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Text |leitechApple's 2024 spring conference is approaching, and while everyone is still speculating about which new products will appear at this conference, Apple has decided to play some new tricks this year and directly update the MacBook Air without any notice.
On March 5, Apple CEO Tim Cook promoted the two new products on his personal Weibo. According to Cook, the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air are equipped with a powerful M3 chip that is better than ever! Two perfect sizes, incredibly thin and lightweight, portable design, and all-day battery life.
Source: Weibo.
Considering that the spring conference is imminent, Apple's rush to release new products has the meaning of "rushing", which indicates that Apple, which is slow to take a beat in AI hardware, is in a hurry. So, how did Apple's first answer sheet on AI hardware perform?
Yes, that's right, the biggest change in the MacBook Air is the use of Apple's self-developed M3 chip, which was a blockbuster product released by Apple at Apple's press conference last fall, and was first carried on the IMAC and MacBook Pro. After five months, the MacBook Air finally uses this chip.
The M3 MacBook Air is equipped with an 8-core** processor and up to 10-core GPU, with support for up to 24GB of unified memory and 2TB of solid-state storage. With the blessing of the M3 chip, MacBook Air will support dynamic caching, which can dynamically allocate appropriate caches for different tasks, improve the efficiency of GPU usage, and support mesh shading rendering and hardware-level ray tracing acceleration technology to achieve stronger graphics rendering effects in games, offices and other scenarios.
This gives the MacBook Air a huge boost in productivity, and while slightly inferior to the MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro and M3 Max, it is infinitely closer to the M3 version of the MacBook Pro. This makes the positioning of MacBook Air a more three-dimensional product, which can not only cope with light office scenarios, but even suitable for some professional scenarios.
Source: Apple
In order to let everyone have a more intuitive feeling of the performance of the M3 MacBook Air, the official directly moved out the M1 MacBook Air as a reference. Compared to the M1 MacBook Air, the performance of the M3 MacBook Air is improved by about 16 times faster graphics processing up to 58 times.
In addition to the performance improvement, the MacBook Air's energy consumption control has also been upgraded accordingly, and the battery life of up to 18 hours is enough to support users for a long time at work.
The reason why Xiaolei focuses on the performance part is because**MacBook AirThe main upgrade is the M3 chip, and the appearance, screen, interface, weight, etc. are no different from before.
Added support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 53Technology、External display,We can roughly understand these functions,Because at best, it can only be regarded as Apple's self-breakthrough,Users have become accustomed to competing products at the same price on the market。
Source: Apple
In terms of *, the MacBook Air has now landed in the Bank of China store, and will be available for order at 9 a.m. on March 6, and will be officially released on March 8.
**13-inch MacBook Air top configuration (8-core CPU 10-core GPU 16-core NPU 24GB+2TB) is priced at 17999 yuan, and the prices of other versions are as follows:
8-core CPU 8-core GPU 8GB+256GB, 8999 yuan.**15-inch MacBook Air top configuration (8-core CPU 10-core GPU 16-core NPU 24GB+2TB) is priced at 19499 yuan, and the prices of other versions are as follows:8-core CPU 10-core GPU 8GB+512GB, 10499 yuan.
8-core CPU 10-core GPU 16GB+512GB, 11999 yuan.
8-core CPU 10-core GPU 8GB+256GB, 10499 yuan.If you have a greater need for device storage space, Brother Guozi said that adding money can solve it. Each additional 8GB memory needs to add 1500 yuan, each additional 256GB hard disk needs 1500 yuan, and a 70W charger needs to add another 150 yuan.8-core CPU 10-core GPU 8GB+512GB, 11999 yuan.
8-core CPU 10-core GPU 16GB+512GB, 13499 yuan.
In today's era of crazy volume storage for mobile phone and computer manufacturers, Apple still maintains its own rhythm. 8999Yuan entry-level Air still provides8GB+256GB configuration,It can be seen that the previous "** memory" turmoil has no impact on Apple. It's not that 8GB+256GB will have a big impact on the performance of MacBook Air, it's just that in the face of the large memory of competitors, Apple users will have more or less a little mustard in their hearts.
