As expected, Apple’s long-rumoured 15-inch MacBook Air laptop was announced on the first day of the WWDC 2023 annual conference on June 5. Pretty similar to the redesigned 13-inch version that Apple announced at WWDC 2022, the 15-inch MacBook Air is a bit bigger. This is the first time that Apple has released a laptop with a 15-inch screen that is not part of its “Pro” lineup of devices.
MacBook Air comes in four finishes: midnight, starlight, space gray, and silver at a starting price of Rs 134,900 and Rs 124,900 for education.
With an expansive 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, the performance of M2, up to 18 hours of battery life and a silent, fanless design, the new MacBook Air brings power and portability — all in the “world’s thinnest” 15-inch laptop. There’s an all-new six-speaker sound system, the 15-inch MacBook Air delivers immersive Spatial Audio, along with a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, MagSafe charging, and the power and ease of macOS Ventura.
Prospective buyers can order starting today (Tuesday), with availability beginning Tuesday, June 13. Meanwhile, the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 gets a new starting price of $1,099 — $100 less than before — to deliver even more value and choice to everyone, from upgraders to first-time Mac customers.
The new MacBook Air has a spacious, high-resolution 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, so users can see even more content. With up to 500 nits of brightness and support for 1 billion colours, the brilliant Liquid Retina display makes content look rich and vibrant, and text razor sharp. It is also twice the resolution and 25 per cent brighter than a comparable PC laptop.
“We’re thrilled to introduce the first 15-inch MacBook Air. With its incredible performance and striking design, the new MacBook Air is the world’s best 15-inch laptop. And it’s only possible with Apple silicon,” John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, said in a statement.
“From its expansive Liquid Retina display and remarkably thin and fanless design, to extraordinary battery life and an immersive six-speaker sound system, the new MacBook Air has it all.”
The new MacBook Air measures only 11.5mm thin, making it the world’s thinnest 15-inch laptop. It weighs just 3.3 pounds, so it’s incredibly portable too. Even with its expansive display, the new MacBook Air is solid and durable and it is also nearly 40 per cent thinner and half a pound lighter than a comparable PC laptop.
MacBook Air also comes with MagSafe charging, two Thunderbolt ports for connecting accessories and up to a 6K external display, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack for versatile connectivity.
With the M2 chip, the 15-inch MacBook Air is said to be 12x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air. When compared to the best-selling 15-inch PC laptop with a Core i7 processor, the new MacBook Air is up to twice as fast, the tech giant said.
It also delivers extraordinary battery life, with up to 18 hours — 50 per cent more than on the PC — even with a better display and better performance. The 15-inch MacBook Air features a powerful 8-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, a 10-core GPU for blazing-fast graphics, and a 16-core Neural Engine. M2 also delivers 100GB/s of memory bandwidth and supports up to 24GB of fast unified memory, so multitasking and working with complex workloads is superfluid. The performance of M2 lets users work, play, or create just about anything — anywhere.
The design of the new 15-inch MacBook Air also features a new six-speaker sound system with two tweeters and two sets of force-cancelling woofers. The new speakers deliver twice the bass depth for fuller sound, and Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos provides immersive experiences whether listening to music or watching movies.
The 1080p FaceTime HD camera on MacBook Air is perfect for FaceTime calls and video conferencing. Combined with the processing power of the advanced image signal processor on M2, users will look great on video calls. A three-mic array captures clean audio using advanced beamforming algorithms, so users come through loud and clear on video calls.