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  The screen on Apple's new MacBook Air. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

According to a new blog post by the company, Apple will begin taking orders for its newly redesigned 13.6-inch MacBook Air this Friday, July 8, at 5am PDT. The laptop will arrive at buyers' doorsteps and become available for same-day retail purchase one week later on Friday, July 15.

It will be the second Mac to launch with Apple's second-generation M2 system-on-a-chip, which follows 2020's M1 with substantially faster memory bandwidth and graphics and moderately improved CPU performance.

It's the same chip as that found in the 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro, which we recently reviewed . We found that the M2 offered 10 to 15 percent improved CPU performance compared to the M1 and as much as 40 percent faster GPU performance with the 10-core GPU configuration. Unlike the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air defaults to an eight-core GPU configuration with an optional 10-core upgrade.