As expected, Apple released the new MacBook Air at its Worldwide Developers Conference this month. As expected, this is the first consumer MacBook to come with Apple Silicone and a 15-inch display. And as expected, it’s perhaps not as new as you might expect given the high-profile event at which it was launched.
But for most users, this is enough to forget about the MacBook Pro.
Cupertino, California, June 5: Apple CEO Tim Cook holds up the new 15-inch MacBook Air.
Update: Sunday, June 11: For all Apple’s introduction of the new MacBook Air, there’s very little new about the consumer laptop. The larger display will appeal to those who need a pure performance upgrade, but others who recognize that this is last year’s model released this year will want more. The good news is that Apple already has a plan for the M3 chipset.
The bad news is that we won’t see it for a while. Mark Gurman notes that a true refresh of the MacBook Air family’s specs won’t happen until 2024.
Currently, any MacBook Air will come with the 5nm-based M2 chipset, announced in June 2022. It was widely seen as an upgraded M1 chip. The next big step will be the M3 chipset, which will use the 3nm process, which should deliver higher performance, longer battery life, and a true upgrade to the MacBook Air platform.
However, for some, the larger screen today makes the investment in a macOS laptop necessary.
The Apple website displayed on a laptop screen is seen in this illustrative photo taken in Krakow. [+]
NurPhoto via Getty Images
The new MacBook Air has one unique feature compared to the rest of the MacBook Air family, namely a 15.3-inch LED/IPS display. Everything else in the package is exactly the same as the 13.6-inch MacBook Air presented at WWDC 2022. Arguably, Apple simply held back the model with a larger screen for twelve months to show artificial momentum with the Air family.
Awkward release timing aside, the MacBook Air eliminates one of the biggest arguments for consumers to skip the MacBook Air and not be sold on the MacBook Pro, and that’s screen size. Apple’s two smart MacBook Pro models have 14-inch and 16-inch displays that offer more digital real estate than the MacBook Air family (at least before WWDC). They also add a ridiculous amount of power with the M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets.
That power costs money. Like many Macs throughout history, if you wanted a bigger screen, you had to buy a higher-end machine.
The 15-inch MacBook Air goes beyond this model. It offers the same specs as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and while I’ll argue that the release of the same-spec laptop a year after a smaller version is disappointing, it offers a clear value proposition. You can buy the 13-inch MacBook Air for the newly reduced price of $1,099, or for an extra $200, you can get the 15-inch model.
Thanks to the flexibility of Apple Silicon, even the basic M2 chipset provides more than enough performance for the average user and is certainly sufficient for content creation and software development to a good standard. For those who need a lot of power and performance, there are two smart MacBook Pro models that look more like everyday portable workstations than high-end laptops.
The MacBook Pro used to be the only choice for those who needed a larger macOS laptop. Three years after debating Apple’s promise to revolutionize the laptop market, Apple has finally decided that you don’t need to buy a more powerful laptop to get a bigger screen.
It’s taken too long to get to this point, but we’re here now.