Well, well, well. What a WWDC that was yesterday! While the revolutionary Vision Pro was the showstopper, the all-new 15-inch MacBook Air, the power-packed Mac Studio, and the haute couture Mac Pro added such oomph to the Silicon Valley ramp that I couldn’t help but be awestruck. And of course, I gotta tell you all about them. So here we go!
The Fifteenth Air Dimension
Just when you thought your MacBook Air couldn’t get any better, Apple whipped up the 15-inch MacBook Air. Now, this baby still has a lot in common with its sibling – the 13-inch MacBook Air. You have your M2 chip, Liquid Retina with Wide Color (P3) & True Tone display, Two Thunderbolt ports, 1080p FaceTime HD camera, and so on.
The battery is bigger, obviously, to give us the same running hours. The screen resolution is pumped up too. And to add more jazz, this new one’s got a six-speaker sound system. But, but. Get this – Apple claims that this new kid in the block is the world’s lightest 15-inch laptop, barely tipping the scales at just 1.4 kgs. And boi, it’s thin. Like eat-a-slice-of-cheese-when-I-am-hungry thin. I mean, an 11.5 mm laptop is just ufff!
The 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip is listed at a starting price of ₹134900, but if you are a student, you might be able to grab it at a lower price. Come June 13, and you can get yours.
Tiny but Mighty Mac Studio
Elsewhere in Mac-land, where designers delve, Apple carried forward a ‘beauty on the inside’ motto. Again, the new Mac Studio looks quite the same as its predecessor – cute, little, tiny. But its inner power is humongous (courtesy: just unveiled M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips). The M2 Max chipset is 50% faster than its previous generation, and M2 Ultra’s performance will be twice as good. Pair either of them with a nice screen and keyboard, and you have a workstation PC that doesn’t disappoint.
The souped-up version knocks the socks off the older Mac Studio in more ways than you can imagine. For one, Octane’s faster – your projects will render three times faster with M2 Max! Multiply that by two if you have an M2 Ultra machine. Second, it can handle six Pro Display XDRs (say thanks, multitaskers). Then, there’s the advanced support for high-impedance headphones, higher unified memory, and twelve high-performance ports. It’s like the Mac Studio 2022 went into a cocoon and emerged as a dazzling, more powerful Mac Studio 2023 butterfly.
Mac Studio (M2 Max) starts at ₹209900. Mac Studio (M2 Ultra) is twice that at ₹419900. Both versions will hit the stores on June 13.
The Big Mac, The Stronger Mac
Alright! If the latest MacBook Air or Mac Studio isn’t heavy-duty enough for you, Mac Pro‘s gotta be it. To begin, it has the big guns of Apple’s chip arsenal, M2 Ultra, of course. Powered by the ‘monster of a chip’ (as Apple calls it), this one is three times faster than its older, Intel-based cousin. And it’s the first one to bring the versatility of PCIe expansion to Apple Silicon. What does that mean? Mac Pro completes the company’s great migration to Apple Silicon.
Now, let’s talk power – a 24-core CPU and up to 76-core GPU says it all. Plus, double the memory and SSD storage. If you feel like taking it to the next level, you can configure your Mac Pro with a whopping 192GB of memory with 800 GB of unified memory bandwidth. And if you want to fire big shots, Mac Pro’s talking seven Afterburner cards’ performance. In case that wasn’t enough, twenty-two 8K ProRes video streams. For the pros who can’t do without customization – seven PCIe expansion slots and six open ones supporting gen 4 (that’s 2x faster, by the way). It seems Mac Pro will be able to take on workloads like no other systems could, and fast!
However, the Big Mac will cost you the big bucks. Starts at ₹729900. Also, available from Tuesday, June 13.
Also Read:
Meet Vision Pro: Apple’s ‘Spatial Computer’ That Everyone Will Love But Not Buy (Yet)
A Little From Here, A Little From There: The iOS 17 Story
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