AppleCare One can also be extended to other Apple products you own “that are up to four years old” (or one year old for headphones) and “in good condition,” even if they’re outside of the typical 60-day grace period for subscribing to AppleCare+. Apple says that the condition of these devices may need to be verified “using a customer’s iPhone or iPad, or at an Apple Store” before they can be added to the plan, presumably to reduce the number of people who opt in after the fact to avoid pricey repairs to already damaged devices.
While the potential savings are the best argument in favor of the new plan, it also adds a handful of new benefits for some devices. For example, AppleCare One covers theft for both iPads and Apple Watches, something that isn’t covered for these devices under a standard AppleCare+ subscription. The subscription can also simplify the trade-in process, removing a traded-in device from your AppleCare One plan and replacing it with an upgraded device automatically.
If you haven’t subscribed to AppleCare+ before, it functions both as an extended warranty and an insurance program. If your device breaks suddenly for reasons outside of your control, repairs and replacements are generally free of additional charge; for accidental damage, theft and loss, or battery replacements, users are charged additional flat service fees for repairs and replacements, rather than Apple’s hefty parts and labor costs. Battery replacements are also free when your battery drops below 80 percent of its original capacity.
AppleCare One plans will go on sale starting tomorrow, July 24.
Op-ed: A Mac with an iPhone chip inside could be great—for the right audience.
The 2018 MacBook Air, which still lives on today as the low-cost M1 MacBook Air. Credit: Valentina Palladino
The 2018 MacBook Air, which still lives on today as the low-cost M1 MacBook Air. Credit: Valentina Palladino
Some Apple rumors just don’t go away, hanging around in perpetuity either because they reflect things that Apple is actually testing in its labs or because hope springs eternal. A HomePod-like device with a screen? A replacement for the dear, departed 27-inch iMac? Touchscreen MacBooks? The return of TouchID fingerprint scanning via a sensor located beneath a screen? Maybe these things are coming, but they ain’t here yet.
However, few rumors have had the longevity or staying power of “Apple is planning a low-cost MacBook,” versions of which have been circulating since at least the late-2000s netbook craze. And yet, despite seismic shifts in just about everything—three distinct processor instruction sets, two CEOs, innumerable design changes, and global trade upheaval—Apple’s cheapest modern laptops have started around $1,000 for more than two decades.
Last week, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (whose Apple predictions aren’t always correct but whose track record is better than your garden variety broken-clock prognosticators) kicked up another round of these rumors, claiming that Apple was preparing to manufacture a new low-cost MacBook based on the iPhone’s A18 Pro chip. Kuo claims it will come in multiple colors, similar to Apple’s lower-cost A16 iPad, and will use a 13-inch screen.
MacRumors chipped in with its own contribution, claiming that a “Mac17,1” model it had found listed in an older macOS update was actually that A18 Pro MacBook model, apparently far enough along in development that Apple’s beta operating systems were running on it.
The last round of “cheap MacBook” rumors happened in late 2023 (also instigated by Kuo, but without the corroboration from Apple’s own software). As we wrote then, Apple’s control over its own chips could make this kind of laptop more plausible. But if it existed, what would this laptop be good for? Who could buy it instead of a MacBook Air, and who would want to stick to Apple’s current $999 status quo? To commemorate the “budget MacBook” idea becoming infinitesimally more likely, let’s ruminate on those questions a bit.
Good for: Basic computing
The A18 Pro combines two high-performance CPU cores, four high-efficiency CPU cores, and six GPU cores. Assuming this A18 Pro MacBook would ship with that fully enabled version of the chip—not a guarantee, especially if Apple is trying to cut costs—that’s two big CPU cores, two little CPU cores, and between two and four GPU cores fewer than the basic Apple M4.
But as pointed out by Jason Snell at Sixcolors, the A18 Pro actually far outstrips the old M1 in single-core processor benchmarks and essentially matches it in both multicore and graphics benchmarks—despite having fewer cores, the other architectural improvements Apple has made over a few generations have helped elevate its performance into a performance category that would still probably read as sufficiently Mac-like for most people.
