Not only did it make a major move by killing the long-standing 15-inch MacBook Pro screen, leaving Apple without a 15-inch laptop, it pulled the plug on the butterfly keyboard, replacing it with a similarly flat design that had a much better mechanism underneath.
Then along came the 16-inch MacBook Pro in late 2019. The butterfly keyboard underwent several small revisions over the years, never quite making everyone happy (and gaining a reputation for stuck keys and other malfunctions), even if the keyboard hatred was, frankly, overblown. Others might have matched or beat its processor speeds, but the Air had a slim, unibody aluminum shell, a near-perfect keyboard and an OS that wouldn't drive you (quite as) crazy. There was once a time I called the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air "the most universally useful laptop you can buy." That was back when the Air was a very college-student-friendly $999 and clearly outclassed anything in the Windows world you could get for the same price. Intel Iris graphics are a step up without adding extra hardware from AMD or Nvidia. The default storage jumps from a measly 128GB to a more reasonable 256GB. New CPUs upgrade options include quad-core Intel 10th-gen chips. Beyond that one issue, most of the other news is good.
That $999 starting price only includes an Intel Core i3 CPU, not the Core i5 one would expect for that price. Also big news is that the laptop finally officially returns to the classic $999 (£999, AU$1,599) price, after a few years of starting at $1,199 and then $1,099 (although some retailers would regularly discount it by $100 or so).
The new keyboard isn't the only interesting new thing about the new MacBook Air. Yes, it solves a problem largely of Apple's own making, but the end result is highly satisfying, especially when coupled with new $999 starting price and component changes, which is why I consider it worthy of an Editors' Choice nod, with the caveat that there's a specific configuration that represents the best overall value. More than anything else, the new Magic Keyboard is what makes the latest Air such a winner.
It's a big improvement on the long-suffering butterfly keyboard found in most Macs in recent years, which has been plagued by breakdowns and general consumer dissatisfaction. That's because this is Apple's Magic Keyboard, a design first seen in the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro and based on the standalone Magic Keyboard for the iMac. The flat, island-style keyboard is slightly raised on the new model versus the older one. It's a subtle thing, but if you look closely there's a new look and feel to the keyboard. Put them next to each other and try to tell the two apart.
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