The M2 MacBook Air, which features the laptop’s first major redesign and the return of MagSafe, is reportedly available for pre-order on July 8.
The completely redesigned M2 MacBook Air will reportedly be available for pre-order on July 8, with a release date slated for one week later on July 15. It was first unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, which is an event that Apple holds each year centered around software and developers. Since the release of Apple Silicon in 2020, though, hardware releases have become a staple of the event. That year, the first-ever Macs with Apple Silicon were previewed in a keynote. At the 2022 event, the 13-inch MacBook Pro was refreshed with the M2 chip, and the MacBook Air was finally redesigned to fit with the company’s current design language. Though Apple provided no official release date at WWDC, a new report gives a glimpse of when the new laptop might be released.
Apple unveiled the MacBook Air alongside the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but the upgrades were not precisely proportional. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 processor is virtually identical to the previous model containing the last-generation M1 chip. It lacks some of the new features on the redesigned laptops, including the M2 MacBook Air, the 14-inch MacBook Pro, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Most importantly, the two devices are not on the same release schedule. The 13-inch MacBook Pro was available for pre-order on June 17 and was released on June 24, but the M2 MacBook Air’s release schedule has remained much more ambiguous.
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There has been some uncertainty regarding the M2 MacBook Air’s release timeline. At the keynote event, Apple announced that the new laptop would be available starting next month, which meant July. The preview page for the M2 MacBook Air repeated those exact words: available next month. However, towards the end of June, the page was adjusted to read ‘Available in July’ — which should have meant the same thing as ‘available next month.’ Regardless, it was a perplexing change without any indication of when the laptop might be released. Now, according to a report from MacRumors, it seems that the computer will be available for pre-order on July 8 and fully released one week later on July 15. The Apple-centered site says that it has learned the release date through a retail source, which usually knows the release date of a product before the public.
Should You Pre-Order The M2 MacBook Air?
The latest design for the MacBook Air can be considered the first significant design refresh since it was first revealed in 2008, with a wedge-shaped aluminum design. That original design was held for an entire decade until the MacBook Air was refreshed in 2018 to be thinner and sleeker but retaining the same aluminum wedge-shaped design. The M2 MacBook Air is the first of its kind to pivot from the wedge shape, instead taking on a uniform body that resembles the larger 14-inch and 16-inch MacBooks Pro. This makes the redesigned laptop — which comes in at 11.3 millimeters in thickness — thinner than the older MacBook Air at its thickest point but thicker than the older MacBook Air at its thinnest point.
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Overall, the design is appealing — and the presence of a notch is a non-factor since the menu bar on macOS fits right inside the extra screen space. The M2 chip figures to be faster and offer better performance than the M1 chip, but it is yet to be tested by reviewers inside the passively-cooled MacBook Air. MagSafe provides safe and reliable magnetic charging while freeing up the two included thunderbolt USB-C ports for other uses. A headphone jack thankfully remains a staple of the Mac despite removing the port across Apple’s mobile devices. All in all, the M2 MacBook Air looks to be the thin-and-light laptop for the masses when it is eventual releases later this month.