I still use an M1 MacBook Air with some regularity, and nearly five years on, its combination of performance and efficiency still strikes a really good balance for basic computing. I’m not using it to play games or edit 8K videos or transcode my media library. But for Messages? Safari? Photos? Google Chrome? Microsoft Word? Slack? For bread-and-butter computing, including office work and communication, I don’t especially miss the extra speed of my Mac Studio’s M2 Max, or even the faster M4 chip in Apple’s latest MacBook Air.
Good for: All-portable use
No one knows what design Apple would use for a hypothetical low-cost MacBook, though past precedent and the 13-inch screen rumor would suggest that Apple could continue to roll with the old 2018-vintage MacBook Air design (“old shell with new guts” being Apple’s standard formula for this kind of thing).
But whatever the company does, the 13-inch MacBook Air is still a great all-rounder and a good combination of size and speed for people whose laptop is a purely portable computer that floats from room to room in their house rather than traveling for work or getting docked on a desk.
There are MacBooks that will never see an external display; there are MacBooks that will never crop or edit a photo; there are MacBooks whose USB-C ports will never be plugged into anything other than their charger. As the MacBook Air has gotten more capable—it has added a 15-inch screen size, more performance, more RAM, and more display outputs in the last couple of years, closing a lot of the gap between the Air and the cheapest of the MacBook Pros—it has left more space underneath it for a cheaper model that can serve an audience that doesn’t need those kinds of features.
Bad for: Heavy multitaskers
Apple’s A18 Pro is smaller and slower than a chip like the M3 or M4, but it’s as fast or faster than the M1. That could make it a decent fit for a low-cost Mac, though it might not be enough for power users. Credit: Apple
The A18 Pro’s single-core performance is going to keep things feeling snappy when you’re just hopping between a couple of apps at a time, but having two fewer high-performance cores and two fewer high-efficiency cores than the M4 is going to take a big bite out of your multicore performance—how your Mac feels when you’re doing something that uses all of its processor cores at once, especially for an extended period of time.
An A18 MacBook—or any Mac built around an A-series iPhone processor—could also have other limitations because of its handheld pedigree. We already know from the iPhone 16 Pro that the A18 Pro only supports 10Gbps USB 3 connections, rather than full Thunderbolt speeds as the M-class processors do. But do they include display controllers that could be used to extend a Mac’s desktop to even a single external display? The A17 Pro chip used in the latest iPad mini doesn’t support extended displays; it could be because it’s an older chip, or it could be because Apple doesn’t spend precious transistors on adding features that its phones don’t need.
Another big question mark here is how much RAM the laptop will have. Would it stick to the same 8GB that the iPhone versions of the processors use? Or could Apple package up a version with 16GB or even 12GB of RAM instead? If the point is to keep the laptop cheap, Apple’s costs would go up when paying for the RAM itself and when asking TSMC to package purpose-built versions of the A18 with extra RAM that could only be used for MacBooks.
It would feel like a step back, since Apple just bumped entry-level Macs up to 16GB of RAM for the first time last fall. But dipping back down to 8GB could be the thing that makes the most financial sense for this kind of laptop.
Bad for: Future-proofing
If you’re already spending a lot of money on new hardware, it’s best to buy a little more than you think you’ll currently need, at least if your budget will bear it. That’s because you don’t know how demanding future software will get, or what new apps you’ll get into that you weren’t thinking of when you bought it. (Case in point: One Ars Technica staffer bought an M1 Mac mini with 8GB of RAM and needed to replace it before its time because 8GB of RAM wasn’t enough to handle Logic Pro when they decided to start experimenting with it.)
Even stuck with 8GB of RAM, an A18 MacBook would serve a lot of people well, particularly the class of casual Internet browsers and email checkers who want a Mac because they’re comfortable with its interface but for whom an Apple M4 would be overkill. But it could be iffy as a starter laptop for someone who wants to experiment with new software. And they’d be less useful hand-me-downs, because the person having the laptop handed down to them could already have needs that outstrip the modest hardware.
Good for: Apple’s lineup
Apple’s iPhone and iPad lineups both include products that were purpose-built to cost a couple hundred dollars less than its flagships (right now, the $599 iPhone 16e and the A16-powered 11th-generation iPad). Even the Apple Watch has a cheaper “SE” version that’s sold alongside the Series 10 and Ultra 2.
