As Tim Cook promised, there was a lot “in the air” for Apple news this week. The company unveiled two new iPad models, two new Mac models, an ultra-powerful Apple Silicon chip, and more. Here’s your full roundup of everything Apple announced this week…
New iPad Air
Apple kicked things off with the launch of the new iPad Air, now powered by the M3 chip. It’s available in the same 11-inch and 13-inch form factors as before. Your color options include blue, purple, starlight, and space gray, while storage choices are 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
There’s also a new Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air, which features a function row and a slightly larger trackpad. The 11-inch version of the Magic Keyboard costs $299, while the 13-inch model is $349.
The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599, while the 13-inch model starts at $799. The first orders arrive on March 12.
Read more about the new iPad Air
iPad (A16)
There’s also a new version of Apple’s most affordable iPad. The new iPad is powered by the A16 chip, which Apple says is up to 30% faster than the previous-generation A14 model. It also comes with twice the storage as the previous model, starting with 128GB for the same $349 starting price.
The one downside to the new iPad is that it doesn’t support Apple Intelligence. For most people, that’s probably not a dealbreaker right now.
New iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands
Apple’s silicone cases are now available in four new colors:
New Apple Watch bands include:
New MacBook Air
On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the M4 MacBook Air, available in 13-inch and 15-inch screen sizes. In addition to the more powerful M4 chip, the new MacBook Air also comes in a sleek new sky blue color option.
The biggest MacBook Air news? It’s now $100 cheaper than before. The 13-inch M4 MacBook Air starts at $999, and the 15-inch model starts at $1199. The base configurations come with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage. I think the M4 MacBook Air might just be the best MacBook value Apple has ever released.
Read more about the new MacBook Air:
New Mac Studio and M3 Ultra
The week’s biggest surprise was the introduction of a new Mac Studio. The new Mac Studio is available with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips. It’s the same M4 Max chip that debuted in the MacBook Pro last year, but this is the first launch of the M3 Ultra.
- An up to 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, which is the most CPU cores in a Mac
- An up to 80-core GPU, more than any Apple Silicon chip
- Nearly 2x faster performance than M4 Max in workloads that take advantage of high CPU and GPU core counts
- Up to 2.6x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Ultra
The M3 Ultra Mac Studio starts with 96GB of unified memory, which can be configured up to 512GB. Its SSD storage can also be upgraded to a whopping 16TB.
Wrap up
What was your favorite Apple announcement of the week? Did you buy any of the new hardware? Let us know down in the comments.
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