Apple made a surprise announcement, introducing updated M3 MacBook Air 13-inch and 15-inch laptops. The M2 13-inch model is now Apple’s entry-level offering.
With surprisingly little fanfare — no spring event this time — Apple has dropped an update to the MacBook Air a bit sooner than expected. The incredibly thin MacBook Air 13- and 15-inch models both received updates to the Apple Silicon M3 chipsets, but that’s not all.
There’s one surprising new feature in the mix that could make a big difference in purchasing decisions: support for multiple monitors with the display closed. As this was the major complaint of the previous MacBook Air, this change is a pretty big deal. While it still supports only a total of two screens, it’s a positive change for those that want to connect to two large, external monitors for work.
Meanwhile, the now-relegated M2 MacBook Air M2 13-inch machine takes over Apple’s entry-level option at a competitive $999, which is a decrease of $100.A modest upgrade in CPU and AI performance
The M3 chipset offers the usual speed bumps ushered in by a new generation of processors. According to Apple, the 13-inch M3 is up to 35% faster than the older M1 model when working in Excel. It’s up to 60% faster in Apple’s Final Cut Pro. And Photomator’s Super Resolution function is up to 40% faster in using AI to enhance an image.
That’s thanks to Apple’s move to a 3nm process that increases performance while improving efficiency. Each M3 performance core — the core counts stay the same between the M2 and M3 — is 30% faster than M1 cores and 15% faster than those in the M2. The M3 comes in an 8-core CPU (four performance and four efficiency) and 8-core GPU version and an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU version.
