Apple ramps up 15-inch MacBook Air testing as release looms

Apple is ramping up testing of the highly-anticipated next-gen 15-inch MacBook Air. A new report today says that the 15-inch MacBook Air will feature a screen resolution that’s the same as the 14-inch MacBook Air and Apple Silicon performance that is “on par with M2 Macs.”

15-inch MacBook Air: The latest

The report comes from Bloomberg and cites developer logs, which have leaked now that Apple has started testing the new MacBook Air with “third-party apps from the App Store to validate their compatibility.”

According to the report, the 15-inch MacBook has a screen resolution identical to the 14-inch MacBook Pro, which means it would “would run the same resolution but with slightly less sharpness.” The machine being tested has an eight-core processor with four high-performance cores and four efficiency cores.

Whether this is the M2 chip, in particular, remains to be seen. Today’s report simply says that the performance of the machine is “on par with the current M2 chip.” There’s also still no word on when exactly Apple is planning to release this new 15-inch MacBook Air.

Apple is expected to use a new 3 nm fabrication process for at least some of the M3 chip variants. This will lead to a notable improvement in performance and efficiency. It’s possible, however, that 3nm tech may not be used in every version of the M3. Apple could, for instance, bifurcate the M3 lineup by using a 5 nm process for the M3 and a 3 nm process for the M3 Pro, M3 Max, and M3 Ultra.

Finally, the report indicates that Apple is also working on new versions of the 13-inch MacBook Air, the 24-inch iMac, and the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple is also reportedly planning an update to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros for the first half of 2024.

The first Mac Pro with Apple Silicon is also still in the works, but the project has faced “delays and specification changes.”

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