What to expect?
12-inch IGZO display?
2304x1440 resolution?
Thinner and lighter?
Touch screen?
New materials?
Cheaper?
Better battery life?
Let's share our thoughts...
As for the LCD, I know that it's very likely true according to the rumours, but I still don't see 12inch as a good option. Looking at 13inch MBA, I see the new model maintaining the same case size but having smaller bezel around the screen thus achieving some 14 inch. Why should they make it smaller?
2304x1440 for 12 inch? You joking right?
If this becomes true, customer is the only one who loses. Bigger resolution = more power and bigger battery needed, and you won't see the full benefit of such enormous resolution on 12 inch lcd ultra portable laptop. So to sum this up, for abit better lcd quality, yet smaller screen size, you need bigger battery and more powerful CPU as well as GPU to archieve the same performance current MBA has.
That means it will be way more expensive but practically won't be more powerful, and
best case scenario battery life will be the same.
Thinner and lighter? I guess sky is the limit, huh?
Touch screen? Possibly indeed, but it might be secondary lcd which will be TS, not primary.
New materials? I don't really see how you could improve this, Apple failed to do so for 4 years for a reason. But they could introduce dark model and change the shape a bit I guess, just to make it look different.
Cheaper? If it's gonna be MAC OS X device like it is now, I certainly don't see it being any cheaper.
Battery life, already discussed that.
There are many big rumours floating around, but all in all, it's really hard to think about something revolutionary when talking about MBA and I don't think Apple wants to lose it's 'ultrabook' spot on the market by doing something extreme like merging top of the line iPad with MBA or releasing MBA without physical keyboard.