Apple’s MacBook Air gets a radical design and new M2 chip

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—The MacBook Air will be soon get a total design overhaul, Apple announced today. Taking the virtual stage at the company's summer developer conference, Apple representatives unveiled the new laptop, which includes the faster and more efficient M2 chip and design cues from both the 24-inch iMac and the recently redesigned 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro computers.

Before announcing the new 13.6-inch MacBook Air, Apple revealed the 5 nm M2 processor with four high-performance cores, four low-power efficiency cores, and a claimed 18% performance boost over the M1. The processor has up to a 10-core GPU, and Apple claimed up to 35% better graphics performance than the M1.

Performance aside, the 2022 MacBook Air looks notably different than its predecessor. It's thinner and lighter at under 0.5 inch (11.3 mm thin) and 2.7 lbs (1.22 kg). And like the 24-inch iMac, it comes in several colors, albeit more boring shades called silver, space gray, starlight, and midnight. The display is also supposed to have thinner bezels. Further, it abandons the wedge-shaped design that has characterized the MacBook Air for years.