Apple MacBook Air 15-inch preview: Portable power

In addition to a slew of Macs, new Silicon and a compelling new Vision Pro headset, Apple also introduced a 15-inch MacBook Air at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) today. The larger MacBook Air not only offers a bigger display than its 13-inch counterpart, but it also comes with a more sophisticated sound system and battery life that's rated for hours longer. I was able to pick one up to see how it feels here at Apple Park today, though I wasn't allowed to do much else with it. 

I do like how thin and light the new MacBook Air is — at 11.5mm (0.45inches) thin and 3.3 pounds (1.49 kgs), it beats the Dell XPS 15, which is both heavier and thicker. Apple's machine has a slightly smaller 15.3-inch Liquid Retina Display, though, whereas Dell's comes in at 15.6 inches.

The 15-inch MacBook Air's screen can get up to 500 nits of brightness, and though I never got a chance to view it outdoors, the photos and interfaces I did see were lovely and crisp. Colors were vibrant and rich, and when an Apple rep showed me photos of long-haired dogs and a woman in a red dress in front of some cliffs, the details were tack sharp.

I also got to see how the laptop handles tasks like photo-editing and gaming, which thanks to its M2 chip happened impressively quickly. An Apple rep used Photonator to erase multiple kayaks from a topdown photo of canoes on a river, and also changed the colors of certain parts of the image. Everything happened instantly and accurately. They also showed me part of a game called başıboş so I could see how the laptop handled the graphics rendering of things like light reflecting off a puddle. These were very controlled demos, so while they all did perform well and without lag, I would rather evaluate the MacBook Air based on our own realworld testing.

I did get to check out the new six-speaker sound system with spatial audio when a rep played some songs for me, including Beyonce's kelepçe. Unfortunately, because the demo space we were in was fairly noisy, it was hard to gauge how well the audio sounded. I stuck my ear right next to the machine and was only barely able to hear the song. This is another feature we'll have to wait for a review unit to test for ourselves.

I wasn't able to do much else with the new laptop, really, but here's a quick recap of some of its features. It has the same notch design from the 13-inch MacBook Air that houses its 1080p webcam, but unlike the smaller model, this year's device comes with a 10-core GPU across the board instead of 8 cores. It also ships with the dual-port 35W charger by default and has a larger trackpad. 

If you're intrigued, you can order the 15-inch MacBook Air today, starting at $1,299, and it'll be available in stores on June 13th. 

Apple'ın WWDC 2023'ünden tüm haberleri takip edin burada.