Apple Discusses 15-Inch MacBook Air's Design in New Interview

Apple's VP of hardware engineering Kate Bergeron and marketing employee Laura Metz recently spoke with Tom's Guide's Mark Spoonauer about the design of the new 15-inch MacBook Air, including its larger display and two additional speakers.

15 inch MacBook Air hands on
Bergeron said the 15-inch MacBook Air having the same battery life as the 13-inch model is the result of "thermal control loops and software optimizations."

There's definitely thermal control loops and software optimizations that we use.

The workloads for a typical MacBook Air owner are fairly bursty, meaning they may do something for a few minutes and then walk away from their computer and either have a background process running that's pretty light or just doing nothing at all. And so we can go in and tweak the levers in the silicon and software to be able to take advantage of these gaps in time and really take the power down to the most minimal level.

When asked if Apple considered adding an additional USB-C port or SD card slot to the 15-inch MacBook Air, Metz said Apple believes the existing port selection is "very complimentary to the thin and light design of the product."

There aren't too many particularly revealing comments shared in the interview, but it is a worthwhile read for those interested in Apple's design considerations for the 15-inch MacBook Air. The laptop launched today following pre-orders last week.

Related Roundup: MacBook Air
Related Forum: MacBook Air

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Top Rated Comments

Freida Avatar
27 months ago
Its incredible how much crap they can talk about when the product is literally identical except its just a bit bigger.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DEMinSoCAL Avatar
27 months ago
Interview starts 10:00AM...

Interviewer: What can you tell me about the new, exciting MacBook Air 15?
Bergeron: We put in a 15" LCD and we had tons of extra speakers in China so we added 2 to help use them up.
Interviewer: Any other innovations or new features in the MacBook Air 15 not in the 13" Air?
Bergeron: Nope.

Interview ends 10:01AM.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jmh600cbr Avatar
27 months ago
Same same but bigger.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ignatius345 Avatar
27 months ago
I don't mind having just the two USB-C ports, but I really do hate that everything is on one side. It's very annoying to use your Mac with the cord awkwardly jammed in from the wrong side because a wall outlet is on your right.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
NT1440 Avatar
27 months ago
Good lord. The amount of the hate from this forum when just a year ago people were clamoring for the 13” Air to be 15”. Those people got exactly what they wanted, but everyone here has an axe to grind apparently.

Is the internet now just a grievance bubble?
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Motawa Avatar
27 months ago
what new design?
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)