When Apple released a slew of MacBook Pros and some of the neglected Mac desktop line on the M4 generation of silicon last fall, one odd exclusion was the MacBook Air. It’s Cupertino’s most popular notebook, by the company’s own metrics, and its continued existence with M2 and M3 versions was a head-scratcher. Well, the itch is finally gone as of today: Apple has announced the MacBook Air with M4 silicon, and the price is surprisingly agreeable. Also, Apple gave the Mac Studio a much-needed spec bump, but that one’s a little weird.
MacBook Air Goes M4
As one might expect with the lightest and cheapest Mac notebook, the M4 in the MacBook Air has been trimmed down slightly, but in a way that most folks probably won’t notice. The full array of four performance CPU cores and six efficiency cores are retained — something that the more expensive M4 iMac sacrificed — and it’s just 20% of the GPU resources that have been cut out. This is likely a good way for Apple to save some binned SoC dice. The 16GB of LPDDR5 memory and 256GB of proprietary SSD storage has been retained from the previous generation.
As has been the case previously, the MacBook Air comes in two flavors – 13-inch and 15-inch, both with 60Hz high-resolution displays with the infuriating notch that has been prevalent on nearly all MacBooks since 2021. The 13-inch model starts at $999, which up until yesterday was the price of the M2 MacBook Air that’s been hanging around since 2022. That model did get a mid-cycle bump to 16GB last fall, but this is a pretty substantial increase in performance, all things considered.
The 15-inch model, which only came with the M3 CPU yesterday, retains its $1,199 starting price, and also gets the full-fat version of the M4 with 10 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores. It also has the same 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
What’s wild to this author is that increasing both MacBook Air models to 512GB of storage is $200. That’s highway robbery, and has been Apple’s SSD upgrading pricing structure since the transition to SSDs a decade-plus ago. At least on the 13-inch MacBook Air, that does net you the full M4 experience with all GPU cores enabled for “free,” so that’s nice. The RAM can be expanded to 24GB for $200 or 32GB for $400, which are also quite pricey.
Memory is LPDDR5, so you can bet it’s soldered. The SSD is either also soldered or at the very least quite proprietary like the Mac mini. So we recommend prospective buyers get what you expect you’ll need at the time of purchase. Still, for $999 the base model rivals the $599 Mac mini in terms of value for the dollar if you can live with the storage and RAM quantities.
These are pretty hard to distinguish from the previous generation unless you go for the new color, Sky Blue. It’s pale and it’s blue, but if you prefer one of the older colors, Apple has you covered. Midnight (black), Silver, and Moonlight are all still available in both 13-inch and 15-inch models.
On the other hand, if you’ve just gotta have a MacBook Air now and need the lowest price possible, Best Buy is blowing out the M2 13-inch MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $799. Aside from the new colors, it’s physically indistinguishable, and the M2 is still a solid daily driver.
Apple Remembers it Still Sells the Mac Studio
Not to be outdone, the Mac Studio would like to remind everyone it still exists, as it’s also gotten a substantial upgrade. It had been previously left to sit in the M2 generation with its M2 Max and M2 Ultra SoC options, but no more. Now the base Mac Studio comes with the M4 Max, which was made available in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBooks Pro last fall. The surprising thing is that there is no M4 Ultra; in fact, the Mac Studio’s dual-CPU option is limited to an M3 Ultra, made from two last-generation M3 Max CPUs. That said, it gives Apple confidence to call this it’s “most powerful Mac ever.”
We start with the base model, which is priced at $1,999. This has the slightly trimmed 14-core version of the M4 Max with a 32-core GPU, 36GB of memory, and 512GB of storage. That SSD is kind of a penny-pincher, because at this price Apple could definitely do better. Upgrading the storage to what we think of as the minimum viable config of 1TB is $200.
Upgrading the CPU has four total stops along the way. The base M4 Max model has 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores with 32 GPU cores. Upgrading to the full M4 Max with 12 performance cores and 40 GPU cores is a $300 upgrade, but it also forces the RAM from 36GB to 48GB for $200 more, so it’s really a $500 upgrade, pushing the total to $2,499. All of these have the same 16-core Neural Engine for Apple Intelligence and other local AI.
The M3 Ultra version has two similar speed grades. The first is a 28-core CPU with dual neural engines and a total of 60 GPU cores, and the second is a 32-core CPU with 80 GPU cores for a whopping $1,500 upgrade fee. And if you want the max 512GB of RAM, you have to pony up for that upgrade as well. Because it’s an M3 rather than an M4, the total capabilities of the NPU are likely not double that of the M4 Max version, but still a slight increase. Both CPU versions come stock with 96GB of memory and 1TB of storage.
Despite the weirdness of two generations of CPUs, and the fact that Thunderbolt 5 support in Macs debuted with the M4 family, the M3 Ultra version of the Mac Studio does not lose out on connectivity. Both models have four Thunderbolt 5 ports on the rear, along with dual USB 3 5Gbps Type-A ports, HDMI 2.1, analog audio out, and 10Gb Ethernet standard. The M4 Max has two 10Gbps USB-C ports on the front where the M3 Ultra gets dual Thunderbolt 5 ports. Both have a front-loading SD card reader as well.
New Macs Up for Preorder
The new MacBook Air and Mac Studio aren’t quite shipping today. Both systems are available for preorder from Apple. However, retailers are already starting to blow out their existing inventory.
But if you just can’t wait for the latest and greatest, head on over to Apple’s storefront and check out the new models. Delivery at the time of publication is currently estimated for March 12-13 depending on delivery or store pickup.