Here’s all of the new hardware Apple announced Monday at WWDC
What you need to know about the M2 chip, the redesigned MacBook Air, and the updated 13-inch MacBook Pro. Plus, here’s what didn’t get announced during the keynote.
Monday’s WWDC keynote was chock full of announcements from Apple. There were far more than we can adequately get into in one column, so for today I want to focus on the hardware announcements from this event. Let’s dive in:
M2
Going into this event, my biggest area of uncertainty was whether or not Apple would use this event to unveil the long-awaited Apple silicon Mac Pro, or if it would announce a redesigned MacBook Air. If the former, my expectation was that we wouldn’t see the MacBook Air until the Fall. If the latter, it would mean that the Mac Pro wasn’t coming until significantly later and that it wouldn’t be based around an M1 processor variant. I think we can safely assume that when the Mac Pro arrives, it’ll be running on an M2 variant since Apple on Monday announced the redesigned MacBook Air alongside the all-new M2 chip.
What Apple didn’t announce was a full range of M2 processors. There’s no M2 Pro, M2 Max, or M2 Ultra. Those likely won’t come until late this year, or I think more likely, starting in Spring 2023. The M2 that was announced today is the entry-level chip in the lineup, well-suited to the two new Macs unveiled today, which we’ll get to shortly.
Here’s what Apple says about the new M2 chip:
Built using second-generation 5-nanometer technology, M2 takes the industry-leading performance per watt of M1 even further with an 18 percent faster CPU, a 35 percent more powerful GPU, and a 40 percent faster Neural Engine. It also delivers 50 percent more memory bandwidth compared to M1, and up to 24GB of fast unified memory.
Looking ahead to how M2-powered Macs are configured, whereas the M1 came with either a 7-core GPU or an 8-core GPU, the M2 is configurable with either an 8-core GPU or a 10-core GPU. This makes me very excited to see the more powerful M2 variants down the line as we extrapolate out what their specs will be.
MacBook Air
The final release of the all-new MacBook Air hewed pretty closely to what several months of rumors and leaks had predicted. From a design standpoint, these look a lot like the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. In fact, it essentially looks like a thinner version of the MacBook Pro. Gone is the wedge-shaped chassis that was the hallmark of the MacBook Air for its entire existence. Like the MacBook Pro, the new MacBook Air features the notch and its accompanying thin display bezels. The display size is 13.6-inches. Rather than round up to 14-inches in its marketing text, I think Apple wants to emphasize that this is a smaller display than the 14-inch MacBook Pro. The new MacBook Air starts at $1299, and the previous M1-powered MacBook Air is still available at $999 with the old design. The new MacBook Air comes equipped with a tiny 35W power adapter that can simultaneously charge two devices at once. That packs a lot of portability and practicality.
The biggest thing the months of rumors missed is that the new MacBook Air does not come in all of the iMac’s color options, nor does it feature a white keyboard or white bezels. Instead it comes in four colors: silver, space gray, midnight, and starlight. That’s a bit disappointing to me. The M1 iMac really embraced Apple’s whimsical past, and I was hoping that wasn’t a one-off but rather heralded a new era of fun Mac colors. That appears not to be the case. Another rumor that turned out not to be true, at least for now, was that Apple would launch a 15-inch MacBook Air. Only the 13.6-inch screen size is available at present.
13-inch MacBook Pro
This is the MacBook Pro that everyone forgets is still in the lineup, and Apple’s update today was a minor one. It still retains the old Intel-era design, complete with the otherwise extinct Touch Bar. The only change Apple made was to replace that model’s M1 chip with the new M2 chip. Apple makes a big deal out of the fact that it has an “active cooling system” (read: it has a fan). Yes, that means it can sustain peak performance for much longer than the fan-less MacBook Air, but that’s not going to matter to most users looking for a laptop in this price range. In fact, I think for the overwhelming majority of users, the MacBook Air is the right product. I know the 13-inch MacBook Pro exists because there would otherwise be a hole in Apple’s laptop pricing lineup, but this is a mediocre Mac laptop relative to the other models around it in the lineup, and most people should avoid it in favor of either the new MacBook Air or the 14-inch MacBook Pro, depending on needs and budget.
So that’s the new hardware that Apple did announce at WWDC this week. Here’s what they didn’t announce:
Mac Pro
As I mentioned earlier, the fact that the Mac Pro didn’t get announced at WWDC means we’re not likely to see it until late this year, or more likely sometime in 2023. If the latter winds up being true, Apple will have missed its goal of making a full transition away from Intel within two years of announcing the switch. But let’s wait for the rest of the year to play out before going too far down that narrative path.
VR Headset
In my preview piece on Friday, I expressed my doubt that the long-rumored VR headset would get a release at WWDC. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s still a 2022 product. Otherwise it’ll be the hot rumor going into 2023. I continue to be uninterested in this rumored new product category for Apple.
The bottom line is that the M2 looks very promising, the MacBook Air looks like a great update to Apple’s most popular laptop, and you have my permission to go back to forgetting that the 13-inch MacBook Pro exists. We will now wait with interest to see what the rest of the M2 family of chips will offer.
Barring any major breaking news, my plan is to be back tomorrow with a column on the big productivity leap forward coming this fall to the iPad in iPadOS 16. If you liked what you read, there’s two ways you can help me grow Your Apple Update into the best place for Apple news and commentary: share this post on your social media feed, and subscribe if you’re not already doing so. Thanks so much!