New MacBook Air Announced With Magic Keyboard, Up to 2x Faster Performance, and Lower $999 Starting Price

Apple today updated its MacBook Air lineup with faster processors and graphics, a scissor switch Magic Keyboard, a lower starting price of $999, and more.

The new MacBook Air features Intel's latest 10th-generation Core processors, including up to a 1.2GHz quad-core Core i7 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.8GHz, resulting in up to two times faster performance compared to the previous generation. And with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, the new MacBook Air delivers up to 80 percent faster graphics performance.

First introduced on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the new MacBook Air features a Magic Keyboard with a redesigned scissor mechanism that delivers 1mm of key travel, plus a new inverted-"T" arrangement for the arrow keys. Most importantly, this keyboard should prove to be far more reliable than the problematic butterfly keyboard on the previous MacBook Air.

The new MacBook Air has a starting price of $999 with 256GB of storage in the United States, compared to $1,099 with 128GB of storage for the 2019 base model. Education pricing starting at $899 is available to current and newly accepted college students and their parents, as well as faculty, staff and homeschool teachers of all grade levels.

Overall, the new MacBook Air has a similar design as the previous model, including a 13-inch Retina display with True Tone, Touch ID, a Force Touch trackpad, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, stereo speakers, an Apple-designed T2 security chip, and three microphones.

The new MacBook Air can be ordered on Apple.com or in the Apple Store app starting today in most countries. It is available in space gray, silver, or gold.