Apple has unveiled a redesigned MacBook Air at its Worldwide Developers Conference that’s powered by its very latest silicon – the M2 processor – which offers all new capabilities and never-before-seen power efficiency.
Apple also introduced an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro that is also powered by the new M2 chip.
Available from next month, the new MacBook Air with M2 will be available in four finishes – midnight, space grey, silver and starlight.
Pricing will start at $1,899 with the product available from next month.
The new M2 MacBook Air includes a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display – that’s a larger display thanks to the thinner borders which offers users more screen real estate for users to work with.
The screen has 500nits of brightness – that’s an increase of 25 per cent than the previous model – and can also support up to a billion colours so your photos and movies will look better than ever before.
Apple’s redesigned MacBook Air has moved away from the wedge shape and now features an all-aluminium unibody enclosure that has 20 per cent less volume than the previous design.
It measures just 11.3mm thin and tips the scales at 1.24kg.
The new MacBook Air brings back MagSafe so you have a dedicated charging port that’s easy to connect and that quickly releases if it is accidentally pulled.
Also on board the MacBook Air are two Thunderbolt ports for connecting accessories and other monitors along with the 3.5mm audio Jack with support for high impedance headphones.
The Magic Keyboard has a full height function row with Touch ID along with a large Force Touch trackpad.
The new MacBook Air has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera that offers twice the resolution and improved lowlight performance and a four-speaker sound system.
On the battery side, Apple says the new MacBook Air will offer all-day use with up to 18 hours video playback.
The MacBook Air now has new charging options including a 35W power adapter with two USB-C ports so you can charge two devices at the same time.
The new MacBook Air also supports fast charge with users able to achieve a 50 per cent charge in just 30 minutes using the optional 67W USB-C power adapter.
The M2 chip – the second generation of Apple’s M series of process is – builds on the impressive features of the original with improved power efficiency and a unified memory architecture to offer even higher performance and capabilities to the MacBook Air and new 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The M2 includes a next generation 8-core CPU with improvements in performance and efficiency along with Apple’s new GPU which now has up to 10 cores.
The M2 chip can deliver 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and can support up to 24 GB of fast unified memory.
In terms of performance, intensive workloads in Final Cut Pro, for example, is now 40 per cent faster than the M1 MacBook Air and up to 15X faster than previous models that do not contain Apple’s silicon.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 offers up to 20 hours of battery life.
The MacBook Air with M2 start at $1,899.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 starts at $1,999.
Additional accessories including the 30W USB-C power adapter will be $59 and the 35W dual USB-C power adapter will be priced at $89.
