If you are heading out this weekend to pick up a shiny new MacBook Air be warned. Apple has just made a small but mighty tweak to these popular laptops and it’s vital you check the specs before tapping the buy button. From this week, all MacBook Air models – including the M2 and M3 versions – have had their ‘Unified Memory’ boosted from a measly 8GB to a more useful 16GB. It’s something Apple had been criticised for in the past with the US firm clearly feeling now is the right time to give things a boost.
The update means Apple no longer sells any laptops with the smaller 8GB memory tucked inside.
It’s a nice upgrade especially as the price hasn’t gone up in the process (Apple charged around £200 to jump from 8GB to 16GB on previous models).
You can order the latest MacBook Air from Apple right now and that’s advice we’d definitely take note of.
Other UK retailers – including Argos and Currys – still have stock of the older MacBook Air laptops that only come with 8GB of memory and buying one of these machines means you’re getting seriously short-changed.
For example, the MacBook Air M2 from Apple starts from £999 with 16GB of memory. You’ll pay exactly the same price at Argos for the model with 8GB.
More Unified Memory means the Mac will be able to cope with intensive tasks such as video editing, photo retouching and gaming far more easily.
Even if you only surf the web and send emails you should still find the device is more capable – it also future proofs it should you suddenly find your workload increases.
Prices for the 8GB models still in circulation may drop in the future but right now these are bad purchases so check before you add them to your online shopping basket.
It’s been a big week for Apple with the US firm announcing the release of new M4 powered MacBook Pros, iMacs and a fully rebooted Mac mini which gets a new design and ports on the the front.
They are all available to pre-order now and will arrive in stores next week.
Along with being faster, these machines are ready for Apple Intelligence which is coming later this year and aims to make daily tasks such as emailing, photo editing and searching for files al lot easier.
