Rumor: Apple won’t unveil Retina display MacBook Air at October 16th media event, will hold off until early 2015

You can expect a lot of nifty things from Apple’s media event on Thursday.

A Retina display MacBook Air probably won’t be one of them.

Per Re/code and AppleInsider, sources close to the story have stated that the rumored new MacBook Air will not debut. He did, however, reiterate that the company is in fact planning to launch a new iMac with a high-resolution Retina display.

The absence of the new MacBook Air is largely in line with the latest rumors, which have indicated the device won’t be available in time for this holiday season. Instead, it’s been reported that the new ultraportable notebook with a Retina display won’t see the light of day until 2015.

Rumors about the device have been in the channel for a while now with many of these rumors focusing on the notebook adopting an even thinner chassis and a single screen size of 12 inches.

It’s been said that part of the hold-up for the new notebook is short supply of Intel’s next-generation 14-nanometer Broadwell chips. Intel’s new chips are said to allow the notebook to have a fan-less design along with power saving advantages.

Other rumors have suggested Apple will achieve new levels of thinness by adopting a “click-less” trackpad, and also including fewer inputs and outputs.

While the new MacBook Air is not expected to arrive this Thursday, the Retina display iMac is likely to be joined by new iPad models, as Apple has in recent history used its October media event to unveil its next-generation tablets. Rumors suggest that this year the new iPads will feature Touch ID fingerprint sensors along with OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.1, which is expected to launch the Apple Pay service.

Invitations for this Thursday’s event with the tagline “It’s been way too long” were sent out to the media last week the keynote will kick off at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. Stay tuned to the PowerPage for full coverage of the event as well as up to the minute details as they become available.