Today at WWDC, Apple updated the MacBook Air to give it a boost. VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller insisted on one of its main feature, its battery. The 13-inch now has 12 hours of battery life while the 11-inch is supposed to last 9 hours.
“You can watch almost the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy,” Schiller said.
The MacBook Air now boasts a new Intel Haswell CPU, a 40 percent faster GPU and twice the “GPU execution units.” The entry 11-inch and 13-inch models have the same $999 and $1,199 price tags. The faster $1,399 13-inch model now costs $1,299. Apple hasn’t specified which CPU will ship with those new MacBook Airs yet. It’s available today, so Apple’s website should have this information after the keynote.
Update: Apple’s website is now up to date, and sadly the new MacBook Air now comes with a Core i5 1.3 GHz across the board. Haswell CPUs are more efficient, especially for graphics performances. A dedicated GPU is now almost redundant for casual web surfing and office usage. It could explain the great battery performance while we await some benchmarks.
The flash memory was updated as well to be faster. The MacBook Air is compatible with the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. As a reminder, Apple’s “netbook” latest update was unveiled at last year’s WWDC.
