Apple today introduced a completely redesigned MacBook Air and an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro, both powered by the new M2 chip — which takes the breakthrough performance and capabilities of M1 even further. MacBook Air takes everything users love about the world’s best-selling laptop to the next level. With an all-new, strikingly thin design and even more performance, MacBook Air also features a larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, four-speaker sound system, up to 18 hours of battery life,1 and MagSafe charging. It is now available in four finishes — silver, space gray, midnight, and starlight. M2 also comes to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the world’s second best-selling laptop — delivering incredible performance, up to 24GB of unified memory, ProRes acceleration, and up to 20 hours of battery life,2 all in a compact design. The new MacBook Air and updated 13-inch MacBook Pro join the even more powerful 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max to round out the strongest lineup of Mac notebooks ever offered. Both laptops will be available next month.
“We’re so excited to bring our new M2 chip to the world’s two most popular laptops — the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Completely redesigned around M2, MacBook Air is thinner, lighter, and faster with a bigger display, better camera, and all-day battery life, in four beautiful finishes. Only with Apple silicon can you build such a thin and light notebook with a fanless design, and this combination of performance and capabilities. M2 also comes to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, featuring incredible performance, ProRes acceleration, up to 24GB of memory, and up to 20 hours of battery life — making our most portable pro notebook even better.”
M2 Supercharges Apple’s Most Popular Systems
M2 starts the second generation of Apple’s M-series chips and extends the remarkable features of M1. With industry-leading power efficiency, a unified memory architecture, and custom technologies, this new chip brings even more performance and capabilities to Apple’s most popular Mac notebooks — the MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro. M2 features a next-generation 8-core CPU with advancements in both performance and efficiency cores, along with Apple’s next-generation GPU, which now has up to 10 cores — two more than M1. M2 delivers 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and supports up to 24GB of fast unified memory, so it can handle even larger and more complex workloads with ease. Designed to dramatically speed up video workflows, M2 also adds a next-generation media engine and a powerful ProRes video engine for hardware-accelerated encode and decode, so systems with M2 will be able to play back more streams of 4K and 8K video than before.
All-New MacBook Air, Completely Redesigned Around M2
Built from the ground up around M2, MacBook Air has an entirely new design that is remarkably thin from every angle. It measures just 11.3 mm thin and is only 2.7 pounds, and features a durable, all-aluminum unibody enclosure that feels incredibly solid and is built to last. This thin and light design integrates its components so efficiently that it results in an astonishing 20 percent reduction in volume. With the power efficiency of M2, all of the capabilities of MacBook Air are built into a silent, fanless design. In addition to silver and space gray, MacBook Air is now available in two new finishes — midnight and starlight.
MagSafe returns to MacBook Air, giving users a dedicated charging port that is easy to connect, while protecting MacBook Air when it is plugged in by quickly releasing if the charging cable is accidentally pulled. MacBook Air also features two Thunderbolt ports for connecting a variety of accessories, and a 3.5 mm audio jack with support for high-impedance headphones. Additionally, the Magic Keyboard features a full-height function row with Touch ID, and a spacious, industry-leading Force Touch trackpad.
New 13.6-inch Liquid Retina Display
The new MacBook Air features a gorgeous 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, which has been expanded closer to the sides and up around the camera to make room for the menu bar. The result is a larger display with much thinner borders, giving users more screen real estate to view their content in brilliant detail. At 500 nits of brightness, it is also 25 percent brighter than before. In addition, the new display now supports 1 billion colors, so photos and movies look incredibly vibrant.
1080p FaceTime HD Camera and Four-Speaker Sound System
MacBook Air includes a new 1080p FaceTime HD camera with a larger image sensor and more efficient pixels that deliver twice the resolution and low-light performance of the previous generation. Combined with the processing power of the advanced image signal processor on M2, users will look great on video calls.
MacBook Air also features a four-speaker sound system. To fit inside such a thin design, the speakers and mics are completely integrated between the keyboard and display — all while delivering an even better audio experience. A three-mic array captures clean audio using advanced beamforming algorithms, while the speakers produce improved stereo separation and vocal clarity. MacBook Air also supports immersive Spatial Audio for music and movies with Dolby Atmos.
Even More Performance in MacBook Air
M2 takes the performance of MacBook Air even further.
For intensive workloads like editing complex timelines in Final Cut Pro, performance is nearly 40 percent faster than the previous generation,3 and up to 15x faster for customers that haven’t upgraded to Apple silicon.4
Applying filters and effects in apps like Adobe Photoshop is up to 20 percent faster than before,5 and up to 5x faster for customers that haven’t yet upgraded to Apple silicon.6
And even with a larger display and increased performance, MacBook Air delivers the same great, all-day battery life as before, with up to 18 hours of video playback.
New Charging Options
MacBook Air offers a number of charging options, including an all-new 35W compact power adapter with two USB-C ports, so users can charge two devices at once. And for the first time, MacBook Air supports fast charge for charging up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes with an optional 67W USB-C power adapter.7
13-inch MacBook Pro with M2
Users love the performance the 13-inch MacBook Pro delivers in its compact design. Now with M2, Apple’s most portable pro notebook gets even more capabilities in the same great form factor.
With a faster 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, working with RAW images in apps like Affinity Photo is nearly 40 percent faster than the previous generation,8 and up to 3.4x faster for users who are upgrading from a model without Apple silicon.9
Playing graphics-intensive games like Baldur’s Gate 3 is also nearly 40 percent faster than the previous 13-inch MacBook Pro,10 and up to 3.3x faster for customers upgrading from a model without Apple silicon.11
With an active cooling system, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is designed to sustain its pro performance.
Thanks to M2, the 13-inch MacBook Pro also supports up to 24GB of unified memory — along with 50 percent more memory bandwidth — making multitasking and working with large assets super fluid.
With support for ProRes encode and decode in the media engine of M2, users can play back up to 11 streams of 4K and up to two streams of 8K ProRes video.12 And they can convert their video projects to ProRes nearly 3x faster than before.13
The 13-inch MacBook Pro delivers phenomenal battery life with up to 20 hours of video playback.
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