【Randy Spears Archives】

Apple's got a new MacBook Air,Randy Spears Archives and it's a big change from the previous one.

On the outside, the new Air has been thoroughly redesigned, now resembling a more compact MacBook Pro. Yes, that means the display now has a notch on top, but it's also gotten bigger, now measuring 13.6-inch diagonally, and with thinner bezels than before.

Being an Air, it's thin and light, weighing just 2.7 pounds, with only 11.3mm of thickness when shut. To stand out from other Macs, the new Air also comes in four colors: silver, space gray, starlight, and midnight.

Other features of note include the new MagSafe power connector, a new 1080p camera with 2x the resolution and low-light performance of the previous Air, a four-speaker sound system, and a surprisingly cool touch in the form of a power adapter with two USB-C ports, so you can use it to charge another gadget besides the Air. As far as ports go, the Air has two USB-C ports on one side and a headphone jack on the other.

On the performance side, the MacBook Air is the first Mac to feature the new M2 chip. It has an 8-core CPU with four high-performance cores, and four high-efficiency cores. When compared to the M1 chip, it offers 18% more CPU performance, 35% better GPU performance, and up to 50% more memory bandwidth, as well as support for up to 24GB of unified memory.

The new MacBook Air starts at $1,199, and it will be available "next month." The previous MacBook Air will remain available for $999.

The MacBook Air isn't the only Mac to get the M2 treatment, though. Apple also updated its 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 chip (yes, that's the old Pro that still doesn't have the notch, but doeshave the Touch Bar). This variant will start at $1,299, and will also be available next month.