It seems very likely that Apple will introduce new laptops at WWDC on June 11. The timing aligns nicely with the release of new processors from Intel, and credible rumors have made the rounds of late. I’ve been thinking of replacing my 2009 15″ MacBook Pro, so the new laptop release holds extra interest for me. Meanwhile, trends in laptop design make the upcoming release both exciting and a bit hard to predict. Nonetheless, I’m going to give it a shot.

Air or Pro?

Right now, Apple sells two types of laptops: the heavier but more powerful MacBook Pro, and the lighter MacBook Air. The Pro models come in 13″, 15″, and 17″ sizes, while the Airs are available at 11″ and 13″. All the Pro models contain optical (CD/DVD) drives, feature glass screens by default, and the 15″ and 17″ models have quad-core processors. The Airs lack optical drives, use non-glass screens and dual-core processors, and generally give up power in order to be extremely slim and light.

The existing 11″ and 13″ MacBook Airs will almost surely get a modest processor upgrade. Otherwise, they’ll probably change very little. The interesting question is whether Apple will introduce a larger version of the Air, and what will become of the MacBook Pro line. Given the power consumed by quad-core processors, it seems very unlikely that Apple will be able to put them into the very slim MacBook Air case while maintaining adequate battery life. Nonetheless, they can’t drop quad-core CPUs altogether; lots of people want the kind of power that comes with the bigger MacBook Pros. Some rumors suggest that they’ll remove the optical drive from the MacBook Pros, slim them down some without moving to the wedge shape of the Air. That makes room for a bigger battery, which could drive the more powerful processor.

My guess is that Apple will split the difference. They’ll introduce a slim, wedge-shaped 15″ MacBook Air with a dual-core processor and place it at the top of the MacBook Air line. At the same time, they’ll proceed with the slimmed-down Pro line, perhaps at only 15″ and 17″, letting the 13″ MacBook Pro fall by the wayside. The new MacBook Pros would be both more powerful and lighter than the current models, albiet not as light as the Airs. It would lead to a bit of overlap between the Air and Pro lines, but in time that could change as low-power, high-performance CPUs become available.

Retina Display

Another rumor making the rounds is that Apple plans to introduce Retina screens to the Mac. These would be very high-resolution displays similar to the ones used on the iPhone and iPad. It’s a big leap, but most of the evidence suggests Apple is ready to take the plunge. If they do, look for Retina screens to be included across the board and without an additional charge. When Apple introduced the Retina display on the iPhone 4 and the most recent iPad, they did it without increasing prices. There’s no option to get a cheaper iPad without a Retina screen, unless you buy last year’s model. Apple clearly believes this high-resolution technology is the future, and I don’t expect them to wait around.

Marco Arment recently wondered if Retina screens would really be an upgrade at first:

I suspect that adoption of Retina assets among Mac apps will be slower than we saw with Retina iOS devices, and more importantly, Retina graphics for websites will likely take significantly longer.

Since non-Retina graphics look worse on Retina screens than on older screens, Retina MacBook users would have significantly worse-looking web browsing for a while — probably years, not months.

Marco’s concern is valid, but I’m not sure it would be as big a problem as he suggests. Well-written Mac apps will be able to take advantage of automatic scaling of native UI elements. As for the web, well, it looks pretty great on the new iPad. Sure, some of the graphics are grainy, but that will change in time. On the whole, I feel like my web browsing experience is better on the iPad’s Retina display, and I expect the same would be true on a Retina-screen Mac.

Price

Rarely does Apple increase prices on the machines they make. Although there’s somewhat more wiggle room with computers than with iPads and iPhones, I think it’s likely prices will stay about the same. The pattern in recent years has been to hold prices mostly constant while adding features and thus, value.

Choices, choices

This is one of those updates where I find it hard to gauge which model I’ll want to buy after they’re announced. I’d really like to buy another laptop with a 15″ screen, so assuming I’m right about Apple introducing both and Air and a Pro version of a 15″ laptop, I’ll have a decision to make. There’s also the possibility that neither machine really hits what I’m looking for, in which case I might wait it out another cycle. One way or another, June 11 should be pretty interesting.

9to5Mac:

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.

Not too surprising, given Apple’s penchant for minimizing dependencies on external services, especially Google’s. But it’s a big move: I’d bet that Maps is one of the most heavily used apps on the iPhone, and I doubt people will tolerate too much in the way of bugginess or lost features. For example, what will happen if you click on a Google Maps-based URL from a friend? Will the new Maps app be able to interpret the link and display the right map? Or will you get punted into Safari to view a Google map in the browser, resulting in a much poorer experience? I hope Apple has thought these things through.

