In Pictures: Apple’s M2-packed Macbooks to hit UAE shelves in July, starting Dh4,999

Alongside a new operating system, Apple on Monday updated its MacBook line up with a completely redesigned MacBook Air and upgrades to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, powered by the new M2 chip. As with all launch hyperbole from Apple, these laptop take matters to ‘the next level’.

With a thinner design, MacBook Air features a larger 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a four-speaker sound system, up to 18 hours of battery life, and MagSafe charging. It measures just 11.3 mm on the thinness count and weighs a truly light 2.7 pounds.

The MacBook Air is priced at Dh4,999 for the UAE market, and at Dh4,579 bought by students. There will be four finishes — silver, space grey, midnight, and starlight – available from July.

The M2 chip finally lands up in the 13-inch MacBook Pro which will deliver performance up to 24GB of unified memory, ProRes acceleration, and – this is significant - 20 hours of battery life. The MacBook Pro starts at Dh5,499 and Dh5,079 for students.

Apple will also deliver 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max, also available from July.

The M2 – from Apple’s own production line - features a next-generation 8-core CPU with advancements in performance and efficiency cores, along with Apple’s next-generation GPU, which now has up to 10 cores — two more than the M1.

The latest chip iteration delivers 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and supports up to 24GB of fast unified memory. M2 also adds a next-generation media engine and a powerful ProRes video engine for hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding. So, systems with M2 will be able to play back more streams of 4K and 8K video than before.

With the macOS Monterey and Apple silicon, MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro will have tools like Universal Control to make it easy for users to work across Mac and iPad, while AirPlay to Mac enables users to play anything from their iPhone or iPad right to their Mac.

During Monday’s Apple WWDC 2022, Apple previewed macOS Ventura, the latest version of the most advanced desktop operating system.

The new operating system comes with a series of new features including Stage Manager; Continuity Camera and also a Handoff coming to FaceTime. The macOS Ventura also includes big updates to Safari, Mail, Messages, Spotlight, and more.

A public beta of macOS Ventura will be available to Mac users next month. macOS Ventura will be available in September as a free software update.