If you’re due for a new laptop, today’s news could make you very happy. On the other hand, if you recently bought a MacBook Air, you have reason to be fairly pissed. Apple announced today a simultaneous upgrade and price cut for its entire MacBook Air line of thin laptops, making its cheapest offering now start at $899.
The MacBook Air’s new fourth generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors bring a 100MHz speed boost and up to 12 hours of iTunes movie playback to the 13-inch model and nine hours to the 11-inch model, a two-hour upgrade over the previous models.
The updated MacBook Air is available online and in Apple stores starting today, with the base 11-inch model retailing for $899 (compared to $999 previously) and the base 13-inch model retailing for $999 (compared to $1,099 previously), both with 128GB of flash storage and 4GB of memory. The prices of models with increased storage have each also been slashed by $100.
While today’s update seems minor, it’s rumored that Apple will release a 12-inch Retina display MacBook Air model later this year, according to AppleInsider. If this is true, Apple’s price cut to the existing MacBook Air models makes sense – the new Retina display model can take over the former, higher price point.
What do you think of the MacBook Air?