Surprise, the MacBook Air is still alive! The new MacBook Air is Apple’s new cheap laptop. While everybody thought the 12-inch Retina MacBook was going to replace the MacBook Air, it’s not going to be the case just yet. Apple just updated the MacBook Air page on its website after its press event. While the 11-inch MacBook Air is gone forever (R.I.P.), the 13-inch MacBook Air is still there at the same price and with the same specs.
“We’re going to continue to offer MacBook Air 13-inch in our line”, SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller said onstage, without saying anything else about the state of the MacBook Air. Here’s what’s happening.
The MacBook Air still starts at $999 and comes with the same 1.6GHz Core i5 processor processor, the same amount of RAM (8GB), the same 128GB SSD storage, the same 12 hours of battery, all of it at the same price.
The previous $1,199 isn’t changing either — still 8GB of RAM and the same processor, but 256GB of storage instead. So if you wanted an affordable computer, you can still get a MacBook Air for $999, but it comes with the same outdated components.
It’s clear that the MacBook Air is on the way out. But the cheapest 13-inch MacBook Pro, or even the 12-inch Retina MacBook, are still too expensive for many people. That’s why Apple is putting the 13-inch MacBook Air on life support until it can make another laptop under $1,000 again.
Update: An earlier version of this post stated that the entry-level MacBook Air got an upgrade from 4GB to 8GB of RAM. Apple already switched to 8GB of RAM a few months ago.