These products have always been slow to adopt new designs and lack certain features that Apple uses to differentiate its midrange and high-end offerings. But they still get the basics right and integrate into buyers’ individual Apple ecosystems just as well as the more expensive products do. A cheap MacBook still syncs with iCloud; it still gives you easy access to iMessage and your photo library; it still runs the same software and apps, even if it doesn’t always do it as quickly.
You could argue that 2020’s M1 MacBook Air currently fills that niche, even though Apple itself no longer offers it for sale through its own site—you can head to Walmart and buy one right now for $649 if you wanted. But buying a nearly 5-year-old MacBook design also means you’re probably buying fewer macOS versions and security updates, potentially lopping years off the useful life of your new-to-you laptop.
Replacing that M1 Air, possibly with an A18-powered version that uses the exact same design, fills a gap in the Mac lineup that Apple has filled in all of its other product families. Buyers would be able to rest easier knowing they were buying a modern product with years of software support ahead of it (Apple sometimes cuts off its “cheap” devices a year or two before higher-end ones, but it varies from device to device). And Apple has already proven that it can make and sell a MacBook that serves basic needs for way less than $1,000, without (apparently) totally wrecking demand for new MacBook Airs and Pros.
Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.
Aside from the M4’s modest performance improvements over the M3, it seems likely that Apple will add a new webcam to match the ones added to the iMac and MacBook Pros. The M4 can also support up to three displays simultaneously—two external, plus a Mac’s internal display. The M3 supported two external displays, but only if the Mac’s built-in screen was turned off.
Gurman also indicates that refreshes for the basic 10.9-inch iPad and the iPad Air are coming soon, though they’re apparently not as imminent as the M4 MacBook Airs. The report doesn’t indicate which processors either of those refreshes will include; the current iPad Air lineup uses the M2, so either the M3 or M4 would be an upgrade. If Apple wants to bring Apple Intelligence to the 10.9-inch iPad, that would limit it to either the A17 Pro (like the 7th-gen iPad mini) or a variant of the Apple A18 (like the iPhone 16e). Apple Intelligence requires a chip with at least 8GB of RAM.
The iPad Air was refreshed a little less than a year ago, but the 10.9-inch iPad is due for an update. Apple gave it a price cut in 2024, but its hardware has been the same since October of 2022.
The macOS 15.2 update that was released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: an apparently accidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the “Mac16,12” and “Mac16,13” model identifiers reference 13- and 15-inch models of the M4 Air and that both are coming in 2025.
That a MacBook Air refresh is planned for next year isn’t much of a surprise at this point—in reporting that pretty much nailed the details of the first M4 Macs, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has said that the Air, the Mac Studio, and the Mac Pro are all slated for updates throughout 2025.
But a reference in the current release of macOS could point to a launch sooner rather than later; the M4 Mac mini was referenced in a macOS update in mid-September around a month and a half before it was released. The M3 Airs came out in March this year, but Apple has been known to put out new Macs as early as January in recent years.
The M4 isn’t a gigantic update over the M3—we tested its performance in the M4 iMac, though a passively cooled MacBook Air version would likely be a bit slower at heavier workloads—but the fully enabled version does come with two extra CPU cores and some nice quality-of-life updates. Those updates include Thunderbolt 5 ports and support for a total of three displays (two external and the built-in screen), up from a total of two for the M1, M2, and M3 MacBook Airs.
We didn’t get M4 MacBook Airs in November, but Apple did “update” the M2 and M3 versions from 8GB to 16GB of RAM without increasing their prices. The RAM increase will be useful for all kinds of things, though it could be a harbinger of increased memory requirements for upcoming Apple Intelligence features.
Not a surprising generational update, but a lot of progress for just one year.
The new M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pros. Credit: Andrew Cunningham
The new M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pros. Credit: Andrew Cunningham
In some ways, my review of the new MacBook Pros will be a lot like my review of the new iMac. This is the third year and fourth generation of the Apple Silicon-era MacBook Pro design, and outwardly, few things have changed about the new M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max laptops.
