WWDC 2022: Apple ‘All New’ MacBook Air, MacBook Pro

Apple has unveiled a brace of new laptops at its annual developer’s conference, WWDC 2022 on Tuesday, that runs on the newly announced M2 processor.

The two new laptops featuring the M2 includes the “all new” MacBook Air, as well as the updated MacBook Pro.

Apple has used its developer conference to also unveil the new operating system for its iPhone and iPad portfolio, as well as other changes and updates including to Apple CarPlay and macOS Ventura for Macs.

MacBook Air with M2

Apple says the new MacBook Air that is “supercharged” with the 8-core M2 CPU, has been “completely redesigned,” while the 13-inch MacBook Pro has been “updated”.

The new thin design MacBook Air features a larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display which has been expanded closer to the sides and up around the camera to make room for the menu bar.

The Air also comes with a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, four-speaker sound system, up to 18 hours of battery life, and MagSafe charging.

It is now available in four finishes, namely silver, space grey, midnight, and starlight.

Apple meanwhile said the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the world’s second best-selling laptop, and with the M2 offers up to 24GB of unified memory, ProRes acceleration, and up to 20 hours of battery life,2 all in a compact design.

MacBook Air measures just 11.3 mm thin and is only 2.7 pounds, and features a durable, all-aluminium unibody enclosure.

“The new MacBook Air and updated 13-inch MacBook Pro join the even more powerful 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max to round out the strongest lineup of Mac notebooks ever offered,” said Apple

“We’re so excited to bring our new M2 chip to the world’s two most popular laptops – the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Marketing.

“Completely redesigned around M2, MacBook Air is thinner, lighter, and faster with a bigger display, better camera, and all-day battery life, in four beautiful finishes,” said Joswiak. “Only with Apple silicon can you build such a thin and light notebook with a fanless design, and this combination of performance and capabilities.”

“M2 also comes to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, featuring incredible performance, ProRes acceleration, up to 24GB of memory, and up to 20 hours of battery life – making our most portable pro notebook even better,” said Joswiak.

MacBook Pro with M2

The 13 inch Macbook Pro M2 is a faster 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, and the machine has an active cooling system, designed to sustain its pro performance.

It also supports up to 24GB of unified memory – along with 50 percent more memory bandwidth – making multitasking and working with large assets much faster for power users such as content creators.

Indeed, the Macbook Pro has support for ProRes encode and decode in the media engine of M2, so power users can play back up to 11 streams of 4K and up to two streams of 8K ProRes video. And they can convert their video projects to ProRes nearly 3x faster than before.

This is coupled with phenomenal battery life with up to 20 hours of video playback for the 13-inch MacBook Pro.