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The new M2 MacBook Air will be available this week

By Nathan Drescher Published July 6, 2022

If you’ve been waiting to snag yourself a new Apple MacBook Air with the M2 chip inside, this week is your chance. The new M2 MacBook Air will be available for order beginning Friday, July 8th, according to an Apple press release.

Apple said the M2 MacBook Air will be available beginning at 5 a.m. PT. Customers will start to receive their orders the following week, on July 15th.

A person holding the M2 MacBook Air in their hand. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

There had been a lot of speculation about when Apple would make the new M2 machines available. The M2 MacBook Air was first revealed at WWDC 2022 in June, alongside a new 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro. But Apple only left us with a cryptic “available later this year” at that time. We did get an inadvertent clue as to the dates from YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who runs the MKBHD channel and the WaveForm podcast. Still, we waited for an official announcement from Apple, which arrived today.

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The M2 MacBook Air has a slimmer design than the previous M1 MacBook Air yet is has a larger 13.6-inch liquid retina display. It also packs a 1080p camera and a MagSafe charging port along with two USB-C ports. The new MacBook Air also features the same controversial notch as last year’s MacBook Pros.

The M2 chip isn’t too different from 2020’s groundbreaking M1 chip. It still features the same eight-core CPU, although it is about 15% more power efficient. The chip is still a 5nm rather than a 3nm due to ongoing lockdowns and supply issues in China. The M2 also features a new 10-core integrated GPU, rather than the M1’s seven cores.

We’ll need to wait to get our hands on one of these new machines to test the M2 chip.

The M2 MacBook Air comes in four colors: midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray. It starts at $1,199 for the base model and goes up from there, depending on configuration. It will be available in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, China, and Thailand.

There’s still no word about when then new 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro will be available.

Nathan Drescher

Former Computing Writer

Nathan Drescher is a freelance journalist and writer from Ottawa, Canada. He's been writing about technology from around the…

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The long overdue MacBook Pro design refresh might land in 2026

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Apple likes to stick around with each product design refresh for at least a few generations. Take for example the M4 MacBook Pro, which is still carrying the same design language that was first introduced atop the M1 series models back in 2021.
Things could finally change next year. “In terms of major new Mac designs, I don’t expect the MacBook Pro to get an overhaul until around 2026 — when the M6 model is due to come out,” says a Bloomberg report.
Apple is currently working on refreshed MacBook Air and Pro models with M5-series processors. They might, however, stick with the same aesthetic formula as their respective M4-series counterparts. It’s not bad, but not without its flaws either.

“It’s no joke to lug around. Some will appreciate the extra screen real estate, no doubt, but there’s definitely a trade-off in mobility,” said Digital Trends’ review of the current-gen MacBook Pro.
“The one eyesore in the whole experience to me is still the notch in the display. I find it quite ugly and intrusive, and the way it cuts into the menu bar can be clumsy, especially on the 14-inch model,” the review adds.

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According to statistics from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), MacBook form factors, in either MacBook Pro or MacBook Air made up 86% of Apple’s PC market share in 2024. Consumers especially favored the M4 MacBook Pro at a rate of 53%, while 33% of MacBook Air models shipped during the year, and 14% of iMac models. These figures vary only slightly from the year prior; however, CIRP noted that Apple appears to have weathered any fluctuations that may have occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Rumors have persisted for years now that Apple is working on a touchscreen MacBook, but I’ve never been truly convinced. For one thing, I don’t see how a touchscreen could improve my MacBook experience enough to justify the inevitable price rise. This is Apple we’re talking about, after all, and there’s just no way that a touchscreen MacBook will possibly come cheap.

As well as that, I’ve long agreed with Steve Jobs’ belief that adding a touchscreen to a regular MacBook is an ergonomic nightmare. Constantly reaching up to the display is a quick way to exhaust your arms, and paining its users isn’t really part of Apple’s playbook. The Mac operating system isn’t designed for touch either, and in any case, adding a touchscreen would result in all manner of greasy fingerprints on your monitor. It’s never seemed like a good idea to me.