M2 MacBook Air preorders begin on Friday, July 8

AppleInsider

Apple has announced that the M2 MacBook Air will become available for preorder on July 8, with shipments arriving as soon as July 15.

When Apple unveiled the next-generation MacBook Air, it didn't give an exact release date beyond "July." On Wednesday, however, the company officially announced that preorders will start on Friday. The MacBook Air will then start shipping out to consumers the following Friday, July 15.

The new M2 MacBook Air starts at $1,199 for the base model. With maximum specifications, it tops out at $2,499.

Compared to the previous MacBook Air, the new model has received a complete overhaul with a new boxier design. The display size has also been bumped up, and it includes a notch for the upgraded 1080p FaceTime HD.

The MacBook Air is equipped with the M2 chip, which Apple promises will be much speedier than the M1. It's equipped with a pair of Thunderbolt ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and MagSafe with supported fast charging.

Alongside the new MacBook Air, Apple also unveiled an M2-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro at the same time. That device, however, became available for preorder on June 17.

We are expecting the new MacBook Air to be in short supply, with custom configurations shipping some time after "stock" ones.

Read on AppleInsider

wood1208

Can't wait for people get there hands on and have detailed review.

TheObannonFile

Cannot wait for in depth testing on how the M2
performs without a fan under heavy loads for extended periods of time. Also curious if Apple will use 2x128GB SSD’s on base model, or opt for 1x256GB again.

coming from 16” Intel MBP, this computer is powerful enough for me, but I do occasionally have longer heavy loads going.

can’t wait for the user reviews on this. 

SamHenry

I was waiting for the new MacBook Air for a while, loved it when it was announced. But found a sale on the 14'' MacBook Pro and though I don't need it for heavy stuff, it seemed like the better value. After some reported issues with the M2 chip, I'm glad I went the M1 Pro route. Also, the 14'' screen is a perfect size and the pro motion technology is insane.

JinTech

TheObannonFile said:

Cannot wait for in depth testing on how the M2
performs without a fan under heavy loads for extended periods of time. Also curious if Apple will use 2x128GB SSD’s on base model, or opt for 1x256GB again.

coming from 16” Intel MBP, this computer is powerful enough for me, but I do occasionally have longer heavy loads going.

can’t wait for the user reviews on this. 

See, that's the funny thing about the Air that no one seems to realize, it's not meant for "heavy loads." People forget that this is Apple's most affordable and accessible laptop, meant for word processing, email, internet. Is it capable of doing more? Absolutely, but it's not intended to be able to render and edit Michael Bay's next Transformer film.

raoulduke42

JinTech said:

TheObannonFile said:

Cannot wait for in depth testing on how the M2
performs without a fan under heavy loads for extended periods of time. Also curious if Apple will use 2x128GB SSD’s on base model, or opt for 1x256GB again.

coming from 16” Intel MBP, this computer is powerful enough for me, but I do occasionally have longer heavy loads going.

can’t wait for the user reviews on this. 

See, that's the funny thing about the Air that no one seems to realize, it's not meant for "heavy loads." People forget that this is Apple's most affordable and accessible laptop, meant for word processing, email, internet. Is it capable of doing more? Absolutely, but it's not intended to be able to render and edit Michael Bay's next Transformer film.

Well sure, but I do think Apple is re-positioning the Air to be the new mid-range Mac laptop— just as the iPad Air is their mid-range tablet. I'm hoping they revive the two pound just "MacBook" at the low end. They'd probably have to axe some features in the name of differentiation— like losing Mag-safe and the nice 1080 webcam, and probably the fancy higher powered headphone jack... but if it still had two thunderbolt ports and only weighed two pounds (and was the cheapest  laptop) I'm pretty sure it'd sell like hot cakes. With the new design language Apple could probably squeeze a 12.9" display in the same size chassis as the 2015-2017 retina 12.1" (I'm typing this on a 2015 12.1"). At that display size it could pick up the folks that want to save money but still need a "thirteen" inch display, as well as folks that just want the lightest Mac laptop available. Obviously they need to ship it with the new scissor-keys keyboard, as this butterfly thing is woefully unreliable (although I'm not as mad at it as others... when it's working), but yeah. Print that money Apple!

sflocal

I owned two MBA's over the years, and loved them for their lightness/mobility.  Had to go with the MBP as my needs exceeded the performance of my MBA.  If these new M2 MBA's are what they are cracked-up to be, I may very well go back to one.  Really looking forward to this review.

