Apple (AAPL) on Monday debuted a host of new Macs including a larger MacBook Air and more powerful desktops as part of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2023 on Monday.
The biggest news comes in the form of Apple's new $1,299 MacBook Air 15-inch. A larger version of the existing MacBook Air 13-inch, Apple says the new MacBook Air is the world's thinnest 15-inch laptop.
Powered by Apple's own M2 chip, the MacBook Air 15-inch features a Liquid Retina display that supports up to 1 billion colors and 500 nits of brightness. The MacBook Air 15-inch also gets a 1080p camera for video calls and a 3 microphone array. As far as speakers, Apple says the MacBook Air gets 6 speakers including force-canceling woofers.
Apple says that the MacBook Air 15-inch gets 18 hours of battery life and packs 2 Thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack.
As far as performance, Apple says the MacBook Air 15-inch is 2 times faster than the best selling Intel laptop and offers 50% better battery life. It's also 15% thinner and a half a pound lighter than those competing devices.
With the new MacBook Air 15-inch, Apple is also lowering the price of the MacBook Air 13-inch to $1,099.
The Mac Studio also gets a new update with the M2 Max chip. The desktop is 25% faster than the M1 Max powered Studio and 4 times faster than the most powerful Intel-based iMac.
In addition to the MacBook Book Air 15-inch and Mac Studio, Apple also debuted a new high-end M2 Ultra chip. Essentially two M2 Max chips married together, Apple says the M2 Ultra is the world's most power chip ever put into a personal computer.
Apple says the M2 Ultra offers 20% faster performance than M1 Ultra and has a 40% faster neural engine. Available in a new Mac Pro, the chip means that video editors can play back 22 streams of 8k pro res video, something Apple says no other computer can do. Overall, Apple says the chip is 6x faster than the most powerful iMac available.
Apple's Mac segment, like the reset of the PC market, is in the midst of a significant slowdown as consumers forgo purchasing new computers after buying them up during the pandemic. According to Gartner, global PC shipments fell 30% in the first quarter of the year to 55.2 million units.
For Apple, that's meant a roughly $3 billion decline in Mac revenue in both the first and second quarters of the year.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.
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