Review: Apple MacBook Air
What's old is new again, and what's new is old. Apple has just released a new version of the old MacBook Air, a beloved laptop that hasn't received any real love in years. I've been using it for the past four days—traveling with it, typing on it, editing photos, wearing its battery down. Staring at its gorgeous new Retina display, which is not unlike the display on my own personal MacBook Pro.
That's the thing: A lot of the components in the brand new MacBook Air are not actually new. Like the display—I have stared at some version of this Retina display for a long time now. But for true MacBook Air lovers, that won't matter. This is a machine that grew stale and cruised solely on its reputation for a long time. Now, it's ready for reinvention. Well, sort of. It's more accurate to say that it has caught up with the times.
The new MacBook Air starts at $1,199 for a configuration with 128 gigabytes of SSD storage. It creeps up to $1,399 for a model with 256 GB of storage, which is the Air most people will want to get if they have a moderately full library of local photos, music, or videos. At its base, the new MacBook Air is $200 more than the old MacBook Air, which was the only Apple laptop to sneak into the lineup at just under $1,000. Apple is still selling the old Air for $999, but that one runs on a processor that hasn't seen a speed bump since June of last year.
