As Apple's next product event, "Spring Forward" to be held in San Francisco on March 9 draws closer, rumors and leaks are beginning to show up on online. At its March 9 product event, Apple is most likely to focus on the Apple Watch, though the company could unveil other products as well.

Apple has not updated its MacBook Air since April last year, indicating that it is time for the company to refresh its line of ultraportable notebooks. As a result, there have been rumors of Apple showcasing a 12-inch Retina MacBook Air at its March 9 event and even unveiling all the three machines together.

According to The Michael Report, Apple could unveil a new much more thinly designed MacBook Air with Retina display at the event. The report expects the Retina display in the new MacBook Air to be similar to that in Apple's MacBook Pro line of laptops. It also suggests that the new MacBook Air could be powered by Intel's new Broadwell Core M low-power processors, giving it an excellent battery life in comparison to the earlier versions of MacBook Air.

The report claims that new MacBook Air will be designed much thinner than the earlier models and will also be fanless, indicating that Apple could do away with the MacBook Air's full-sized USB ports, MagSafe connectors, and SD card slot. The report claims to have received the information from "sources familiar with the matter within Apple," though its credibility is questionable.

More recently, new screenshots showing specifications of the new MacBook Air with one of Intel's Broadwell processors have come up on the forum of Chinese site Feng.com, suggesting that it could be heading for an imminent update by Apple.

The screenshots seem to show a 13.3-inch MacBook Air with an Intel Broadwell processor and a 7422 mAh battery, while other features are more or less similar to the current 13.3-inch model.

The screenshots reveal the base model of the new MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD, a step-up model with a 256GB SSD and a top-tier model with a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. Apple has maintained the non-Retina resolution of 1440×900 in the new MacBook Air model with a 13.3-inch display, indicating that the company could keep the specs and price points of the new model similar to those in its existing models.

However, the screenshots need to be taken with a pinch of salt as it is not possible to verify their source and one can easily spoof such system information windows.