Apple has unveiled its new MacBook Air and added the latest features to the device including Retina Display, Touch ID as well as an even sleeker design.
Also introduced by Apple today was updated Mac Mini which retains its convenient small form factor but gains powerful new capabilities.
MacBook Air set the tone for ultrathin and ultralight laptops for years to come when it was introduced by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld in 2008.
Jobs dramatically illustrated just how thin the new laptop was by saying “there is something in the air” before removing the original MacBook Air from an envelope.
“The first MacBook Air revolutionised Mac with its thin wedge-shaped aluminium design. It forever changed the entire industry for portable computers and became the world’s most loved notebook,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
The new 13.3-inch Retina Display has narrower black bezels (the bezels used to be silver) and has more than 4 million pixels of resolution and 48 per cent more colour than the previous generation.
The new MacBook Air is 10 per cent thinner and 17 per cent smaller by volume than the previous generation.
It measures just 1.56cm at its thickest point and weighs in at 1.25 kg – that’s 100g lighter than before.
The MacBook Air is made from 100 per cent recycled aluminium for the first time which retains the same strength, durability and finish as all of the other Apple products but reduces the device’s carbon footprint by almost 50 per cent.
For the first time, the MacBook Air includes a Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the top right corner of the keyboard so users can quickly unlock the device, authorise their accounts and make secure purchases using Apple Pay.
Also on board is the Apple T2 Security Chip which makes the MacBook Air more secure than ever.
It has a Secure Enclave which protects your Touch ID information and makes sure the software loaded during the boot up has not been tampered with.
It also enables Hey Siri so you can use your voice to find files or open apps.
The MacBook Air keyboard has also been significantly updated with each key individually backlit using low-power LEDs for illumination.
It also now includes a Force Touch trackpad which is 20 per cent larger than the previous model.
On the audio side, customers will hear a higher quality sound experience with wide stereo playback to make watching movies and listening to music better than ever before.
The speakers are actually 25 per cent louder with double the bass than the earlier versions.
Under the hood Apple has included an 8th generation Intel Core i5 processor along with Intel UHD graphics and a faster 2133MHz system memory of up to 16GB.
That adds up to slick performance to power through your activities like viewing and editing videos, organising photos, creating presentations or browsing the web.
MacBook Air will also include SSDs (solid state drives) up to 1.5TB and up to 60 per cent faster.
Apple has also included to Thunderbolt 3 ports to the MacBook Air so users can quickly transfer data via USB and Thunderbolt.
The MacBook Air is available in Space Grey, Gold and Silver. It will be priced from $1,849 and will be available on November 7.
The new Mac Mini has been re-engineered with quad and six core processor with room for up to 64GB of RAM and faster all-flash storage.
It is now five times faster than the previous version and capable of hitting Turbo Boost speeds of up to 4.6GHz.
Also included is the Apple T2 Security Chip, four Thunderbolt 3 ports which can connect high-speed storage and 4K and 5K displays.
The Mac Mini is priced from $1,249 and will go on sale on November 7.
