The degree to which the M1 MacBook Air has handled my uncompromising day-to-day use has been, frankly, astonishing. Indeed, Apple says you could even notice an uptick in speed. In theory, it means the same programs you're used to running on your old Mac should work on your new MacBook Air. In short, while native software written for Apple Silicon is best, Rosetta 2 allows apps written for Intel-based Macs to run on the new M1 and future Apple-designed chipsets.

To make it less arduous a change are things like Rosetta 2. Developers are under no misconception about the future of the platform. Apple may still have Intel-powered Macs coexisting alongside their Apple Silicon counterparts for a while to come, but the writing is undoubtedly on the wall for them. On the one hand, the transition is inevitable. Apple's solution – in somewhat typical Cupertino fashion – is a mixture of stick and carrot.

It's a problem that has stymied attempts by Microsoft and Qualcomm to coax Windows on Arm into making any sort of splash: getting all the pieces of apps, operating system, laptop, and the core chipset to line up properly has turned out to be akin to herding cats. The flip side to that is compatibility with the apps Mac owners have already been using. It also helps narrow the gap between those three ecosystems, computer and tablet and phone, by supporting native iOS/iPadOS apps on macOS for the first time. That combination of Arm-based hardware – versus Intel's x86 processors – and software like macOS Big Sur allows for the same sort of optimizations on Mac that have long made iOS and iPadOS such powerhouse platforms. Both, though, are capable of driving up to a single 6K 60Hz external display ( at least, officially).Īs anybody following the Apple Silicon story likely already knows, the headline here is Apple using for its Macs the same chip tech that powers its iPhone and iPad models. The $1,249 version of the Air, however, has an M1 variant with an 8-core GPU. The entry-level $999 machine with 8GB of memory – the one I'm reviewing – uses an M1 variant with an 8-core CPU, a 7-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine. Star of the show is the Apple M1, of course, though the specifications differ very slightly depending on which MacBook Air configuration you buy. Inside, 8GB or 16GB of memory, between 256GB and 2TB of SSD storage, and both WiFi 6 802.11ax and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless can be found.

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