Apple Announces Upgrades on Macbook Air Laptops
The search for more accurate, faster and stress-free means of getting tasks completed will never stop! Even at this stage of technological developments, many companies are still making advances towards pushing the performance limits of technological devices and systems in order to offer man a better, safer, faster, more satisfactory, accurate and cost-effective solutions.
These advances had become so evident in the computer/gadget manufacturing industry where almost every company seems to be in an endless research to beef-up one feature or the other in their products. To substantiate this quest, Apple™ recently announced several upgrades to the MacBook Air laptops. Apple Senior VP, Phil Schiller, made the announcement while saying that the upgrades was intended to make these laptops faster, to incorporate them with better graphics and to make them more affordable. Precisely, the new upgraded versions of “Air” are $100 cheaper despite the improved performance.
What Upgrades Were Made?
The MacBook Air is one of the portable laptops that are so popular in the consumer market. It comes with nice slim body architecture and color selections that are just amazing. Simply put, the design of this laptop takes from the NoteBook and thus, is as portable and can even be as mobile. No wonder Apple chose to upgrade one of their hottest selling products in order to appeal to and satisfy a wide range of consumers. According to the Apple Senior Vice President, the new generation of MacBooks will now ship with new upgraded features and configurations touching specific areas like:
The processor and the flash storage: These laptops now come with the 3rd generation core processors nicknamed the Ivy Bridge. Depending on the configuration of the laptop, they can run up to 2.0GHz dual-core i7 including a Turbo Boost speed that can get as high as 3.2GHz. They can also be configured to up to 8GB memory, which is faster at 1600MHz memory. The graphics now come with about 60% faster performance than before.
Additionally, the flash storage has also been beefed up to accommodate more inputs – you can put up to 512GB flash storage. This has dramatically enhanced the performance of these laptops. With these new features, launching applications, waking the system up and executing tasks operates at double the initial speed. Specifically, they have about 500MBps read speed.
A USB 3: Apple also introduced a USB 3 port to allow users more connectivity options. The performance of USB 3 is about ten times faster than the USB 2 as it comes with about 5Gbps read speed. The placement of this new port is very close to the USB 2 port while maintaining the slim architecture of the laptop for the desired portability.
The FaceTime HD Camera: The new MacBook Air now ships with FaceTime HD Camera of up to 720p situated at the top of the screen. This is a revolution in the HD FaceTime application with which users can enjoy even a more vivid and live-like interactions with their friends, colleagues and relations.
Upgrades/Configurations According To Sizes
As you may already know, the MacBook Air laptop comes in two sizes; the 11-inch and the 13-inch sizes. Here are some specific upgrades to these sizes.
The 11-inch MacBook Air upgrades/configurations start from:
- 1366 x 768 display
- 1.7GHz dual-core i5
- 4GB RAM
- Intel HD Graphics 4000
- 64 GB flash storage / 128GB
- 5 hours
- 0.11 – 0.68”, 2.38 lbs
This configuration ships for $999. Another configuration of 11-inch MacBook Air with 128GB flash storage, instead of the 64GB, ships for $1099.
The 13-inch MacBook Air upgrades/configurations start from:
- 1440 x 900 display
- 1.8GHz dual-core i5
- 4GB RAM
- Intel HD Graphics 4000
- 128GB flash storage / 256GB
- 7 hours
- 0.11 – 0.68”, 2.96 lbs
This configuration ships for $1199. Another configuration that includes 256GB flash storage, instead of the 128GB, ships for $1499.
The MacBook Air laptops are among the best sellers in the computer industry. These products were not only incredibly fast and portable, but with these new upgrades, they are now the fastest in performance. While many companies announce upgrades to their products which may take several weeks to actually hit the consumer market, Phil Schiller was happy to announce that MacBook Air laptops will start shipping with these upgrades/configurations from the day of the announcement – giving users a faster, more accurate and portable computing solutions.