Apple today announced power and performance updates to its MacBook Air laptops, and also gave developers a sneak peek of an updated Mac Pro desktop PC. The updated computers were unveiled by Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller during a keynote address at the company’s 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The MacBook Air updates include much-improved battery life, Intel’s fourth-generation Core i5 and i7 processors dubbed Haswell, a faster version of Wi-Fi known was 802.11ac, and flash storage that Apple claims is up to 45 percent faster than the previous generation. Apple didn’t mention a Retina MacBook Air, as has been speculated.
The battery life improvements are relatively huge: the 11-inch MacBook Air now has nine hours of battery life, up from five in the previous generation, and the 13-incher now lasts 12 hours, up from seven. Apple attributes the better battery life to Intel’s more power-efficient Haswell processors.
MacBook Air ships with OS X Mountain Lion, upgradeable to OS X Mavericks when it’s released this fall. Notable OS features include Messages, Notification Center, system wide Sharing, Air Play Mirroring, Dictation, Game Center and Gatekeeper. Each notebook also has dual microphones, a FaceTime HD camera, a Thunderbolt port, and two USB 3.0 ports. Apple says the notebooks will be assembled in the U.S.
CNET was at WWDC and to get a hands-on video of the new MacBook Air, and Engadget has also posted several photos some CPU clocking numbers here.
The new MacBook Air notebooks are available today from Apple’s online store and Apple retailers. The 11-inch MacBook Air offers a 1.3 GHZ processor, with 4GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash storage for $999, or 256 GB of storage for $1,199. The 13-inch MacBook Air offers a 1.3 GHz processor, with GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash storage for $1,099, or 256 GB of flash storage for $1,299. Other configuration options are also available.
The new Mac Pro packs Intel’s new Xeon processor and comes standard with dual AMD workstation discrete graphics processors — in a box that Apple says is just one eighth the volume of the earlier model. The new Mac Pro will also support 4K, ultra high-definition displays. Apple plans to start selling it later this year.
