“Lightness Strikes Again.”
Today Apple finally took the wraps off its new 13-inch, consumer, Retina notebook. Long-rumoured to be a MacBook Air successor, it turns out it’s just a new MacBook Air. It also turns out it’s effectively a bigger MacBook with 2 USB-C ports. Tim Cook almost joked about the fact that the MacBook Air was still lacking a Retina Display, and that’s the key new feature here; the new 2018 model has a 13.3-inch Retina Display, which Apple claims has 4x the pixel count of the previous generation. This isn’t quite true, as the resolution is a native 2560x1600 - the same as the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The keyboard is the 3rd-generation butterfly mechanism found on the 2018 MacBook Pros and features Touch ID in place of the power button. The trackpad is now larger and features Force Touch. Under the hood, there’s now a T2 chip, just like iMac Pro, the 2018 MacBook Pro, and the 2018 Mac mini. The T2 is used as an SSD controller, allows support for always-on ‘Hey Siri’, features a Secure Enclave for storing secure Touch ID data, and has new secure boot options. The CPU is a low-power 7W class chip, similar to the 5W version used in the 12-inch MacBook, with i5 and i7 options. There’s up to 16GB RAM - up from 8GB on the 2017 model - and up to 1.5TB SSD options.
MagSafe and the SD card slot are gone, replaced with 2 USB-C ports, which are also Thunderbolt 3 capable. This is pretty impressive seeing as the 12-inch MacBook only has a single, USB-C port with no Thunderbolt support whatsoever. This means the new MacBook Air is capable of driving external displays up to 5K resolution. The headphone jack remains on the right-hand side of the chassis. The enclosure itself is almost unchanged from the 12-inch MacBook, and it takes up 17% less volume than the old MacBook Air. It’s just 15.6mm thick and weighs in at just 2.75 lbs. For the first time, MacBook Air comes in multiple colour options. No surprises here - it comes in Space Grey, Silver and Gold - the Gold being the yellow/rose gold hybrid first introduced on iPhone 8 in 2017. The brilliant news here, however, is that the enclosure is now made from 100% recycled aluminium - just like the 2018 Mac mini.
Battery life remains stellar, as we’ve come to expect from a MacBook Air; with up to 13 hours of iTunes movie playback. The speakers have also been vastly improved with stereo sound and improved bass. They’re also 25% louder. Ultimately, this new MacBook Air is everything it needed to be, although it’s a little expensive. It starts at $1199/£1199 which is considerably more than the old model, which is still on sale for £949, but honestly, Apple should be ashamed of themselves for still selling that thing in 2016, let alone going into 2019. $1199 gets you a 1.6GHz dual-core i5 with turbo boost up to 3.6GHz, 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage.
Whilst this Mac is great, the bigger problem here is that Apple decided to keep lots of older models in the product line, rather than take the opportunity to fix the confusing mess that is the Mac notebook lineup. I wrote about this a couple of months ago, and this Mac addresses a lot of those issues, but it needed to be launched in conjunction with a cleansing of the lineup, which today, unfortunately, did not bring. However, this should not take away from the fact that Apple has finally done the MacBook Air justice and given it the update it truly deserves.
MacBook Air goes on sale November 7th.
:))