Matthew Skyrm’s .Plan in Japan

It is less than 12 hours before MacWorld SF 2008. Rumors are flying about the “MacBook Air” super-slim notebook.

Wired’s Gadget Lab seems to think it will look like this:

They also say:

“The MacBook Air may also dispense with a wired Ethernet port, according to rumor. “

My friend Graeme suggested that Apple will need to provide a USB to Ethernet adapter. So I figured that just in case they don’t and I’m left fending for myself, I better do a quick Y! search to see what options exist out there.

It turns out that Sustainable Softworks has some nice open source drivers for a couple of popular USB to Ethernet chipsets. But on this page I found something peculiar:

“We’ve seen some reports of AX88772 based adaptors being recognized on Leopard without needing to install any drivers. The system.log reports the device is being matched by AppleUSBEthernet. We’ve also had some problem reports of not getting a DHCP Lease. If you’re experiencing difficulty, please check the system.log to see which driver is actually being used. I understand from Apple that the presense of this driver may be inadvertent and does not imply support for generic USB-to-Ethernet adaptors.“

So Apple is inadvertently including drivers for USB to Ethernet adapters? I surmise that in roughly 12 hours Apple will start offering a USB to Ethernet adapter based on the AX88772 chipset either as part of the MacBook Air package or as an additional accessory.

We’ll all know shortly.

P.S. — It is all about Mac OS X and consistent design. Sony (my employer here in Tokyo) has been making beautiful super-slims from exotic materials and novel features for years now. They all run Windows.

P.P.S. — I still think Cinema displays with USB Video Class cameras built-in are coming…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Hardware, Sony, Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.