Apple finally refreshes the MacBook Air line with new models announced yesterday

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The MacBook Air was one of the first laptops that was crazy thin but very useable and ultra-portable. While many people have loved this laptop, the problem has been, Apple just has not refreshed it. Apple has finally announced a refresh for the MacBook Air and here are the full details.

The all-new MacBook Air with Retina display was announced and it’s the same but different. It’s just as slim and thin as its predecessors but with better specs. The new Retina display is 13.3″ with slimmer bezels and the display has over 4 million pixels. Apple says the display also has 48% more color than previous displays.

MacBook Air
The 3rd Gen Butterfly keyboard.

MacBook Air Retina also has Touch ID which means you can unlock your MacBook Air with your fingerprint. The Touch ID sensor is on the keyboard and comes with the T2 security chip. The T2 is supposedly one of the most secure chips for use with fingerprint sensors.

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MacBook Air now includes Touch ID — a fingerprint sensor built right into the keyboard — which allows you to conveniently and instantly unlock your MacBook Air, authenticate your identity, and make fast, simple and secure purchases using Apple Pay. To support Touch ID, MacBook Air comes with the Apple T2 Security Chip, which makes your notebook far more secure. The T2’s Secure Enclave protects Touch ID information and also ensures that software loaded during the boot process has not been tampered with. The T2 also features an SSD controller with on-the-fly data encryption for everything stored on the SSD. These allow MacBook Air to offer the most secure boot process and most secure storage of any notebook. T2 also features an always-on processor that enables “Hey Siri,” which lets you make requests to Siri with just your voice for things like finding files or opening an app.

The new MacBook Air also comes with Apple’s 3rd Generation Butterfly keyboard. The new Butterfly keyboard has been a sore spot for some MacBook users as the first few generations just didn’t match up to previous Mac keyboards. It remains to be seen if Apple’s 3rd generation attempt can come close to its pre-Butterfly brethren. The trackpad is also upgraded to the newer and wider Force Touch version.

As for performance, the Air features the 8th generation Intel Core i5 with integrated Intel UHD Graphics and memory up to 16GB. Of course, there are SSDs in this machine, given how thin it is. You can get an SSD that’s up to 1.5TB in capacity. The new Air also sports Thunderbolt 3 but only comes with two ports. So you will be living the dongle life if you need more ports or legacy ports.

The price has also gone up. The new MacBook Air now starts at $1199USD instead of the previous $999USD. That was a bit disappointing to many but this is Apple after all. You can order yours on Apple’s website as it is available now.

What do you think of the new MacBook Air? Do you think Apple did enough to justify the price hike? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

Last Updated on February 3, 2021.

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