Apple Spring Forward/March 2015 Event

Apple Spring Forward Apple’s “Spring Forward” event for March of 2015 is set to start in about 10 minutes (10am Pacific, noon CST, 1pm EST).

Of course, the Apple Store is down ahead of the event.

Obviously, Apple’s Watch is going to be the main focus, with pricing, new apps, and release information making up the main part of the presentation.

There is a lot of speculation about additional hardware being introduced (MacRumors has a good summary), and the thing that’s of interest to me (and to Mac-using genealogists) concerns non-Watch hardware. Not that the Watch isn’t cool, but I don’t consider it a must-have for myself. Anyways, the speculation is focused around new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs, with a move to Intel’s Broadwell CPUs, with most of the other options remaining the same. The same holds true for the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.

The one rumor I find very interesting, is about a 12-inch Retina MacBook Air. It’s been several years since we had a 12-inch portable Mac offering (going back to the G4 PowerBook days I believe). It’s supposed to be a completely redesigned Mac laptop, with fewer ports and with a much thinner build than current Macs.

In the realm of “probably not happening” are updates to the iPad mini (the iPad mini 3 was disappointing due to the lack of major improvements outside of the fingerprint sensor), and the release of a new iPad size, the fabled “iPad Pro”, which I’ve seen mentioned as being anywhere from 11 to 13 inches.

You can watch the event through AppleTV, or point your web browser to:
http://www.apple.com/live/2015-mar-event/