Enlarge / The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

When Apple upgraded its Macs with the M2 chip, some users noticed that storage speeds were actually quite a bit lower than they were in the M1 versions. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and the 512GB M2 MacBook Pro had their storage speeds roughly halved compared to M1 Macs with the same storage capacities.

Teardowns revealed that this was because Apple was using fewer physical flash memory chips to provide the same amount of storage. Modern SSDs achieve their high speeds partly by reading from and writing to multiple NAND flash chips simultaneously, a process called "interleaving." When there's only one flash chip to access, speeds go down.

Early teardowns of the M3 MacBook Air suggest that Apple may have reversed course here, at least for some Airs. The Max Tech YouTube channel took a 256GB M3 Air apart, showing a pair of 128GB NAND flash chips rather than the single 256GB chip that the M2 Air used. BlackMagic Disk Speed Test performance increases accordingly; read and write speeds for the 256GB M2 Air come in at around 1,600 MB/s, while the M3 Air has read speeds of roughly 2,900 MB/s and write speeds of about 2,100 MB/s. That's roughly in line with the M1 Air's performance.

Enlarge / Apple's M3 MacBook Airs put a new chip in 2022's design. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Right off the bat, the M3 MacBook Airs aren't as interesting as the M2 models.

July 2022's M2 MacBook Air updated the design of the 13-inch laptop for the Apple Silicon era after the M1 Air's external design played it safe. And the first-ever 15-inch MacBook Air , released over a year later, was an appealing option for people who wanted a larger screen but didn't need the extra power or cost of a MacBook Pro. Together, they were a comprehensive rethink of Apple's approach to its mainstream laptops, modeled after the similarly dramatic Apple Silicon MacBook Pro redesigns .

The M3 Airs don't do any of that. They are laptop designs we've already seen, wrapped around a processor we've already seen. But they may end up being more important than the M2 Airs because of when they're being released—as the last of the Intel Macs slowly age and break and Apple winds down software support for them (if not in this year's macOS release, then almost certainly next year's). Between the faster chip and a couple of other feature updates, the new machines may also be the first ones that are truly worth a look for M1 Air early adopters who want an upgrade.

Enlarge / Apple's 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It's a credit to Apple's chips that when I'm using my 13-inch MacBook Air, I feel much more constrained by the screen size than I do by the performance.

That wasn't always the case. The Intel MacBook Airs of years past were perfectly fine for basic computing, but you could feel the difference between an Air and an iMac or MacBook Pro as soon as you tried to edit something in Photoshop or Lightroom or export something with iMovie. The M1 and M2 Macs also feel slower than their Pro, Max, and Ultra counterparts, but for the kinds of light-to-medium-duty work that I spend most of my time doing, I rarely find myself waiting around for things to happen.

That's why I've been looking forward to the 15-inch MacBook Air, which has been rumored for at least a year and is being released to the public this week . Before now, getting a larger Mac laptop meant paying at least $2,000 for the privilege—$2,500 for the 16-inch MacBook Pro—because getting that bigger screen also came with extra ports, more powerful chips, and fancier screen technology.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—People have been asking for a 15-inch MacBook Air for about as long as the Air has existed.

The Air was originally conceived as a laptop that was all about extreme portability. But over time it became the default MacBook for most people—and plenty of users don’t need the performance of a MacBook Pro but might like a little more desktop space or a bigger screen on which to watch streaming TV.

Apple has targeted those people here. I spent a few minutes handling and using the 15-inch MacBook Air and—surprise! It’s just like the most recent 13-inch Air but wider and taller.

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  The color options (left to right): midnight, starlight, space gray, and silver. [credit: Apple ]

CUPERTINO, Calif.—It's common for Apple to refresh its various MacBook models more or less annually, but it's not so common that an entirely new screen size is introduced. That's what happened today during the company's WWDC keynote: Apple announced a 15-inch variant of the traditionally 13-inch MacBook Air.

It's something that has been rumored for years on end, and now after many false starts, the rumor has proven true.

