Today at WWDC, Apple updated the MacBook Air to give it a boost. VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller insisted on one of its main feature, its battery. The 13-inch now has 12 hours of battery life while the 11-inch is supposed to last 9 hours.
“You can watch almost the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy,” Schiller said.
The MacBook Air now boasts a new Intel Haswell CPU, a 40 percent faster GPU and twice the “GPU execution units.” The entry 11-inch and 13-inch models have the same $999 and $1,199 price tags. The faster $1,399 13-inch model now costs $1,299. Apple hasn’t specified which CPU will ship with those new MacBook Airs yet. It’s available today, so Apple’s website should have this information after the keynote.
Update: Apple’s website is now up to date, and sadly the new MacBook Air now comes with a Core i5 1.3 GHz across the board. Haswell CPUs are more efficient, especially for graphics performances. A dedicated GPU is now almost redundant for casual web surfing and office usage. It could explain the great battery performance while we await some benchmarks.
The flash memory was updated as well to be faster. The MacBook Air is compatible with the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. As a reminder, Apple’s “netbook” latest update was unveiled at last year’s WWDC.
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Romain Dillet was a Senior Reporter at TechCrunch until April 2025. He has written over 3,500 articles on technology and tech startups and has established himself as an influential voice on the European tech scene. He has a deep background in startups, AI, fintech, privacy, security, blockchain, mobile, social and media. With thirteen years of experience at TechCrunch, he’s one of the familiar faces of the tech publication that obsessively covers Silicon Valley and the tech industry — his career started at TechCrunch when he was 21. Based in Paris, many people in the tech ecosystem consider him as the most knowledgeable tech journalist in town. Romain likes to spot important startups before anyone else. He was the first person to cover Revolut, Alan and N26. He has written scoops on large acquisitions from Apple, Microsoft and Snap. When he’s not writing, Romain is also a developer — he understands how the tech behind the tech works. He also has a deep historical knowledge of the computer industry for the past 50 years. He knows how to connect the dots between innovations and the effect on the fabric of our society. Romain graduated from Emlyon Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He has helped several non-profit organizations, such as StartHer, an organization that promotes education and empowerment of women in technology, and Techfugees, an organization that empowers displaced people with technology.