Here are the things that are different. Boosted RAM capacities, across the entire lineup but most crucially in the entry-level $1,599 M4 MacBook Pro, make the new laptops a shade cheaper and more versatile than they used to be. The new nano-texture display option, a $150 upgrade on all models, is a lovely matte-textured coating that completely eliminates reflections. There’s a third Thunderbolt port on the baseline M4 model (the M3 model had two), and it can drive up to three displays simultaneously (two external, plus the built-in screen). There’s a new webcam. It looks a little nicer and has a wide-angle lens that can show what’s on your desk instead of your face if you want it to. And there are new chips, which we’ll get to.
That is essentially the end of the list. If you are still using an Intel-era MacBook Pro, I’ll point you to our previous reviews, which mostly celebrate the improvements (more and different kids of ports, larger screens) while picking one or two nits (they are a bit larger and heavier than late-Intel MacBook Pros, and the display notch is an eyesore).
New chips: M4 and M4 Pro
That leaves us with the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max.
We’ve already talked a bunch about the M4 and M4 Pro in our reviews of the new iMac and the new Mac minis, but to recap, the M4 is a solid generational upgrade over the M3, thanks to its two extra efficiency cores on the CPU side. Comparatively, the M4 Pro is a much larger leap over the M3 Pro, mostly because the M3 Pro was such a mild update compared to the M2 Pro.
The M4’s single-core performance is between 14 and 21 percent faster than the M3s in our tests, and tests that use all the CPU cores are usually 20 or 30 percent faster. The GPU is occasionally as much as 33 percent faster than the M3 in our tests, though more often, the improvements are in the single or low double digits.
For the M4 Pro—bearing in mind that we tested the fully enabled version with 14 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores, and not the slightly cut down version sold in less expensive machines—single-core CPU performance is up by around 20-ish percent in our tests, in line with the regular M4’s performance advantage over the regular M3. The huge boost to CPU core count increases multicore performance by between 50 and 60 percent most of the time, a substantial boost that actually allows the M4 Pro to approach the CPU performance of the 2022 M1 Ultra. GPU performance is up by around 33 percent compared to M3 Pro, thanks to the additional GPU cores and memory bandwidth, but it’s still not as fast as any of Apple’s Max or Ultra chips, even the M1-series.
M4 Max
And finally, there’s the M4 Max (again, the fully enabled version, this one with 12 P-cores, 4 E-cores, 40 GPU cores, and 546GB/s of memory bandwidth). Single-core CPU performance is the biggest leap forward, jumping by between 18 and 28 percent in single-threaded benchmarks. Multi-core performance is generally up by between 15 and 20 percent. That’s a more-than-respectable generational leap, but it’s nowhere near what happened for the M4 Pro since both M3 Mac and M4 Max have the same CPU core counts.
The only weird thing we noticed in our testing was an inconsistent performance in our Handbrake video encoding test. Every time we ran it, it reliably took either five minutes and 20 seconds or four minutes and 30 seconds. For the slower result, power usage was also slightly reduced, which suggests to me that some kind of throttling is happening during this workload; we saw roughly these two results over and over across a dozen or so runs, each separated by at least five minutes to allow the Mac to cool back down. High Power mode didn’t make a difference in either direction.
CPU P/E-cores
GPU cores
RAM options
Display support (including internal)
Memory bandwidth
Apple M4 Max (low)
10/4
32
36GB
Up to five
410GB/s
Apple M4 Max (high)
12/4
40
48/64/128GB
Up to five
546GB/s
Apple M3 Max (high)
12/4
40
48/64/128GB
Up to five
409.6GB/s
Apple M2 Max (high)
8/4
38
64/96GB
Up to five
409.6GB/s
We shared our data with Apple and haven’t received a response. Note that we tested the M4 Max in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and we’d expect any kind of throttling behavior to be slightly more noticeable in the 14-inch Pro since it has less room for cooling hardware.
The faster result is more in line with the rest of our multi-core tests for the M4 Max. Even the slower of the two results is faster than the M3 Max, albeit not by much. We also didn’t notice similar behavior for any of the other multi-core tests we ran. It’s worth keeping in mind if you plan to use the MacBook Pro for CPU-heavy, sustained workloads that will run for more than a few minutes at a time.
GPU performance in our tests varies widely compared to the M4 Max, with results ranging from as little as 10 or 15 percent (for 4K and 1440p GFXBench tests—the bigger boost to the 1080p version is coming partially from CPU improvements) to as high as 30 percent for the Cinebench 2024 GPU test. I suspect the benefits will vary depending on how much the apps you’re running benefit from the M4 Max’s improved memory bandwidth.
