As we know, today on November 10th, 2020, Apple hosted yet another Digital Event, for the launch of their all-new silicon based macs. The All-new Macbook Air is the first mac on the list, and here’s everything you need to know, about the all-new MacBook Air.
Table of Contents
Performance
The MacBook Air, is Apple’s highest-selling mac, in that price segment, and now things have improved greatly. The all-new MacBook Air comes with the latest Apple M1 chipset on-board.
But let’s talk about the benefits of the Apple M1 chip in the Macbook Air. The Macbook Air is now 3.5 times faster in terms of CPU performance, and is almost 5x times faster in terms of graphics performance, thanks to the 8core CPU and GPU on the Apple M1.
Apple claims that intensive tasks like multiple streams of 4K video editing, and workloads in things like Unity, will be quite possible with the new MacBook Air, with the Apple M1 Chip on-board.
The Neural Engine is now 9 times faster, which helps in softwares like Final Cut Pro X which uses Machine Learning for performing various tasks.
The SSD on the Macbook Air is 2 times faster, and is also responsible for the overall performance boost.
Design
Now as you had already guessed, the MacBook Air comes in a very thin and light form factor, and the design is exactly the same as that of the previous generations, with a 13-inch retina display, and USB-C ports, this time with Thunderbolt 4 support, and a Touch-ID sensor on-board.
But there is one very important change internally. This time the MacBook Air, is fan-less, which means it will be silent than ever before.
On the flip-side, I personally feel that this design change will greatly affect the thermals, and though the Mac will be silent all the time, it might not be able to sustain the peak performance for long periods of time.
This time due to the rise in the Work-From-Home culture, Apple has also upgraded the webcam, with features like greater noise reduction, Dynamic Range, improved auto white balance, and ML-enhanced face detection.
Battery
Apple, is so confident about the battery efficiency of the new M1 chipsets, that the MacBook Air, is expected to have 15 hours of Web-Browsing on a full charge, and this is the longest battery life till date on a MacBook Air.
Battery life, is generally a strong point in the MacBook Air lineup, so nothing to worry about here.
Software
With all that, in terms of software, Apple has greatly mentioned how the new Mac OS Big Sur is fully optimized for the Apple M1 chips.
The mac OS Big Sur was the latest mac OS launched by Apple in 2020, and now with the launch of the all-new Apple Silicon-Based Macs, the MacOS Big Sur is of great significance. We have covered the MacOS Big Sur in detail, at the time of launch, check it out here.
Here are some brief points on the macOS Big Sur
- Big Sur is greatly optimized for the Apple M1 SOC
- It is 1.5 times faster in running Java Script
- Smooth System Animations
- Optimization provides faster rendering, with graphics-intensive gameplays
- Highly Secure
- Cross-Platform functionality [ iOS and iPad OS apps can now run on Macs ]
Though not all apps are compatible with apple silicon, developers will soon update their apps, and in the mean time Rosetta 2 can help run intel based apps on apple M1 powered macs
The macOS Big Sur is set to roll-out from this Thursday.
The details of the Mac OS Big Sur are mentioned in the event summary.
Conclusion
To conclude, this time the MacBook Air has received quite a few updates internally, primarily thanks to the Apple M1 chip. For a price of 999$, it is now a much better product overall, than the previous-gen macs. The Only limiting factor according to me is the exclusion of a dedicated fan for the CPU. But let’s see how it affects performance in real-life usage.
You can order the MacBook Air starting Today, and deliveries will start next week.
Read about the whole Apple: One More Thing event here
Read all about the MacBook Pro 2020 here
Read all about the Mac Mini 2020 here
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