Apple has introduced a new MacBook Air Retina and has given Mac mini much more performance.
New MacBook Air with Retina Display
The new MacBook Air now follows the same design philosophy as the other Macs with a USB-C port. It has two Thunderbolt 3 ports (USB-C is the mechanics, Thunderbolt 3 the protocol) on the left and one 3.5mm audio port on the right. To the left and right of the keyboard are small holes for the underlying speakers. So it follows the design language of the MacBook Pro. It can drive 5K monitors and use external GPUs.
The Retina display now comes with very thin black edges, unlike the previous aluminum frame. A nice bezel for the 4 million pixels. Very nice: the MacBook Air comes with an HD Face Time camera, unlike the 480p model in the 12″ MacBook.
The new Air also has Touch ID! Terrific. And this with conventional function keys. A long-awaited combination. The T2 chip is also responsible for encryption in the small MacBook Air, which also takes care of the Facetime camera and Hey Siri.
The third generation keyboard should be 4x more stable. The trackpad is 20% bigger and has Force Touch and Haptic feedback. The loudspeakers have also improved: they have twice as much bass as before and are 25% louder. Three microphones are responsible for the sound recording.
The i5 processor has two cores and up to 16 GB RAM. 1.5 TB of internal memory is available. Apple has managed to keep the battery life high. You should be able to watch movies for up to 13 hours. The new Air is 17% shrunk in volume and only 15.6mm thick.
The manufacturing process uses 100% recycled tin and 35% recycled plastic. The aluminium housing is even made of 100% recycled aluminium. As it looks, we are actually on the way to keeping all raw materials in the cycle.
Short interim review without having seen it before: The MacBook Air combines the best features of all Macs at the best price. Retina display, Thunderbolt ports, good sound, Touch ID and fantastic trackpad. And it’s all the better that they’re also looking at sustainable sourcing of raw materials.
The basic equipment consists of a 1.6 GHz Dualcore i5 processor with 3.6 GHz Turbo Boost and 8 GB RAM. The price is 1199 dollars. It is available from November 7th.
New Mac mini
The new Mac mini comes in the familiar design, but is now in space grey and has lost its IR port.
Inside, everything has been renewed: The 8th generation processors start with four cores, even six are available. Memory of up to 64 GB is possible – on SO-DIMMs, so it can be upgraded. SSDs are possible up to 2 TB. Even the smallest desktop Mac comes with a T2 chip.
The cooling system has been reworked so that it is still very quiet. At ports there are four times Thunderbolt 3, once HDMI and twice USB-A. Ethernet is available on request even up to 10 GBit/s. The Mac mini also uses 60% recycled plastic and 100% recycled aluminum.
The basic version comes with a 3.6 quad core processor, 128 GB SSD and SSD 8 GB RAM for 799 dollars. The largest processor is a 3.2 GHz i7.