JinTech

raoulduke42 said:

JinTech said:

TheObannonFile said:

Cannot wait for in depth testing on how the M2
performs without a fan under heavy loads for extended periods of time. Also curious if Apple will use 2x128GB SSD’s on base model, or opt for 1x256GB again.

coming from 16” Intel MBP, this computer is powerful enough for me, but I do occasionally have longer heavy loads going.

can’t wait for the user reviews on this. 

See, that's the funny thing about the Air that no one seems to realize, it's not meant for "heavy loads." People forget that this is Apple's most affordable and accessible laptop, meant for word processing, email, internet. Is it capable of doing more? Absolutely, but it's not intended to be able to render and edit Michael Bay's next Transformer film.

Well sure, but I do think Apple is re-positioning the Air to be the new mid-range Mac laptop— just as the iPad Air is their mid-range tablet. I'm hoping they revive the two pound just "MacBook" at the low end. They'd probably have to axe some features in the name of differentiation— like losing Mag-safe and the nice 1080 webcam, and probably the fancy higher powered headphone jack... but if it still had two thunderbolt ports and only weighed two pounds (and was the cheapest  laptop) I'm pretty sure it'd sell like hot cakes. With the new design language Apple could probably squeeze a 12.9" display in the same size chassis as the 2015-2017 retina 12.1" (I'm typing this on a 2015 12.1"). At that display size it could pick up the folks that want to save money but still need a "thirteen" inch display, as well as folks that just want the lightest Mac laptop available. Obviously they need to ship it with the new scissor-keys keyboard, as this butterfly thing is woefully unreliable (although I'm not as mad at it as others... when it's working), but yeah. Print that money Apple!

Fair enough. Then Max Tech will do a video on that model and push it to its limits and be like “The world is on fire! Apple’s entry level, lowest priced laptop can’t handle multiple streams of 12K RAW in Final Cut Pro while surfing Safari with 200 tabs open! DO NOT BUY!” 😂😂

coolfactor

SamHenry said:

I was waiting for the new MacBook Air for a while, loved it when it was announced. But found a sale on the 14'' MacBook Pro and though I don't need it for heavy stuff, it seemed like the better value. After some reported issues with the M2 chip, I'm glad I went the M1 Pro route. Also, the 14'' screen is a perfect size and the pro motion technology is insane.

By "M2 chip problems", are you referring to the slower SSD speeds? If so, that has nothing to do with the M2. The M2 **is** faster and more capable than the M1, that's a fact.

The slower SSD has to do with another chipset where Apple moved from a dual-chip setup to a single chip setup, thereby reducing the amount of data that can be transferred in parallel. And that issue only exists on the Base configuration of the MacBook Pro, not the higher-end configurations. It was an unfortunate design change, but could be related to the global chip shortages affecting every industry.

Despite being slower, the overall performance is still exceptional when compared to the alternative laptops on the market. In this case, slower is just relative.

The jury is still out on whether the M2 MacBook Air also suffers from this design change. We won't know until Friday.

charlesn

TheObannonFile said:

Cannot wait for in depth testing on how the M2
performs without a fan under heavy loads for extended periods of time. Also curious if Apple will use 2x128GB SSD’s on base model, or opt for 1x256GB again.

coming from 16” Intel MBP, this computer is powerful enough for me, but I do occasionally have longer heavy loads going.

can’t wait for the user reviews on this. 

Yes! And I can't wait to see how my hammer performs when I use it to paint my apartment. Same logic. Using the wrong tool for a job and finding it doesn't perform well doesn't mean it's a deficient tool. Honestly, do you really need a review to tell you what happens when the fanless M2 Air is run under heavy loads for extended periods of time, a use case for which it isn't designed? The Air has always been Apple's entry level laptop -- and it was priced cheaper than the Macbook 12" when that was in production. There is zero indication that any cheaper laptop is coming from Apple, so it's not Apple's "midlevel" laptop.