Apple Upgrades MacBook Air, Lowers Price

Along with Apple’s announcement of a new iPad Pro, the company also announced a new MacBook Air with faster specs and a lower price.

Performance

The new MacBook Air offers quad-core processors for the first time ever. The processors are the “latest 10th-generation Intel Core processors up to 1.2GHz quad-core Core i7 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.8GHz.” The new processors give the laptops “up to 80 percent faster graphics performance, letting customers breeze through daily activities and play more games.”

As an added benefit, by using Intel’s 10th-generation processors, the new MacBook Airs should be immune to the CPU flaw that plagues all previous generations of Intels chips.

Keyboard

The new models also include the Magic Keyboard, first introduced on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The “redesigned scissor mechanism delivers 1mm of key travel for a comfortable and stable key feel,” and should be a major improvement over the problem-plagued keyboard on previous models.

Storage

The new models also start with 256GB of storage. Just as important, the MacBook Air offers up to 2TB of SSD storage, double what was previously available.

“From students and consumers buying their first computer to customers looking to upgrade, everyone loves the Mac, and they especially love MacBook Air. Today we’re giving it a huge update, with two times faster performance, the new Magic Keyboard, double the storage, a new lower price of $999 and an even lower price of $899 for education,” said Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing. “With its stunning, thin and light design, brilliant Retina display, all-day battery life and the power and ease-of-use of macOS, MacBook Air is the world’s best consumer notebook.”

Taken as a whole, this is a well-rounded upgrade that makes the MacBook Air a powerful computer that has the ability to punch well above its weight. It should appeal to a broad user base, far beyond the students and casual users it is aimed at.