2018 MacBook Air Reviews

Hardware
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A good review from Jason Snell:

The introduction of the new MacBook Air hasn’t simplified Apple’s overall product line—there’s still an old model and the MacBook hasn’t been updated and that 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar still feels like a weird outlier product that should have another name. But I think the MacBook Air does simplify the Mac laptop buying process, in that it feels like the best starting point, the center of the Venn Diagram of MacBooks.

Still, Apple has placed the MacBook Air back where it spent the first part of this decade: firmly at the center of the Apple laptop universe. It’s not the cheapest or fastest or lightest laptop, but it’s the lowest-priced Retina Mac and it’s powerful and flexible enough to serve the needs of the broad audience for consumer Macs. The new geographic center of the Mac is once again where it’s been for most of this decade: It’s the MacBook Air.

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Gruber’s review of the new MacBook Air:

A lot of people are looking at the lineup as it stands today thinking they must be missing something, because it seems obvious that most people looking for a MacBook in this price range should buy the new MacBook Air. They’re not missing anything. The new Air is exactly that: the MacBook most people should buy, and exactly the MacBook everyone has been asking Apple to make.

Before he gets to the Air itself, he’s got a digression on ARM Macs that includes this tidbit:

Behind the scenes last week in New York, I asked a few folks from Apple for any sort of hint why these two Macs — the MacBook Air and Mac Mini — went so long between updates. One thing I was told is that Apple wants to focus on “meaningful updates”. The days of “speed bump” updates are largely over. The value just isn’t there.

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