As speculation about the possibilities of the next Mac notebook revision heat up, some are wondering whether the MacBook Pro will become just another MacBook Air? Maybe it will be lighter, thinner, and perhaps contain a longer-lasting battery. At the same time, with the arrival of Intel's Ivy Bridge chips, it'll run faster too.

It sounds good so far. But I won't speculate as to when you'll see them in the stores.

There will also likely be a wider selection of solid state drives, and maybe prices will begin to come down to the point where you don't go broke having a larger storage capacity. An SSD means much faster start times, quicker app launching, faster file copying and so on and so forth.

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Last winter, the Apple haters were delighted to learn that Amazon appeared to have a winner on their hands with the Kindle Fire tablet. That 7-inch gadget sold for a "mere" $200, and evidently did pretty well over the holiday season, with reported sales of several million units. Well, at least that's what the industry analysts said since, of course, Amazon never discloses unit sales of hardware in their quarterly financials. I suppose sales were to be inferred by sampling dealer sell-throughs, or by examining Amazon's earnings. But since many of those Kindles are sold directly, the results are little more than educated or not-so-educated guesses.

Indeed, if you can believe those reports, the Fire took control of more than half the otherwise stagnant Android tablet market. Sure, Amazon puts their own face on the Fire, so it's not obviously Android, but that still counts as support for the platform.

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Some felt that Apple CEO Tim Cook was being conciliatory when he suggested the company would be willing to work out settlements for those ongoing intellectual property lawsuits involving Samsung, Motorola and other companies. At the same time he didn't hesitate to assert that he wanted them to invent their own stuff, so it's not as if he's willing to let them off the hook for perceived patent infringement.

Now this week it's reported that both Apple and Samsung have reduced the number of claims of patent infringement they've filed against each other in a California lawsuit. This action was taken at the request of Judge Lucy Koh, who remarked, "I think that's cruel and unusual punishment to a jury, so I'm not willing to do it." In response, Apple cut their claims roughly in half, and Samsung is dumping five out of their 12 claims.

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Not so long ago I read a piece that quoted a supposedly respected industry analyst suggesting that the iPad's share of the tablet market would begin to take a huge dump later this year or the next. With more and more Android tablets with which to compete -- and don't forget the Android-powered Amazon Kindle Fire -- along with the forthcoming expected avalanche of Windows 8 tablets, Apple's overwhelming dominance may be short-lived.

Now I suppose the estimates about a declining market share might have been vindicated some because of the apparent success of the Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet, in the holiday quarter last year. On the other hand, the latest reports of sales appear to indicate that the Kindle Fire has tanked. While lots of people were willing to try them out as possible gifts, the Fire doesn't seem to have staying power. That's clear. Worse, if Amazon does deliver a 10-inch version, as reported, the higher price will put it in iPad territory. Amazon has not yet demonstrated the ability to compete in the general-purpose tablet space.

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