Apple could reveal a new MacBook Air this June
The new devices will likely be unveiled alongside Apple's new VR/AR headset
Apple looks set to unveil a new line of MacBooks at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, alongside the debut of its long-anticipated mixed-reality headset.
That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who regularly reports on the latest happenings inside the tech giant. Gurman’s latest report suggests the reveal of the headset (which is expected to be called Reality) will be the show’s main event, while new MacBooks and new versions of Apple’s various operating systems will accompany it.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: MacBooks at WWDC
💻 Apple is expected to reveal new MacBooks at this year’s WWDC
🎀 A 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air will likely be unveiled
🙉 We’ve heard rumors of the 15-inch laptop for a while
🥽 Apple’s mixed-reality headset will also be revealed
According to Gurman, Apple has “several new models” of MacBook in the works, including a 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air, and an entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro. He expects they’ll release next year, although they probably won’t boast Apple’s new, internally manufactured M3 processors.
That tallies with rumors we’ve been hearing for a while now. Other leakers have suggested Apple is preparing to unveil the 15-inch MacBook Air in the first half of the year and production on the new models has already started, although it may appear under a different name and possibly drop the “Air” label entirely.
Gurman notes that mention of new laptops sporting M2 processors have shown in recent developer test logs. “That includes what appears to be a larger MacBook Air,” he says. “The logs show machines running chips with an eight-core CPU – split between four high-performance cores and four efficiency cores – and a 10-core graphics processor. They also include 8 gigabytes of memory.”
The upcoming Reality headset will be just as beefy. Rumored to support iris tracking, VR versions of popular Apple apps like FaceTime, and a pioneering hands-free tracking system, it sounds like a real beast of a device. It’s no surprise, then, that it’ll probably have a $3,000 price tag to match.
But just how big a splash it’ll make in the VR space isn’t certain. Apple’s designers reportedly want to delay the headset in favor of a pared-down, lighter and cheaper model that can appeal to a wider consumer market, and even after Apple hired a few VR game developers, it’s clear it won’t be a gaming-specific machine that can compete with Sony’s library of PSVR 2 games.
Worth dropping three grand on? Probably not for the everyday tech enthusiast. We’ll have to wait and see what Apple’s cooked up.