Following the announcement at the Worldwide Developers Conference of the latest Apple Silicon chipset in the M2, Tim Cook and his team also unveiled the latest macOS laptops in the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The first to market was the M2-powered MacBook Pro, and it didn’t receive a warm welcome, with its sluggish performance, tired design and confused positioning highlighted by reviews.
Apple has already confirmed when the MacBook Air with M2 will be released and there are high hopes that this laptop will have a better reception.
M2 MacBook Air, Mid 2022
Apple news
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Pre-orders for the MacBook Air will begin this Friday, July 8, with the first batch of laptops going live on April 15. From Apple’s press release:
“From Friday 8 July at 1pm BST, the fully refreshed MacBook Air with M2 will be available to order and will start arriving to customers worldwide on Friday 15 July. Powered by the M2 chip, the all-new MacBook Air features even more performance and a new astonishingly thin design, a larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a four-speaker sound system, up to 18 hours of battery life1 and MagSafe charging. Now available in four gorgeous finishes — midnight, starlight, silver and space gray — MacBook Air with M2 starts at £1,249 and £1,149 for education.”
Although the core number is larger, the M2 chip is no faster than the M1 Pro or M1 Max found in the larger professional-focused MacBook Pro laptops, so the direct comparison will be with the first M1 MacBook Air, and a performance jump from about eighteen percent are expected.
One question will be whether this will stick given the throttling and performance issues faced by the M2 MacBook Pro. Another would be if Apple reduced the effective read and write speeds of SSD storage by using single SSD chips instead of paired SSD chips, another issue plaguing some of the M2 MacBook Pro SKUs.
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Finally, will Apple be able to meet the demand? Supply issues have led to long lead times in the consumer electronics industry, and Apple has been affected. As a populist, consumer-focused laptop, this MacBook Air will no doubt be in high demand, and the schedule of shipping dates could quickly increase when pre-orders open this Friday.
A popular laptop with potentially limited supply… If you want to be on the M2 train, get your tickets fast.
Now read why the MacBook Pro should be ignored….
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