For years Apple’s MacBook Air has languished in partial obsolescence — a great laptop with fantastic battery life and a quizzically outdated screen. 1440 x 900 is a pitifully small resolution for modern times. Sadly, the company hasn’t learnt its lesson: the 2015 MacBook Air refresh has the same, outdated display as it has for years. What a disappointment.
It’s hard to be too upset — the humble MacBook Air now has to live in the shadow of a “normal” MacBook that’s even thinner, promises the same ballpark of all-day battery life and has a 2304 x 1440 retina display. With something like that around, what’s the point in buying a MacBook Air? Well, oddly, the answer is power: the refreshed 2015 Air now has 5th generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.
This puts the MacBook Air in a weird place. Yesterday it was the machine you went to if you wanted to trade battery life for power and resolution. Today it’s the machine you go to if you want to trade screen resolution for a more powerful CPU. With Apple injecting similar upgrades in its regular MacBook Pro line, its made the Air the machine in the middle. Is that weird? That’s weird.
The new MacBook Air will be out in Australia tomorrow, starting from $1249.