After an unusually lengthy lag between upgrades, Apple has finally unveiled an all-new redesigned Apple MacBook Air, with a sharper, higher resolution 13.3-inch Retina Display offering four times the resolution as the screen on its last Air edition, packed in an all-recycled aluminum enclosure that's 17 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter.
And for the fashion-conscious, the new Air is available in a new gold finish in addition to the usual space gray and silver. It's available for pre-order today in 128GB and 256GB versions for $1,199 and $1,399, respectively, physically available on Nov. 7. A silver version of the existing Air remains for sale, priced at $999. No update to the smaller MacBook was introduced.
While arguably the world's most popular laptop, the Air has suffered from a lower-resolution display compared to its Windows counterparts. The new HD Retina display displays 4 million pixels (2560 x 1600), four times the resolution of the previous Air, which results in 227 dots-per-inch density for much sharper text and images, and 48 percent more color, according to Apple.
Air also features 50 percent narrower bezels, which allows the entire PC to shrink to just 11.97 inches wide, 8.36 inches deep and its wedge from .16 to .61 inches thin, weighing just 2.75 pounds.
Other improvements include a more stable backlit butterfly keyboard, Touch ID security like the old iPhone Home button, a 20 percent larger touchpad, 25 percent louder stereo speakers, a three-mic array so Siri and your friends/family/co-workers over FaceTime can hear you more clearly, two dual-purpose USB-C jacks for charging and connectivity, and an "all-day" 12-hour web-browsing battery.
Air's front-facing FaceTime camera remains at 720p, but the latest Mac OS X Mojave operating system (v14.x) supports the new Group FaceTime. Group FaceTime also has been added to the new iOS 12.1 for iPhone and iPad, available today.
Inside, the new Airs run on Intel's latest 8th generation processors, 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, together with 8GB of RAM expandable to 16GB, and flash memory that can be expanded to 512GB or 1.5TB of user storage.
[Image credit: Apple]