Power efficiency in the M4 Max isn’t dramatically different from the M3 Max—it’s more efficient by virtue of using roughly the same amount of power as the M3 Max and running a little faster, consuming less energy overall to do the same amount of work.
Credit: Andrew Cunningham
Finally, in a test of High Power mode, we did see some very small differences in the GFXBench scores, though not in other GPU-based tests like Cinebench and Blender or in any CPU-based tests. You might notice slightly better performance in games if you’re running them, but as with the M4 Pro, it doesn’t seem hugely beneficial. This is different from how it’s handled in many Windows PCs, including Snapdragon X Elite PCs with Arm-based chips in them because they do have substantially different performance in high-performance mode relative to the default “balanced” mode.
Nice to see you, yearly upgrade
The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. The nano-texture glass displays eliminate all of the normal glossy-screen reflections and glare. Credit: Andrew Cunningham
The new MacBook Pros are all solid year-over-year upgrades, though they’ll be most interesting to people who bought their last MacBook Pro toward the end of the Intel era sometime in 2019 or 2020. The nano-texture display, extra speed, and extra RAM may be worth a look for owners of the M1 MacBook Pros if you truly need the best performance you can get in a laptop. But I’d still draw a pretty bright line between latter-day Intel Macs (aging, hot, getting toward the end of the line for macOS updates, not getting all the features of current macOS versions anyway) and any kind of Apple Silicon Mac (fully supported with all features, still-current designs, barely three years old at most).
Frankly, the computer that benefits the most is probably the $1,599 entry-level MacBook Pro, which, thanks to the 16GB RAM upgrade and improved multi-monitor support, is a fairly capable professional computer. Of all the places where Apple’s previous 8GB RAM floor felt inappropriate, it was in the M3 MacBook Pro. With the extra ports, high-refresh-rate screen, and nano-texture coating option, it’s a bit easier to articulate the kind of user who that laptop is actually for, separating it a bit from the 15-inch MacBook Air.
The M4 Pro version also deserves a shout-out for its particularly big performance jump compared to the M2 Pro and M3 Pro generations. It’s a little odd to have a MacBook Pro generation where the middle chip is the most impressive of the three, and that’s not to discount how fast the M4 Max is—it’s just the reality of the situation given Apple’s focus on efficiency rather than performance for the M3 Pro.
The good
RAM upgrades across the whole lineup. This particularly benefits the $1,599 M4 MacBook Air, which jumps from 8GB to 16GB
M4 and M4 Max are both respectable generational upgrades and offer substantial performance boosts from Intel or even M1 Macs
M4 Pro is a huge generational leap, as Apple’s M3 Pro used a more conservative design
Nano-texture display coating is very nice and not too expensive relative to the price of the laptops
Better multi-monitor support for M4 version
Other design things—ports, 120 Hz screen, keyboard, and trackpad—are all mostly the same as before and are all very nice
The bad
Occasional evidence of M4 Max performance throttling, though it’s inconsistent, and we only saw it in one of our benchmarks
Need to jump all the way to M4 Max to get the best GPU performance
The ugly
Expensive, especially once you start considering RAM and storage upgrades
Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.
The macOS 15 Sequoia update will inevitably be known as “the AI one” in retrospect, introducing, as it does, the first wave of “Apple Intelligence” features.
That’s funny because none of that stuff is actually ready for the 15.0 release that’s coming out today. A lot of it is coming “later this fall” in the 15.1 update, which Apple has been testing entirely separately from the 15.0 betas for weeks now. Some of it won’t be ready until after that—rumors say image generation won’t be ready until the end of the year—but in any case, none of it is ready for public consumption yet.
But the AI-free 15.0 release does give us a chance to evaluate all of the non-AI additions to macOS this year. Apple Intelligence is sucking up a lot of the media oxygen, but in most other ways, this is a typical 2020s-era macOS release, with one or two headliners, several quality-of-life tweaks, and some sparsely documented under-the-hood stuff that will subtly change how you experience the operating system.
