Forget the new MacBook Pro, Apple has something much better

Updated June 11th: Article was originally published on June 10th.

as expected, apple released New MacBook Air Then Worldwide Developers Conference This month. As expected, it’s the first consumer-focused MacBook to ship with both Apple Silicon and a 15-inch display. And as expected, it probably isn’t as fresh as you might expect, given the high profile event in which it was launched.

But it’s more than enough to make most consumers forget about the MacBook Pro.

Update: Sunday, June 11: For all Apple releasing the new MacBook Air, there’s very little new about the consumer laptop. The big screen will sell to those who need a pure productivity upgrade, but for others who realize this is last year’s model released this year, they’ll want more. The good news is that Apple already has a plan for it with the M3 chipset.

The bad news is we won’t see her for a while, Mark Gurman points out that a true spec upgrade for the MacBook Air family won’t happen until 2024.

As it stands, any MacBook Air will come with the 5nm-based M2 chipset announced in June 2022. This was widely seen as an upgraded M1 chip. The next big step will be the M3 chipset that will use a 3nm process, which should allow for more performance, longer battery life, and a real upgrade for the MacBook Air platform.

But for some, a larger screen is all the excuse they need to invest in a macOS laptop today.

The new MacBook Air has one distinct feature over the rest of the MacBook Air family, and that is its 15.3-inch LED display/IPS screen. Everything else in the package is exactly the same as the 13.6-inch MacBook Air that launched at WWDC 2022. Apple arguably held back the model with a larger screen for twelve months so it could show some artificial momentum with the Air family.

Awkward timing of its release aside, the MacBook Air removes one of the biggest arguments for consumers to skip the MacBook Air and not sell the MacBook Pro, which is the screen size. The two affordable Apple MacBook Pro models feature 14-inch and 16-inch displays, which offer more digital real estate than the MacBook Air family (at least before WWDC). It also delivers a ridiculous power boost with the M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets.

This power costs money. Like countless Macs throughout history, you had to buy a machine with higher specs if you wanted a bigger screen.

The 15-inch MacBook Air breaks out of this style. It offers the same specs as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and while I would argue that it’s disappointing to launch the same exact laptop one year after its smaller version, it makes a clear value proposition. You can buy the 13-inch MacBook Air for a newly reduced price of $1,099, or an extra $200 and get the 15-inch model.

Thanks to Apple Silicon’s flexibility, even the most basic M2 chips offer more than enough performance for the average consumer, and there’s certainly enough for content creation and software development at a good level. Those who need big levels of power and performance have two affordable MacBook Pro models, which look more like portable workstations than high-end laptops day in and day out.

The MacBook Pro used to be the only option for those who needed a larger macOS laptop. After three years of debating Apple Silicon’s promise to change the laptop market, Apple has finally decreed that you don’t need to buy a more powerful laptop to have a bigger screen.

It took a long time to get to this point, but we are here now.

Now read the latest Mac, iPhone, and WWDC news in this week’s Apple Loop weekly column…

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