2022 MacBook Air tidbits include display limits, Thunderbolt specifications, BTO options, and other details.
At Apple's annual developer's conference, WWDC, on Monday, the company unveiled a new MacBook Air model.
The MacBook Air is Apple's most popular notebook, and the new design is expected to improve Mac sales in the coming quarters. According to Canalys, the Mac product line has been expanding substantially in recent years, with shipments increasing by nearly 28 percent in 2021, compared to just under 15 percent for the total market.
Overall, Apple's Mac line has witnessed increasing sales, owing to the pandemic forcing people to buy laptops to work or go to school from home, as well as Apple's decision to use its own CPUs rather than Intel's, which has considerably extended battery life.
The new MacBook Air is still a slim and light laptop, weighing in at 2.7 pounds, but it has a new style that includes a continuous thickness rather than the tapering wedge form that has been popular in previous years.
The new MacBook Air is out, and it features a brand-new look, an M2 processor on the inside, and a lot more. Aside from the big picture improvements Apple announced on stage at WWDC, there are a few more details about the 2022 MacBook Air worth noticing. As we round them up, keep an eye on the list below.
External displays are supported.
One of the MacBook Air's main drawbacks with the original M1 processor is that it can only power one external monitor. Unfortunately, the new M2-powered MacBook Air suffers from the same problem.
According to Apple, the new MacBook Air can handle one external display with a resolution of up to 6K at 60Hz. This display and the built-in MacBook Air display can both be powered at the same time, so you can technically have two active screens – but only one of them can be an external monitor.
Slimmer than the new iPhone.
The new MacBook Air is 11.3 mm thin and weighs 2.7 pounds. This implies it is both slimmer and lighter than the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G. The original iPhone had a thickness of 11.6mm, whereas the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS had a thickness of 12.3mm.
Thunderbolt 3
The new MacBook Air, unlike the current MacBook Pro and Mac Studio devices, uses Thunderbolt 3 rather than Thunderbolt 4.
The two Thunderbolt 3 ports support the following devices:
DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3 charging (up to 40Gb/s)
USB 4 (up to 40 gigabits per second)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 gigabits per second)
Color-matched MagSafe chargers
The new MacBook Air comes with a MagSafe cable that matches the color of the MacBook Air, unlike the cords that came with the MacBook Pro. For example, if you purchase a new MacBook Air in the midnight color, the MagSafe cable will be the same color.
The cables have also appeared on Apple's online store; however, they are currently out of stock. The cables are available for $49 and are compatible with both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. This implies that owners of MacBook Pros will be able to get one of these cords to match their machine if they so want.
Configuration pricing
Finally, some fresh information about the new MacBook Air's cost. The 2022 MacBook Air has a starting price of $1,199. You receive the following features with this entry-level configuration:
256GB SSD
In the meantime, if you upgrade to the $1,499 configuration, you'll get the following:
CPU with 8 cores
A GPU with 10 cores
8GB of Unified Memory
512 GB of SSD storage.
Following that, Apple offers a number of different MacBook Air upgrades. Upgrades to 16GB of unified memory for $200 or 24GB of unified memory for $400 are available. You can increase your storage capacity from 512GB to 1 TB for $200 or 2 TB for $600.
M2 chip development
The M1's direct successor was finally shown exactly two years after Apple initially announced it. During Apple's annual developer conference, executives and product managers revealed details of the new processor, which has been named the M2.
The M2 is an enhancement over the M1, although it's not designed to compete with the MacBook Pro and Mac Studio's higher-end M1 Pro, M1 Max, or M1 Ultra. The M2 Pro, Max, and Ultra models feature more CPU and GPU cores, but the M2's performance gains will still be outpaced.
The M2 contains eight CPU cores; four high-performance cores and four low-power efficiency cores, the same as its predecessor. Apple claims that it will be 18% quicker than the M1's CPU. It also increases the number of GPU cores from eight to ten, resulting in a 35% performance boost. However, as with the M1, we may see a variety of M2 chip variants with varying numbers of GPU cores.
Apple claims that the M2 has 20 billion transistors, a 25% increase over the M1, and has a memory bandwidth of 100 GB/s, which should help with integrated GPU performance, among other things. The processor is still made using the same 5nm manufacturing process as the M1. The CPU will also support up to 24GB of RAM, compared to 16GB on the M1.
The M2 also has a 40% faster Neural Engine than the M1, hardware decoding support for H.264 and HEVC at resolutions up to 8K, a ProRes video engine that can play multiple 4K and 8K video streams at the same time, and an improved image signal processor (ISP) that should improve webcam noise reduction. However, like the M1, the M2 can only manage two displays at a time: the laptop's internal screen and an up-to-6K external monitor if it's utilized in a laptop. You'll still need a Pro, Max, or Ultra SoC if you wish to drive additional displays.
An all-new redesigned MacBook Air, as well as a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with the same design as the M1 version, will be the first Macs to debut with the M2 CPU (and the last few Intel MacBook Pros, to boot).
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