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In addition to its reasonable price iPhone 17e and M4 iPad Air Yesterday, Apple announced some updates to the rarely updated MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and desktop Latitude line.
Your MacBook Air has now been updated to the latest M5 chip. It’s a fairly modest upgrade, but it picks up speed with Apple’s latest processor that debuted in MacBook Pro last fall. There are no other major hardware changes — it now comes with 512GB of storage with “faster SSD technology” — but you can still get the Air with a 13- or 15-inch screen size.
This laptop also features the Apple N1 wireless chip, which includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the latest communication standards. It still comes with the standard 16GB of RAM, and unfortunately, there’s a $100 price bump to account for the extra storage. Pricing now starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch model. Apple says you can pre-order it tomorrow, with sales starting on March 11.
Even more interestingly, Apple is expanding the M5 chipset lineup with the M5 Pro and M5 Max, now available in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Like previous generations of Apple silicon, the “Pro” and “Max” configurations add improved multi-core CPU and graphics performance.
The M5 Pro and M5 Max can be configured with up to 18 CPU cores (12 performance cores and 6 “ultra” cores), compared to 16 cores in the M4 Max. The M5 Pro can scale up to 20 GPU cores, while the M5 Max scales up to 40 GPU cores. Thanks to higher memory bandwidth, a more efficient neural engine, and improved GPU architecture, Apple says the M5 Pro and M5 Max have “more than 4x the peak AI CPU computation” compared to the last generation and deliver 20 percent better GPU performance.
The new MacBook Pro doesn’t include any other hardware changes; Things have remained largely the same since 2021 – the same port selection, Mini-LED display, speakers, and webcam. Even the claimed 24-hour battery life is unchanged from the M4 models, which were released in late 2024. Interestingly, as of last week, Bloomberg reported Apple is planning to launch a more significant update to the MacBook Pro later this fall, which will reportedly debut an M6 chip, an OLED touchscreen, and a thinner chassis.
Like the MacBook Air, all versions of the M5 Pro or M5 Max MacBook Pros come with double the storage capacity and a slightly higher starting price. The 14-inch M5 Pro comes in a 1TB variant, and now starts at $2,199, and the 16-inch model is $2,699. That’s $200 more than last year’s machines. Meanwhile, prices for the M5 Max start at $3,599.