The MacBook Air's performance boost is certainly a pleasant surpriseHowever, the most striking thing is that Apple called the MacBook Air "the best AI consumer notebook" in the promotional draft on the official website of the United States - this is the first time that Apple has officially mentioned the concept of AI notebooks, and it is also the first time that Apple has stated that it will follow the trend of AI hardware.
Prior to this, Apple completely abandoned the car-making project and increased AI, which made the outside world look forward to Apple's actions in AI mobile phones and AI hardware.
2024 is the first year of AI PCs, and leading computer manufacturers, including Lenovo, Asus, and HP, have launched their own AI PC products. **MacBook Air is the first AI PC launched by Apple after adding AIHowever, I prefer to call it an AI MacBook rather than an AI PC.
The AI MacBook is a new concept launched by Apple based on the M3 chip that integrates a 16-core neural engine, a ** processor, and a graphics processormacOS leverages the power of the M3 chip to provide users with real-time speech-to-text, translation, text**, visual understanding, accessibility and more.
In addition, AI MacBook has a rich AI application ecosystem to assist applications that support AI functions and help users better use these applications. For example, use Pixelmator Pro to auto-enhance**, check your assignments with the AI Math Assistant in Goodnotes 6, or remove background noise with Capcut.
Apple officially said that the MacBook Air supports cloud-based solutions and runs optimized AI models locally, such as large language models (LLMs) and image generation diffusion models, so that users can better leverage the power of AI productivity and creativity.
Previously, some Mac users imitated Chat with RTX and launched an exclusive Mac framework: Chat with MLX. Let Apple computers also run local large models, complete local document summary, youtube ** analysis and other 7 kinds of open source large models. Although the effect is achieved, the complicated setup process discourages ordinary users. Now the official support for the import of AI models will greatly reduce the cost of using AI functions for users.
As the first experience of Apple's AI PC, the AI MacBook is remarkable in terms of the number of AI functions and the attitude towards AI applications. However, at present, Apple has only opened up the AI interface, and still does not have its own official model, which is still slightly inferior to the progress of other manufacturers.
In addition, Microsoft has just launched the Copilot Pro subscription service to provide users with AI functions, which clearly puts forward new requirements for PC computing power and memory: the new Windows AI PC will require at least 40 TOPS of computing power and 16GB of memory to meet the threshold of AI PC. By this standard, the MacBook Air is not yet an AI PC, at least not the 8GB version.
AbsolutelyApple has a famous saying that "Apple's 8GB is equivalent to other 16GB", so it is impossible to refute the **MacBook Air in line with the "16GB" memory of AI PC.
For consumers, with the blessing of Apple's M3 chip, MacBook Air has become more outstanding while maintaining a small body. It will also be one of the best solutions in the computer market today for both daily work and light professional productivity.
For Apple, the release of MacBook Air is not only an iteration at the hardware level, but more importantly, it is the first step in the combination of AI and hardware. Apple's attitude shows that AI hardware is not a gimmick, but a battleground.
If the **MacBook Air is Apple's AI field of testing the waters, then the next WWDC developer conference may be the key work of Apple's AI, after all, AI hardware is inseparable from software and hardware, systems and application ecology, cloud and terminal support, in the terminal AI at the same time, software system and application ecology AI is equally important. Currently,iOS 18's update on generative AI has attracted much attention, and it will be the foundation of Apple's AI hardware ecosystemIt will directly affect Apple's most profitable iPhone business, and will also determine whether Apple can continue its leading position in the era of smart phones in the AI era.
So, whether Apple's MacBook Air can "use 8GB as 16GB", whether it is a qualified AI PC, Lei Technology will provide an evaluation as soon as possible. Regarding the dynamics of Apple's AI hardware and all AI hardware, please pay attention to Lei Technology, which focuses on AI "hard" technology.