!
Laugh out loud as they say.
This black MacBook Air story reminded me of the
inimitable General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Stangelove:
“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”