New M3 MacBook Air Models Expected Around March 2024
Apple plans to refresh the MacBook Air around March 2024, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said today in a report on Apple's future iPad and Mac plans. Updated 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are in the works.
As Apple overhauled the MacBook Air's design in 2022 and then introduced a larger model in 2023, no design changes are planned for the 2024 models. The focus will instead be on new internal hardware, including the updated M3 chip.
Introduced earlier this year in the updated MacBook Pro models, the M3 chip is the first chip built on Apple's 3-nanometer process, bringing performance and efficiency improvements. M3 chip benchmarks suggest that the CPU is up to 21 percent faster than the M2, and the GPU is up to 15 percent faster.
According to Gurman, Apple is developing the Macs alongside macOS 14.3, an update that is expected between the end of January and February, but new hardware may ship around the March timeframe. The new MacBook Air models could be timed to launch alongside updated iPad Pro and iPad Air models, which are coming around March.
There is no word yet on when other Macs might be refreshed. The MacBook Pro and iMac models were updated in October 2023, the Mac mini was last updated in January 2023, and the Mac Studio and Mac Pro updated in June 2023.
In the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023, Apple saw a steep decline in Mac sales. Macs brought in $7.6 billion, down 34 percent from the $11.5 billion that Apple earned in Q4 2022. Apple expects Mac sales to go up following the launch of the October MacBook Pro models, and an early 2024 MacBook Air refresh will also help to drive growth.
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