It’s almost exactly two years since Apple made the far-reaching announcement that it was saying goodbye to Intel and trying its luck in in-house chips from now on. After the great success of chip development for the iPhone and iPad, Apple saw the time to change over to the Mac as well. It was still a few months before the first market-ready devices (MacBook Air, Mac mini M1, MacBook Pro 13″ M1), but when they were first able to prove themselves in everyday use, the industry was enthusiastic. The regular M1 was followed by the variants M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra Now Apple has unveiled the first major overhaul that goes beyond just increasing the core count The M2 debuted at WWDC and makes its debut again in MacBook Air – as Apple says,
Details on the M2 chip: Increased performance
It’s not just the performance per core that sets the M2 apart from the M1, but also the significantly increased graphics performance. It has already been said before that Apple is starting exactly at this point – including with additional cores. Apple says that the M2 offers 18 percent more CPU power, four performance and four efficiency cores are still used – but with a faster memory connection. In the graphics area, however, it is an increase of 35 percent, because ten GPU cores are now beating in the system chip. The maximum RAM configuration is 24 GB, previously it was only 16 GB.
The design of the new MacBook Air
While Apple left the case design of the first M1 Macs completely the same, the new MacBook Air also has a clearly visible visual makeover. The design language is based on the MacBook Pro presented at the end of 2021, but appears much more discreet and slimmer. Compared to the previous MacBook Air, the device has become even thinner. The display is slightly larger (13.6″ instead of 13.3″), but there is also a notch. Four speakers provide sound, plus there are three microphones and support for spatial audio. 2x Thunderbolt as well as MagSafe are available for connections. Fast charging is also possible. In terms of battery life, Apple documents up to 20 hours of video playback.
MacBook Pro 13″ with M2 chip
Unlike the MacBook Air, Apple hasn’t changed the design fundamentally. Instead, you get the well-known case, and there’s still the Touch Bar. In view of the active cooling, the computing power is initially identical to the MacBook Air However, after intensive use, the Air has to throttle its performance a bit in contrast to the Pro.
Price and availability
The delivery of the updated notebooks should start “in the coming month”. However, it will be interesting to see how the delivery times develop – the market situation has only eased slightly and Quanta’s production facilities are said to be still not running at full capacity. The MacBook Air costs at least $1199 (€1499) and the MacBook Pro at least $1299 (€1599). Incidentally, the MacBook Air M1 remains in the range for 999 dollars (1199 euros).