Apple has held its “One More Thing” event, and it was focused on all things Mac. While previous events revealed the new iPad Air and the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, this one took viewers on a trip that led off with Apple’s own M1 chip.
To go along with the fancy new processor, Apple announced many new devices, including a new MacBook Air. The two things that make this Air stand out from previous models is the brand new ARM-based M1 chip and the lack of a fan.
The New M1-Based MacBook Air
During its event, Apple spent a lot of time talking about how much faster this new laptop is than just about anything else on the market. The company said that the new MacBook Air is “three times faster than the best-selling Windows laptop in its class.” It even said that it’s faster than “98 percent of PC laptops sold in the last year.”
That’s a lot of comparisons between other laptop models, and the specs offered by the new MacBook Air seem to back that up.
The laptop is available in a few configurations, with the cheapest featuring an 8‑Core CPU and 7‑Core GPU. That model features 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It features the improved Retina display and all of the new features announced by the company.
A higher configuration comes with the Apple M1 chip with an 8‑core CPU and an 8‑core GPU. That model also includes 8GB unified memory and a 512GB SSD.
Each of the two models is upgradable to 16GB of RAM if you need a little bit more memory. You can also upgrade them to a 2TB SSD for quite a bit more money.
The new laptop, and others released with the M1 chip, can run iOS and iPadOS apps natively on macOS. That opens up a whole slew of new ways to use a laptop. It blends the world of mobile devices and notebooks even further and could be a big game-changer for people deeply invested in the Apple ecosystem.
The lack of a fan is what makes this laptop stand out from the crowd. This means the computer will run entirely silently, no matter how intensive the task you’re trying to perform is. The company says that an “aluminum heat spreader dissipates the heat the system generates, so no matter how intense the task, MacBook Air runs completely silently.”
Apple touted up to 18 hours of battery life on the MacBook Air. That’s up to six hours of additional juice over previous models.
As this is a MacBook Air, size is also one of the key benefits. The Air is 11.97 inches wide, 8.36 inches long, and only 0.63 inches deep at the fattest point. It tips the scales at 2.8 pounds.
The New MacBook Air Price and Availability
Apple announced that the MacBook Air would be delivered on November 17 or 18. The cheapest model is $999 (or $899 from the education store). The price jumps from there for the higher configurations.
You can pre-order any of the configurations now on the Apple Store Online.