Apple announced an unexpected change to the current M2 and M3 MacBook Air today: more memory. Alongside the overarching bump to RAM in base configurations of the M4 iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro, Apple also announced that the 8GB versions of the M2 and M3 MacBook Air have also been removed from the lineup.
Starting today, the M2 MacBook Air and M3 MacBook Air will both have 16GB as the starting configuration. But here’s the kicker: Apple isn’t raising prices. That means if you’d spent $1,199 on an M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM yesterday, you’d be getting it today for just $999. As much as that’ll sting for recent buyers, it’s great news for people buying MacBook Airs this holiday season.
Apple was criticized heavily for the way it sold the M3 MacBook Pro with a starting configuration of only 8GB of RAM last year. Despite its defense at the time, that decision has been reversed by this week’s M4 announcements. But no one, myself included, thought Apple would reach back into its own lineup to reverse its position.
It’s also peculiar timing for the product itself. It’s highly rumored that the MacBook Air will receive the M4 upgrade early next year, with some placing it as early as in February. That means Apple could have easily waited a few months and made this change at a more natural time for the product.
One possible reason is to sweeten the deal on the MacBook Air heading into the holiday shopping season. The MacBook Air is Apple’s bestselling laptop, and if everyone is being told to wait until next year to buy one, that could to hurt sales. But that’s just a theory. Whatever the reason, it seems that Apple was intent on addressing this complaint once and for all.
There’s one other bit of possible good news with the announcement. Although Apple will no longer sell the 8GB MacBook Air, it’s possible that it will remain around in third-party retailers — and hopefully at a reduced price. Before the announcement, you could already find the starting M2 MacBook Air for Buy at Best Buy , so here’s to hoping we see those prices drop even further in the near future.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.