Also, a minor quibble: The maps app on iOS has never been called “Google Maps.” People might refer to it that way, but it’s always been called simply “Maps.”

Listen to this with the sound turned up on good speakers or headphones. Amazing.

Farhad Manjoo:

But there’s something even more perplexing about Amazon selling The Hunger Games and other huge bestsellers for free. The Kindle lending program upends the conventional wisdom about Bezos’ business goals for e-readers. Most people think that Amazon is selling Kindle devices at cost in order to make a profit on the sales of books and movies. But if Amazon is also giving away a lot of media for free—4 of the Top 10 books in the Kindle Store can be had for free under the Kindle lending program—then what is its business model for Kindle?

Giving away the razor to make money on the blades is a well-known strategy. But giving away the razor and the blades in order to make money on a subscription loyalty program as a way to sell everything else? Is that Amazon’s real goal with the Kindle—is Amazon in the device business only to sell Prime subscriptions, which the company sees as a key accelerant for sales across the rest of its site? And if that’s the case, how well is that circuitous business model working out? Is the Kindle helping to sell Prime? And are those Kindle-fueled Prime subscriptions moving more sales across the rest of the company’s inventory?

It’s a really interesting set of questions. Is it possible that subset of Amazon’s catalog – books, movies, TV, music – could evolve into a subscription-oriented service akin to Netflix? Prime members would get access to free or heavily discounted content in the hope that membership encourages them to buy more physical goods through Amazon as well. Personally, I certainly buy more things though Amazon since I got my Prime membership. Even if the price is the same, I’ll buy heavy or bulky items on Amazon to save me an inconvenient trip to the store.

MacRumors on AT&T’s plans for shared data plans:

Shared “family plans” for voice minutes have been available for quite some time, and a similar mechanism for sharing data seems to be a natural evolution. But aside from sharing data among family members, even individuals could see a benefit from the plans, which would allow them to subscribe to a single monthly data allotment that could be used with their iPhone, iPad, and perhaps even a USB modem or mobile hotspot device.

Being able to share a single data plan between devices would make me much more likely to buy a 4G-equipped iPad next time around.

In 2009, Sen. Dick Lugar acted as “grand marshal” of a DC-area chug-n-run:

The group of athletes came up with the idea last year as a season-ending blowout, Aronson explained. The rules are simple: Chug one beer before each of the four laps, and eat a hot dog between laps two and three. “The idea is to do something relatively short, relatively painless, and increase the likelihood that somebody would throw up,” said Aronson.

Lugar described the racers as “very high-spirited.”

You just can’t find public servants like this anymore.

File under “could’ve seen this coming”:

“My only regret was how we introduced pricing in the beginning, because how did we introduce pricing? Thirty dollars and you get all you can eat,” [AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson] said in the on-stage interview at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference on Wednesday. “And it’s a variable cost model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital.”

He goes on to complain about losing sleep over Apple’s iMessage service, citing lost revenue. I’ll file that one under “I couldn’t care less.”

The makers of Draw Something were acquired by Zynga a couple of months ago, and since then Zynga has been busily adding “sponsored brands” to the game.

Until recently, the Pictionary-like game had only run spammy banner ads in its free mobile app that, including the paid no-ads version, has amassed a staggering 50 million downloads in five months. Now, with a direct-sales force that’s been on the ground for a whole eight weeks, Draw Something is inserting advertisers’ paid terms into the game for players to literally draw brands.

Here’s how the game works: Pick a word from a list of three, then create a drawing so a Facebook friend can guess that word and you can win points. For the ad product, imagine inserting words like “Doritos” or “Coca-Cola” in among “golfer,” “bikini” or “fireworks.”

…

However, as brands begin to come onboard, Draw Something’s popularity with consumers may be waning. Its monthly active users have declined in recent weeks, according to App Data. Daily active users have dropped from 14 million at the beginning of April to about 10 million.

I’m not surprised that people are jumping ship. On the one hand, it’s an interesting business model, particularly as a departure from traditional banner ads. Nonetheless, I bought the paid version of Draw Something before it was acquired by Zynga, and I resent having “brands” shoved at me in an app I already paid for. This sort of thing is the problem with the “make it free and monetize later” model. In the long run, it ends up being annoying for users.

Daniel Hooper comes up with a great concept video for a better way to edit text on the iPad. Here’s hoping Apple implements something like this in a future version of iOS. If you agree, I highly recommend following the directions to file a feature request.