The 15-inch MacBook Air is in most respects identical to its 13-inch counterpart and has Apple's M2 chip. The star is the 15.3-inch screen, with 5 mm borders and a 500-nit brightness claim. Apple hasn't provided the exact resolution for the screen yet, but it was rumored that the 15-inch MacBook Air would have the same resolution as the 14-inch MacBook Pro, 3024×1964. The 15-inch MacBook Air will be available with up to 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, Apple said today.

Enlarge / Inside the Steve Jobs Theater building at Apple's headquarters. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple's 2023 Worldwide Developer Conference is just a few days away—it kicks off with a keynote on Monday, June 5. That keynote will be livestreamed (we'll liveblog it, too), and it's expected to be a doozy.

The WWDC keynote isn't always the most exciting for non-developers, as it usually focuses on iOS updates rather than exciting new hardware. There have been exceptions, though, and next week's event will surely be one of them. Apple is expected to finally unveil its rumored mixed reality headset, which has taken a long and winding path to market.

That will be the main focus, but there will be interesting new developments on the iPhone, Mac, and Watch. Here's what to expect from the WWDC keynote next week.

Enlarge / The 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

A new report by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman identifies several new Macs coming to Apple's lineup over the next several months, mostly strengthening previous reports from analysts and leakers, as well as Gurman's prior reporting. Gurman credits developer logs of third-party applications that contain evidence of Apple engineers or testers using the new Macs to verify that they work with popular software before release.

The most clearly discernible of the Macs within these logs is a 15-inch MacBook Air, which has long been rumored. It's labeled "Mac 15,3" and it has the same display resolution as the 14-inch MacBook Pro (3024×1964). The laptop appears to have 8GB of RAM and a chip with eight CPU cores and 10 GPU cores—just the same as many M2 Macs already on the market.

Gurman also reports that Apple is readying an M3 chip to debut in the near future—hardly a surprise, of course. He claims that the M3 will transition to a new 3-nanometer production process (it was 5 nm for the M2), just like the chip coming to the 2023 flagship iPhones. Although he doesn't specify which ones may come with the M3 and which might ship with the current M2, he writes that Apple is also working on updates for the 13-inch MacBook Air, the 24-inch iMac, and—surprisingly—the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple is readying a new batch of Macs to launch "between late spring and summer," according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman .

The most significant of the three would be a 15-inch MacBook Air, but a new Mac Pro refresh would complete the Mac's transition from Intel's CPUs and AMD's GPUs to Apple Silicon, and a new 13-inch MacBook Air could also be in the cards. Apple is also said to be planning a new 24-inch iMac that could be the first of its Macs to use its next-generation M3 chip.

The 15-inch MacBook Air would be a new product category for Apple: a larger-screened laptop that costs less than a MacBook Pro. Apple's consumer-focused laptops—from the old PowerPC iBook to the first Intel MacBooks to the current MacBook Air—have all ranged somewhere between 11 and 13 inches. The 15- to 17-inch PowerBook and MacBook Pro models always required a step up in CPU and GPU power that drove the price up; the cheapest MacBook Air starts at $999, while the cheapest 16-inch MacBook Pro costs $2,499.

Enlarge / An Apple-made image of the 13.6-inch MacBook Air that was revealed earlier this week. (credit: Apple)

Apple is working on a 15-inch MacBook Air and a new 12-inch MacBook, according to Bloomberg , citing sources familiar with Apple's plans. The sources also revealed details about the M2-family chips coming to Apple's high-performance MacBook Pro computers.

The 15-inch Air will use the same overall design as the 13.6-inch MacBook Air revealed at the company's WWDC keynote on Monday. That means an ultra-thin design with no tapered edges, plus a screen notch and a keyboard with function keys and Touch ID. The laptop is expected to use the same M2 processor as the one found in its smaller sibling.

The new laptop could arrive as soon as spring of 2023, the sources say. They also say Apple is working on a 12-inch MacBook that could arrive in late 2023 or early 2024—but that one is far enough out that Apple could still abandon its plans.