After eight years and countless failed public appearances, Cupertino computing giant Apple has finally announced a successor to the company’s vaunted 2010 MacBook Air.
Using an October 30th, 2018 event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House in New York City, the company unveiled the new MacBook Air with a 13.3-inch Retina display.
Apple says the Retina display in the new MacBook Air has over four million pixels and is capable of delivering 48 percent more colours than the previous Air model. The device’s display borders are also 40 percent narrower than the previous MacBook Air.
For anyone worried about ports, the new MacBook Air mercifully contains a 3.5mm headphone jack and two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports.
Apple’s T2 security chip — the same 64-bit security chip found in the company’s 2017 iMac Pro — is also included in the machine.
The T2 chip makes sure that the Touch ID sensor built right into the device’s keyboard keeps user fingerprints on-machine — rather than in the cloud — while securely booting Apple’s newest laptop during every boot sequence.
On the subject of the keyboard, the new MacBook Air has the company’s third-generation butterfly keyboard — the same one found in the updated 2018 MacBook Pro — as well as keys lit by individual LEDs.
Apple’s newest laptop also includes a Force Touch trackpad that’s 20 percent larger than the diving board trackpad on the original MacBook Air.
The 2010 MacBook Air already had an impressively tactile trackpad, so the updated trackpad will no doubt prove to be yet another success.
The new MacBook Air comes with sterero speakers found on the sides of the keyboard, rather than under it.
Apple says the new MacBook Air’s speakers are 25 percent louder than previous Air models, and also pack in a three-mic array that improves Siri voice recognition and voice chat.
In terms of internal specs, the new MacBook Air is powered by Intel’s eighth-generation Coffee Lake chips and can be customized to include up to 16GB of RAM and an internal SSD of up to 1.5TB.
Apple boasts that the new MacBook Air is capable of delivering up to 12 hours of web browsing and up to 13 hours of iTunes movie playback.
Of course, this wouldn’t be an Apple event if the company didn’t boast about the size of its products.
According to Apple, the company’s latest laptop is not only 10 percent thinner than its predecessor, but also 17 percent smaller in volume compared to the previous MacBook Air. The device also weighs 2.75 pounds.
Apple added that the new MacBook Air is made from 100 percent recycled aluminum, doing away with the need for mining new ore for the device’s casing.
The base model device will come with 128GB of internal store, 8GB of RAM and will be powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor.
According to an October 30th, 2018 Apple media release, the new MacBook Air will come in ‘Gold,’ ‘Space grey’ and ‘Silver.’
The device will start at $1,499 CAD and will be available on November 7th, 2018.
It’s worth noting that the top of the line model — with 1.5TB of internal storage, 16GB of RAM and the same 1.6GHz eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor as the entry-level model — costs $3,239 CAD.
Anyone interested in purchasing a new MacBook Air can do so by going to apple.com/ca/mac.
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