Apple MacBook Air laptop gets a little faster — and a little cheaper

The rumors were true: Apple just improved on Air.

The Cupertino, Calif., consumer electronics giant revealed a modest boost for its line of ultra-light laptops Tuesday, following multiple rumors suggesting a new set of MacBook Air notebooks outfitted with minor upgrades would come this week.

Apple quietly replaced the processors in the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air with Intel Core i5 dual-core CPUs that, at 1.4 GHz, are clocked slightly higher than those in previous models. It’s a 100-MHz upgrade over what was available just yesterday (Intel Core i5 dual-core processors running at 1.3 GHz). Turbo Boost also got a bump across every iteration of the MacBook Air. Before, Turbo Boost could previously shoot the Core i5’s clock speed as high as 2.6 GHz. Now they can reach 2.7 GHz.

On top of that, both the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air have starting prices $100 cheaper than they were up until yesterday. The 11.6-inch MacBook Air dropped from $999 to $899, and on top of the upgraded CPU, includes a 128GB PCI Express SSD, 4GB of RAM, and Intel HD Graphics 5000. The same goes for the 13-inch MacBook Air, which now starts at $999 as opposed to $1,099, as well as souped up versions of both sizes, which now start at $1,099 and $1,199.

Though the base CPU in the MacBook Air got a small upgrade, the 1.7-GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 CPU that was offered as a $150 upgrade as of yesterday remains, and wasn’t upgraded. 

The refreshed MacBook Air can be ordered immediately, and ships “within 24 hours,” Apple claims.

Though these upgrades are brand new, Apple is widely expected to give the MacBook Air even more attention later on this year, and may introduce models equipped with Retina displays.