The AI-free version of the operating system is also the one that all users of the remaining Intel Macs will be using, since all of the Apple Intelligence features require Apple Silicon. Most of the Intel Macs that ran last year’s Sonoma release will run Sequoia this year—the first time this has happened since 2019—but the difference between the same macOS version running on different CPUs will be wider than it has been. It’s a clear indicator that the Intel Mac era is drawing to a close, even if support hasn’t totally ended just yet.
Enlarge/ Apple’s external DVD-burning SuperDrive may be fading away.
Apple
Apple has always been eager to dump technologies when the company feels they have outlived their usefulness. The original iMac came without a floppy drive. The iPhone 7 came without a headphone jack. Mid-2010s MacBooks and MacBook Pros came with USB-A ports. And the original 2008 MacBook Air came without a built-in optical drive for CDs and DVDs. By the time 2012 and 2013 Macs rolled around, products from the iMac to the MacBook Pro followed suit.
These exclusions have often made Apple’s devices thinner, lighter, sleeker, or some combination of all three. But they’ve also meant that people who still needed those technologies also needed to deal with dongles, adapters, or clunky external accessories hanging off their devices. For the MacBook Air and other modern Macs that needed to read or burn optical discs, that clunky accessory was Apple’s SuperDrive, an external DVD burner that connected via USB.
After 16 years of availability, it looks like the SuperDrive’s run could be coming to an end. As noticed by MacRumors, the drive’s status has shifted to “sold out” in Apple’s online store, a more definitive and permanent-sounding label than the “currently unavailable” status assigned to some other out-of-stock products.
Though it’s been more than a decade since Apple introduced a new Mac with an optical drive built in, modern versions of macOS still have roughly the same level of support for CD and DVD drives that they did back when optical drives were standard-issue equipment. Plug an optical drive into a modern Mac—whether it’s a SuperDrive or a third-party model—and you’ll still be able to burn and rip audio CDs with the Music app, rip or burn CD and DVD image files with Finder or Disk Utility, or burn files to a disc for archiving with the Finder. Even the venerable DVD Player app is still included, though macOS relies mostly on third-party software to handle Blu-ray discs.
Third-party external DVD drives can be had for as little as $20, and external Blu-ray drives start around $50, making the $79 DVD-only SuperDrive an iffy financial proposition. It was also never updated with a USB-C connector, so connecting it to any modern MacBook requires yet another dongle. But Apple’s drive was unique, as it was a metal, slot-loading optical drive from a major manufacturer; SuperDrive clones on Amazon go for $30 or $40 but come from no-name companies and have mixed customer reviews. For now, if the news of its potential demise suddenly makes you want one, the genuine SuperDrive is still in stock at Amazon and Best Buy, among a few other third-party retailers.
We’ve contacted Apple to check on the status of the SuperDrive and will update this article if we receive a definitive response.
When Apple upgraded its Macs with the M2 chip, some users noticed that storage speeds were actually quite a bit lower than they were in the M1 versions. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and the 512GB M2 MacBook Pro had their storage speeds roughly halved compared to M1 Macs with the same storage capacities.
Teardowns revealed that this was because Apple was using fewer physical flash memory chips to provide the same amount of storage. Modern SSDs achieve their high speeds partly by reading from and writing to multiple NAND flash chips simultaneously, a process called “interleaving.” When there’s only one flash chip to access, speeds go down.
Early teardowns of the M3 MacBook Air suggest that Apple may have reversed course here, at least for some Airs. The Max Tech YouTube channel took a 256GB M3 Air apart, showing a pair of 128GB NAND flash chips rather than the single 256GB chip that the M2 Air used. BlackMagic Disk Speed Test performance increases accordingly; read and write speeds for the 256GB M2 Air come in at around 1,600 MB/s, while the M3 Air has read speeds of roughly 2,900 MB/s and write speeds of about 2,100 MB/s. That’s roughly in line with the M1 Air’s performance.
For the other M3 MacBook Airs, storage speed should be mostly comparable to the M2 versions. Apple sent us the 512GB configuration of the 13- and 15-inch M3 Airs, and storage speeds in the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test were roughly the same as for the 512GB M2 Airs—roughly 3,000 MB/s for both reading and writing.
