As expected, Apple has officially refreshed its MacBook Air lineup with its M4 chip, the same silicon we've already seen in products like the MacBook Pro, the iMac, and the Mac mini. And in most ways, it's a straightforward update, with no major changes to the laptop's physical design, screen specs, keyboard, or ports.

The most important update is the price. The 13-inch M4 MacBook Air will start at $999, a $100 price cut compared to the M3 Air and the same price that Apple set for the M2 Air last year when the M3 models came out. The 15-inch model will also get a $100 cut, from $1,299 to $1,199. These baseline configurations still come with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, plus the 8-core version of the M4's GPU.

The M2 version will continue to be sold as a budget model in some countries, but the US isn't one of them. Apple will also continue to sell a cheaper version of the M1 MacBook Air through Walmart, which it has been doing since March 2024.

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Apple on Wednesday introduced a new MacBook Air on its website, offering improved performance while retaining the familiar design. The new laptop is equipped with Apple’s M4 chip, the most recent addition to the M-series chip lineup. The MacBook Air comes in two sizes. Customers can choose between a 13-inch and a 15-inch display. Pricing […]

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Apple's slow trickle of early 2025 product announcements is apparently set to continue this week, following the introduction of the iPhone 16e a couple of weeks ago. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company plans to refresh its 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air laptops "as early as this coming week," adding the M4 processor that Apple put in the iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro lineups last fall.

An M4 refresh for the MacBook Air was always likely, but Apple has kept us guessing about the timing. Usually, the MacBook Airs are among the first devices to get new M-series processors from Apple, but Apple surprised us by bringing the M4 to the iPad Pro just a few months after introducing the M3. In mid-December, concrete references to the M4 MacBook Air appeared in the macOS 15.2 update, suggesting that the laptops were in testing, even if they weren't ready for a public launch yet.

The laptops are unlikely to look too different from the current M2 or M3 MacBook Airs, which got an "update" of sorts last fall when Apple discontinued the versions with 8GB of RAM in favor of 16GB versions that kept the same prices.

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Apple's outlook for the year includes a new member of the iPhone lineup, another push for the smart home, and beefy MacBook Pros.

The macOS 15.2 update that was released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: an apparently accidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the "Mac16,12" and "Mac16,13" model identifiers reference 13- and 15-inch models of the M4 Air and that both are coming in 2025.

That a MacBook Air refresh is planned for next year isn't much of a surprise at this point—in reporting that pretty much nailed the details of the first M4 Macs, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has said that the Air, the Mac Studio, and the Mac Pro are all slated for updates throughout 2025.

But a reference in the current release of macOS could point to a launch sooner rather than later; the M4 Mac mini was referenced in a macOS update in mid-September around a month and a half before it was released. The M3 Airs came out in March this year, but Apple has been known to put out new Macs as early as January in recent years.

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