During WWDC 2023, Apple announced a number of new Mac PC products, along with a new Apple Silicon processor. That includes a new version for the MacBook Air notebooks, new versions of the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, and an all-new Apple Silicon processor that the company claims is the most powerful PC CPU ever made.
The new 15-inch MacBook Air is Apple"s latest thin-and-light notebook. In fact, Apple claims it"s the thinnest 15-inch notebook ever made at 11.5mm. The 3.3-pound laptop includes a 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, with the Apple M2 processor inside. Apple claims the battery life for the notebook will handle up to 18 hours on a single charge.
It comes in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray colors and comes with a starting price of $1,299. It"s available to pre-order now, and shipments will begin next week. The previous 13-inch MacBook Air also gets a price drop to $1,099.
Apple is also updating its Mac Studio desktop and it"s also relaunching its Mac Pro workstation. The new Mac Studio will add the M2 Max chip, and you can get the Max Studio and the new Mac Pro version with the all-new M2 Ultra chip.
Basically, the M2 Ultra merges the die of two M2 Max chips using what Apple calls "groundbreaking UltraFusion technology". Apple claims the M2 Ultra is the most powerful PC CPU ever made. Apple states:
M2 Ultra consists of 134 billion transistors — 20 billion more than M1 Ultra. Its unified memory architecture supports up to a breakthrough 192GB of memory capacity, which is 50 percent more than M1 Ultra, and features 800GB/s of memory bandwidth — twice that of M2 Max. M2 Ultra features a more powerful CPU that’s 20 percent faster than M1 Ultra, a larger GPU that’s up to 30 percent faster, and a Neural Engine that’s up to 40 percent faster.1 It also features a media engine with twice the capabilities of M2 Max for blazing ProRes acceleration. With all these advancements, M2 Ultra takes Mac performance to a whole new level yet again.
The chip will be included in models of the Mac Studio and is also being put into the new version of the Mac Pro. Apple is also adding the M2 Max to the Mac Studio as well. Mac Studio will start pricing at $1,999, while the Mac Pro will start pricing at $6,999 for its tower version and $7,999 for the rack-mounted version. Again, both are available to preorder now for shipment next week.