Apple unveiled its latest MacBook Air models on Monday, showcasing the inclusion of the robust M3 chip. The new iterations, available in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, boast a sleek and lightweight design, offering up to 18 hours of battery life, a Liquid Retina display, and enhanced features.
According to a statement from the company, the MacBook Air with the M3 chip delivers a performance boost of up to 60 percent compared to the previous M1 model, and a staggering 13 times improvement over the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.
Additional enhancements include support for up to two external displays and a doubling of Wi-Fi speed compared to previous versions.
Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, highlighted the broad appeal of the new MacBook Air, stating, "From college students to business professionals seeking productivity tools, the new MacBook Air offers unparalleled performance, portability, and battery life in a fanless design."
Pre-orders for the new MacBook Air with M3 are now available, with shipments expected to begin on March 8th. The latest MacBook Air boasts an 8-core CPU, up to a 10-core GPU, and support for up to 24GB of unified memory, enabling hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing.
Apple highlighted the MacBook Air's compatibility with cloud-based solutions, citing support for productivity and creative apps utilizing AI capabilities, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly.
M3 takes MacBook Air perform better:
- Game titles like No Man's Sky run up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip.
- Enhancing an image with AI using Photomator's Super Resolution feature is up to 40 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 15x faster for customers who haven't upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.
- Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for customers who haven't upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.
- Video editing in Final Cut Pro is up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 13x faster for customers who haven't upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.
- Compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor, MacBook Air delivers up to 2x faster performance, up to 50 percent faster web browsing, and up to 40 percent longer battery life.
Experience the Pinnacle of AI on Your MacBook Air
With the transition to Apple silicon, every Mac becomes a powerhouse for AI applications. The new M3 chip is equipped with a 16-core Neural Engine, alongside specialized accelerators in both the CPU and GPU, elevating on-device machine learning capabilities and establishing the MacBook Air as the premier consumer laptop for AI tasks.
Harnessing this exceptional AI prowess, macOS introduces intelligent features that revolutionize productivity and creativity, empowering users to access advanced camera functionalities, real-time speech-to-text conversion, seamless translation, predictive text input, visual comprehension, accessibility enhancements, and more.
Supported by a rich ecosystem of apps boasting sophisticated AI functionalities, users can seamlessly integrate AI into various tasks. Whether it's utilizing AI Math Assistance in Goodnotes 6 for academic purposes, automatically refining images in Pixelmator Pro, or eliminating background noise from videos using CapCut, the possibilities are endless.
Furthermore, with the unified memory architecture of Apple silicon, the MacBook Air can efficiently execute optimized AI models, including complex language models (LLMs) and image generation diffusion models, delivering exceptional performance locally.
Beyond on-device capabilities, the MacBook Air extends support to cloud-based AI solutions, enabling users to leverage powerful productivity and creative apps that leverage AI functionalities, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly.
Whether on-device or in the cloud, the MacBook Air stands as a pinnacle of AI performance, empowering users to unlock new levels of productivity and creativity with unparalleled efficiency and convenience.
Pricing and Availability
- Customers can order the new MacBook Air with M3 starting Monday, March 4, on apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app in 28 countries and regions, including the U.S. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting Friday, March 8.
- The 13-inch MacBook Air with M3 starts at $1,099 (U.S.) and $999 (U.S.) for education, and the 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 starts at $1,299 (U.S.) and $1,199 (U.S.) for education. Both are available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray
