macplusplus

That benchmark only reveals a modest improvement of the Intel chip, not of the MBA as a whole.

Actually it means nothing in terms of machine performance, because the SSD controller is tied to the T2 chip, not Intel and the benchmark cannot take that into account, obviously. Since the SSD controller is driven by the T2 chip the two processors work in tandem, probably in a high level of parallelism.

entropys said:

So if there is a fan, why downgrade th MBA  to a lower powered “Y” series Chip? The integrated 617 GPU seems lower performance than the 620 integrated GPU in the “U” chipped ultrabook products the MBA would be compared with (eg base XPS and Spectre).

The 640 GPU in the nTB 13” MBP differ only by its 64 MB of eDRAM from the 617 GPU, all other specs are identical.

7 W TDP vs. 15 W TDP of the 7th generation. Benchmarks will reveal whether that generation difference may be easily ignored or not. The fan is not a miraculous solution, if it is a solution at all. The whole architecture matters. I believe Apple has sound technical reasons to choose a Y series chip.

Besides, pushing a tightly integrated laptop such as MBP or MBA to its thermal limits is not the best kind of ownership. Would you? I don’t think so.

scartart said:

The new MBA has such a weak CPU compared to the nTB Pro that I don't see it taking too many sales away.

Wait for the benchmarks. The 1.6 GHz vs 2.3 GHz clock difference may be already offset by 7 W vs 15 W TDP difference. 8th gen. vs 7th gen. difference may not be such easily ignored.

There is also the T2 chip. With its lack of T2 security features nTB Pro is not suited to mission critical applications/jobs.

tipoo said:

The 12" particularly seems on death row. Who would pay 100 dollars more, to lose Thunderbolt 3 and a port and have less power? All to save 0.75 pounds. 

The 13" nTB Pro is a bit better positioned with more powerful processing, and I'm not sure if the Air screen has 500 nits and P3 like it? 

That 0.75 pounds is something in an airplane or during a mountain trip. 12” is the most suited Mac to extreme conditions. Besides, it is fanless, so, battery life...

The new MBA doesn’t have 500 nits and P3. But it has T2 chip, that makes it preferable over 13” nTB Pro in mission critical applications/jobs.

rogifan_new said:

titantiger said:

Trying to figure out Apple's pricing strategy here.  The regular 12-inch MacBook is inferior in almost every way to this new MacBook Air.  Only advantages it has are a slightly smaller/thinner/lighter size and that it starts with 256GB SSDs instead of 128.  But everything else...

Smaller screen
One USB-C port vs two
Processor power
Older integrated graphics
Shorter battery life
Lesser Facetime camera

...is inferior to the new MBA

Yet it starts at $1299 vs $1199 for the MBA.  Que?

Because Apple couldn’t be bothered to drop the price. Same as the iPad mini 4 which is more expensive than the new iPad announced back in March.

Why would Apple drop the price of rMB? And of iPad Mini 4? Both offer larger storage than their base models. Besides, what is wrong with an 256 GB NVMExpress SSD? Finding an Apple-grade component is extremely difficult. No favorite DIY marketplace can compete with Apple in terms of purchase power, so forget Apple quality if you're into those realms. Also, rMB has still a value, it is a fanless computer capable of running dual core i5 and i7, offering the power of macOS in an iPad footprint... So, the true answer to your questions is,

Because Apple CAN.. !