Apple will reportedly flush out the year with 12-inch MacBook, 4K iMac

Macbook Air
Apple aims to reshape laptops again

Apple may have a very busy end of the year schedule with larger iPhones, thinner iPads, OS X Yosemite and now more rumors of 12-inch MacBook.

Sources have told 9to5 Mac Apple is working on a smaller 12-inch MacBook Pro featuring a much thinner and slightly lighter aluminum body and a Retina display to boot.

Supposedly Apple believes its new Retina MacBook will be another significant leap in the laptop industry.

In the past Apple has come up with novel designs for its notebooks, like the unibody MacBook Air first announced in January 2008. This design bled into Apple's larger MacBook Pro line up and eventually led to the company abandoning optical drives all together.

Seeing as there are so many laptops trying to emulate MacBook Air and Retina Pro's shape, Apple could cause another upheaval in the industry with this rumored thinner model.

Super high-resolution iMacs

The same sources also suggested that Apple is working on a new 27-inch iMac or standalone to feature the hardware makers' first 4K display.

9to5 Mac claims the pixel-doubling technology of the current 27-inch iMac and Thunderbolt displays aren't up to snuff, but that could change with Apple's next line of products.

If anything the sharper interface of OS X Yosemite provides evidence that the Cupertino company is already laying the groundwork for new Retina machines. On the apps-side Apple is also purportedly working on updates for iMovie and Final Cut Pro to get them ready to work with quadruple HD footage.

Optimized to the max

The last bit of titillating rumor surrounds Apple's plans to continue working on OS X Yosemite until the last possible second. Supposedly Apple will continue releasing updated Developer Previews from the first version it seeds on September 29 all the way to early October.

To get a sense of how close this will be to Yosemite's actual release, Apple will purportedly release a golden master build (the version ready for commercial distribution) sometime around October 10.

Also rumored for an October unveiling? The iWatch.

OS X Yosemite just released into a beta and its already showing a lot of promise from our hands on review. With a down-to-the-wire development process the final release could be something truly spectacular - or potentially filled with tons of last minute bugs.

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Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.