Apple has announced the launch of M4 MacBook Air as well as the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra and M4 Max chips, claiming the latter to be the “most powerful Mac ever.” The new Mac Studio comes with Thunderbolt 5, up to 512GB of unified memory, and an up to 16TB SSD, all in a compact design. The M4 MacBook Air now comes in a new Sky Blue colour.
M4 MacBook Air: Price, Availability, Features
Customers can pre-order the new MacBook Air with M4 on apple.com/in/store and in the Apple Store app in 28 countries and regions, including India. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting Wednesday, March 12.
The 13-inch MacBook Air with M4 starts at Rs 99,900 and the 15‑inch MacBook Air with M4 starts at Rs 1,24,900. Both are available in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver shades.
The most evident new change in the MacBook Air with M4 is the sky blue colour that distinguishes itself from the previous generation. It is metallic light blue that creates a dynamic gradient when light reflects off of its surface. All colour options, including sky blue, come with a colour-matched MagSafe charge cable. Then, the base model now comes with 16GB of RAM compared to 8GB in the previous generation. The storage options start from 256GB.
With M4 in MacBook Air, everything from daily activities like multitasking between apps to more demanding tasks like photo and video editing is faster and more fluid, according to Apple. The M4 chip features a 10-core CPU, an up to 10-core GPU, and support for up to 32GB of unified memory, making the new MacBook Air up to 2x faster than the M1 model. When compared to the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air, the M4 model delivers up to 23x faster performance.
With battery life on the new MacBook Air up to 18 hours, Intel-based upgraders will get up to six additional hours, so they can get more done on a single charge. The powerful Neural Engine in the M4 chip, which accelerates AI-based tasks, is also up to 3x faster than on MacBook Air with M1, significantly increasing speed in tasks like automatically enhancing photos and removing background noise from a video.
The new MacBook Air also comes packed with Apple Intelligence. There’s also a new 12MP Center Stage camera with improved video quality. It also supports Desk View, which simultaneously displays the user and a top-down view of their desk. For users who like to spread their work out, MacBook Air now supports up to two 6K external displays, in addition to its built-in Liquid Retina display.
The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air feature a durable aluminium unibody enclosure. With the advanced security of Touch ID, users can easily and securely unlock their MacBook Air, make online purchases with Apple Pay, and download apps. The comfortable and quiet Magic Keyboard is backlit and comes with a full-height function row.
MacBook Air features a 13.6- or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina Display with up to 500 nits of brightness, support for 1 billion colours, and up to 2x the Resolution of comparable PC laptops. MacBook Air with M4 features fast Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. It also includes MagSafe charging and two Thunderbolt ports for connecting accessories like external storage and security keys, along with a 3.5mm Headphone jack.
There’s also a 3-mic array along with an immersive sound system that has support for Spatial Audio along with Dolby Atmos. The M4 MacBook Air runs on macOS Sequoia out of the box. Next month, macOS Sequoia 15.4 will make it easier than ever to set up the new MacBook Air with iPhone. By simply bringing iPhone close to Mac, users can quickly and conveniently sign in to their Apple Account to get their files, photos, messages, passwords, and more on their new MacBook Air.
Read More: Apple Debuts M3 iPad Air, iPad with A16, and New Magic Keyboard: Check India Prices
Mac Studio with M3 Ultra, M4 Max: Price, Availability, Features
The Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at Rs 2,14,900 while the one with M3 Ultra begins at Rs 4,29,900. Customers can pre-order the new Mac Studio starting today on apple.com/in/store and in the Apple Store app in 28 countries and regions, including India. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting Wednesday, March 12.
The new Mac Studio with M4 Max is the perfect choice for video editors, colourists, developers, engineers, photographers, creative pros, and other users who need to blaze through intensive workflows. It delivers phenomenal single-threaded CPU performance with the world’s fastest CPU core, along with outstanding multithreaded CPU performance for complex workloads. Featuring an up to 16-core CPU, an up to 40-core GPU, over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth, and a Neural Engine that is over 3x faster than M1 Max, Mac Studio with M4 Max can run on-device AI models incredibly fast. Mac Studio with M4 Max is up to 3.5x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Max, and is up to 6.1x faster than the most powerful Intel-based 27-inch iMac.
The GPU in M4 Max also brings Apple’s graphics architecture to Mac Studio for the first time, including dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and a second-generation ray-tracing engine for more seamless content creation and gaming.
Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at 36GB of unified memory, with support for up to 128GB, so users can do everything from sorting through thousands of images with speed and precision, to producing complex compositions with hundreds of tracks, plug-ins, and virtual instruments, all played in real time. And with the enhanced Media Engine in M4 Max, which features two ProRes accelerators, Mac Studio performance is apt for videographers who can work with multiple streams of 4K ProRes.
As for the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra, it is claimed to deliver nearly 2x faster performance than M4 Max in workloads that take advantage of high CPU and GPU core counts, and massive amounts of unified memory. Mac Studio with M3 Ultra is up to 2.6x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, and up to 6.4x faster than the 16-core Intel Xeon W-based Mac Pro.
With the new M3 Ultra, Mac Studio features an up to 32-core CPU with 24 performance cores, 50 percent more than any previous Ultra chip and the most CPU cores ever in a Mac. It also offers an up to 80-core GPU, more than any Apple silicon chip; a powerful 32-core Neural Engine for on-device AI and machine learning (ML); and a high-bandwidth memory architecture that delivers over 800GB/s of unified memory bandwidth.
Mac Studio with M3 Ultra starts with 96GB of unified memory, which can be configured up to 512GB — the most unified memory ever in a personal computer — and up to 16TB of ultrafast SSD storage, so content and data can be kept locally. That’s enough storage for over 12 hours of 8K ProRes video. The advanced graphics architecture brings Dynamic Caching, along with hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, so graphics workflows like GPU-based renderers are up to 2.6x faster than Mac Studio with M1 Ultra.
The new Mac Studio features Thunderbolt 5 ports that deliver transfer speeds up to 120 Gb/s, up to 3x faster than the prior generation, enabling faster external storage, expansion chassis, and powerful hub solutions. For those who rely on PCIe expansion cards for their workflows, Thunderbolt 5 allows users to connect an external expansion chassis with higher Bandwidth and lower latency.
And with M3 Ultra, Mac Studio now drives up to eight Pro Display XDRs at the full 6K resolution. Mac Studio also offers a wide array of connectivity within easy reach for pros, including a 10Gb Ethernet port, an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot on the front to conveniently import photos and video, along with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Mac Studio also supports Apple Intelligence and runs on macOS Sequoia.