Though this appears to be good news for M3 Air buyers, it doesn’t guarantee that any given 256GB MacBook Air will come configured this way. Apple uses multiple suppliers for many of the components in its devices, and the company could ship a mix of 128GB and 256GB chips in different 256GB MacBook Airs based on which components are cheaper or more readily available at any given time. (The Max Tech channel speculates that a single 128GB NAND chip costs Apple more than a single 256GB NAND chip, though Max Tech doesn’t cite a source for this, and we just don’t know what prices Apple negotiates with its suppliers for these components.)
Though it’s nice that the M3 Air’s baseline storage speeds are increasing, it’s too bad that a new Air is still offering the same storage speed as the M1 Airs released over three years ago. It’s frustrating that Apple can’t improve storage speeds along with CPU and GPU performance, especially when the standard M.2 SSDs in PCs are getting faster and cost less money than what Apple sells in its Mac lineup.
Enlarge/ Apple’s M3 MacBook Airs put a new chip in 2022’s design.
Andrew Cunningham
Right off the bat, the M3 MacBook Airs aren’t as interesting as the M2 models.
July 2022’s M2 MacBook Air updated the design of the 13-inch laptop for the Apple Silicon era after the M1 Air’s external design played it safe. And the first-ever 15-inch MacBook Air, released over a year later, was an appealing option for people who wanted a larger screen but didn’t need the extra power or cost of a MacBook Pro. Together, they were a comprehensive rethink of Apple’s approach to its mainstream laptops, modeled after the similarly dramatic Apple Silicon MacBook Pro redesigns.
The M3 Airs don’t do any of that. They are laptop designs we’ve already seen, wrapped around a processor we’ve already seen. But they may end up being more important than the M2 Airs because of when they’re being released—as the last of the Intel Macs slowly age and break and Apple winds down software support for them (if not in this year’s macOS release, then almost certainly next year’s). Between the faster chip and a couple of other feature updates, the new machines may also be the first ones that are truly worth a look for M1 Air early adopters who want an upgrade.
Apple left us a scant 48 hours to test and use this laptop, but here’s what we’ve observed so far.
Does the design hold up?
The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs. Same design, but the 15-inch Air has a bigger screen and trackpad and better speakers, while the 13-inch Air is smaller and lighter. Note both the fingerprints on the Midnight finish and how the notch can be either more or less visible based on your settings.
Andrew Cunningham
Air footprints compared: the 13-inch on top of the 15-inch.
Andrew Cunningham
The M1 MacBook Air is still the one I use most days, and anyone coming from a 2018–2020 Intel MacBook Air will be familiar with the design. So the M2/M3-era MacBook Air design is still striking to me, despite being the better part of two years old.
By and large, I think the newer design holds up pretty well; I don’t mind the loss of the taper, even if it makes the laptop look a bit more boxy and less sleek. The full-height function row and tweaked keyboard are both good, and I don’t generally have issues with trackpad palm rejection on either the 13- or 15-inch models. It’s nice to have MagSafe back, though in the end, I almost always charge the Air with one of the many USB-C chargers I have strategically tucked into most rooms in the house.
Specs at a glance: Apple M3 MacBook Air (as reviewed)
Screen
13.6-inch 2560×1664 IPS LCD
15.3-inch 2880×1864
OS
macOS 14.4 Sonoma
CPU
Apple M3 (4 E-cores, 4 P-cores)
RAM
16GB unified memory
GPU
Apple M3 (10 GPU cores)
Storage
512GB soldered SSD
Battery
52.6 WHr
66.5 WHr
Networking
Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.3
Ports
2x Thunderbolt/USB4, MagSafe 3, headphones
Size
11.97×8.46×0.44 inches (304.1×215×113 mm)
13.40×9.35×0.45 inches (340.4×237.6×115 mm)
Weight
2.7 lbs (1.24 kg)
3.3 lbs (1.51 kg)
Warranty
1-year
Price as reviewed
$1,499
$1,699
Other perks
1080p webcam, TouchID
I’m also reminded anew of just how much I like the 15-inch MacBook Air as someone who likes a big screen but doesn’t use a laptop for much gaming or anything heavier than Photoshop or Lightroom (and I generally don’t care that much about high-refresh-rate displays). The combination of size and weight really is close to ideal, and though the 15-inch Air is unmistakably larger and heavier than the 13-inch model, the difference isn’t so large in daily use that I spend a lot of time thinking about it. The improved speaker setup is also nice to have when you’re playing music or using that bigger screen to watch something.
