Yesterday saw Apple hold their fourth virtual event, debuting the new M1 Apple Silicon chip running on MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13″ and Mac mini.

At WWDC last June, Apple announced their plans to bring their own custom designed Silicon to Macs with promises of the first ARM-based Macs before the end of the year. Yesterday at Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ event, we indeed got our first three Macs with the new M1 chip: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13″ and Mac mini. According to Apple, M1 delivers an impressive leap in performance and efficiency.

M1 joins Apple’s other own designed SoCs (system on a chip) alongside the A-series iPhone, iPad and Apple TV chips, S-series Watch chips and W/H-series headphone chips.

For more on Apple Silicon, M1, Big Sur, MacBook Pro 13″, Mac mini, buying advice and what’s next for Apple, click here.

MacBook Air
  • 8-core CPU – up to 3.5x faster performance over the previous generation
  • 8-core GPU – up to 5x faster graphics performance
  • 16-core Neural Engine – up to 9x faster machine learning performance
  • 2x faster SSD
  • No fans – silent design
  • Up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing
  • Up to 18 hours of video playback – 6 hours more than before
  • Wi-Fi 6
  • Retina display with P3 wide colour gamut – 25% more colours than sRGB
  • 720p webcam – greater noise reduction, dynamic range, white balance and face detection
  • Two Thunderbolt/USB-C 4 ports, 3.5mm headphone jack
  • Space Gray, Gold or Silver
  • Same starting price $999
  • $899 for education
  • Available for pre-order today, shipping starts 17th November
  • MBA iMovie
  • MBA Side