The biggest downside of the design remains the display notch. As we and others have noted multiple times, it’s not that you don’t get used to it, and in typical desktop use (especially in dark mode and with a dark wallpaper), you can often forget it’s there. But in the absence of FaceID or some major other functional addition, it feels like a lot of space to take up for not a lot of user-visible benefit.
Sure, a 1080p webcam instead of a 720p webcam is nice, but I would choose a notch-less screen with more usable space every time if given the choice. (The strips of screen to either side of the notch can only really display the macOS menu bar; go into the Control Center area of the Settings and change “automatically hide and show the Menu Bar’ to “Never” if you don’t want those strips of screen to go totally wasted in full-screen mode).
The Midnight finish as seen on a 15-inch MacBook Air, freshly cleaned and pristine.
Andrew Cunningham
This is what the laptop looked like before I cleaned it. I’ve had it for two days. You’ll definitely still see fingerprints.
Andrew Cunningham
One design change that Apple has highlighted for the M3 Airs is a new coating for the Midnight (read: blue-tinted black) version of the Air that is said to reduce its fingerprint-y-ness. Apple did the same thing for the M3 version of the MacBook Pro last year.
The new finish looks a shade or two lighter than the old Midnight coating and does show fingerprints a bit less. But “less” isn’t “none,” and my Air was immediately, visibly fingerprint-y and skin-oily, both on the lid and in the palm rest area. It remains more noticeable than on either the Starlight finish of the 13-inch M3 Air or the space gray finish on my M1 Air. Choose your color finish accordingly.
Enlarge/ Apple is refreshing the MacBook Air with M3 chips but leaving everything else about the 2022 redesign intact.
Apple
Apple has quietly refreshed its MacBook Air lineup, bringing new chips (and in some cases, new prices) to its most popular laptops. New 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs include Apple’s latest-generation M3 chip, while the old M2 MacBook Air now replaces 2020’s M1 MacBook Air as Apple’s $999 entry-level laptop. The new 13- and 15-inch M3 systems start at $1,099 and $1,299; they can be ordered today and will be released on March 8.
The new Airs use the same design as the M2 versions. Compared to older M1 and late-Intel-era Airs, they have slightly larger displays with a prominent notch, a non-tapered but still thin-and-light chassis, larger trackpads, modestly refined keyboards, and a MagSafe port for charging.
All of the new Airs use the M3, with no options to upgrade to faster or more capable processors (frustratingly, this means the Air is still restricted to just a single external display). The $1,099 13-inch Air does use a slightly cut-down version of the chip with 8 GPU cores instead of 10, with the 10-core GPU available as a $100 upgrade; all 15-inch models use the fully enabled M3 with the 10-core GPU.
Aside from the M3 chip, the new laptops also support Wi-Fi 6E, and hardware-accelerated video decoding for the AV1 video codec. But other specs, including RAM and storage options, stay the same as before. Both laptops start with 8GB and 256GB or RAM and storage, respectively, and top out at 24GB and 2TB. Both Airs’ performance should generally be similar to the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro that starts at $1,599, though the Pro has a cooling fan that may help it run heavy workloads a bit more quickly.
All versions of the M3 include four high-performance CPU cores and four high-efficiency CPU cores, the same as the M1 and M2, though Apple says that chip upgrades have made the M3 “up to 60 percent faster” than the M1. Performance upgrades compared to the M2 will be a bit milder.
The update gets the 13- and 15-inch Airs onto the same update schedule, though the timing is a bit awkward for the barely nine-month-old 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. That’s an even shorter life cycle than we saw with the M2 MacBook Pros that Apple replaced last November after just 11 months. But the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air originally came out in July of 2022 and was well overdue for an upgrade.
The only Macs without an M3 update are Apple’s desktops: the Mac mini, the Mac Studio, and the Mac Pro. Of these, the M2 Mac mini is the oldest, and Apple has already released the M3 and M3 Pro chips that would probably be used in a refresh. It’s possible that Apple is waiting to get the mini and the Studio models in sync with one another to prevent some of the awkward overlap that happened last year when the Mac mini got an M2 upgrade but the Studio still used M1 chips.
