In the past few hours, the dense and fast day one of WWDC 2022 ended, projected on the maxi screens of the Apple Park in Cupertino, which made it possible to appreciate the implementation of the new M2 processor in the MacBook Pro 13 M2 and in the MacBook Air 2022 .
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After so much software, the “flab”, or the hardware. At WWDC 2022, Apple started slowly, illustrating the new M2 processors, and then focused on the fact and fake products, namely the MacBook Pro 13 M2 and the new MacBook Air.
Starting from the M2 processor, it was underlined how it was made with a production process that involves the use of 2nd generation 5-nanometer lithography: this has led to improvements not only in efficiency, but also in performance (+ 18% on the M1), and in speed (+ 1.9 times compared to the last decacore chip for notebook / PC). Among the improvements, there is also an increase in performance for the NPU (neutral processing unit, AI accelerator with 16 cores capable of executing 15.8 trillion operations every second), and by 40%, and for the GPU (2 more cores than in the past, now 10), improved in performance, compared to the M1, from 25 to 35% (at maximum power), so as to be able to support “multiple streams of 8K and 4K videos”.
This was achieved thanks to the possibility of integrating 25% more transistors, now equal to 20 billion, also mounting up to 24 GB of unified memory, supporting the 128-bit LPDDR5 type, inserting new cores dedicated to performance (4, ultrawide microarchitecture) and efficiency (4, wide microarchitecture), and increasing the bandwidth by 50% (now from 100 Gbps, with simultaneous lowering of latency) compared to the previous M1 processor.
Moving on to notebooks, let’s start with the new MacBook Air. If the WWDC 2020 with the Apple Silicon school’s M1 processor had brought as a dowry a MacBook Air 13 “innovated only in substance, with this year’s edition not only the new processor is foreseen, since the MacBook Air 2022 also changes the design .
The profile in the lower part no longer bears the wedge thinning but, as in the MacBook Pro, it is symmetrical and regular: the bezels, around the Liquid Retina display with True Tone brought from 13.3 to 13.6 inches, have been adequate, and this has allowed to respect the compaction of the device (0.44 x 11.97 x 8.46 mm for 1.24 kg). At the top of the display, the 1080p FaceTime camera is included in a notch and works in concert with an array of three beamforming microphones to capture crisp audio and with a poker of speakers, now all placed between the screen and Magic Keyboard (with Touch ID and a large touchpad supporting Force Touch), benefiting from the immersion of Spatial Audio. On the right side of the camera body, there are two USB 4 Type-C (with Thunderbolt 4) and the revived MagSafe 3 port for charging while, on the left, the 3.5 mm jack stands out.
The interior houses eight-core M2 processors, always with improved cores for efficiency and performance (such as to obtain a speed of 1.4 times higher than the M1 and an autonomy of up to 18 hours), differentiated in the GPU since in one case it is a 8 cores and in the other to 10 cores: the RAM starts from 8 GB, but also includes the options of 16 and 24 GB (increasing the price by 230 or 460 euros respectively), while the SSD storage starts from 256 GB, and includes also the cuts from 512 GB, 1 and 2 TB, (with upgrades of 230, 460 and 920 euros).
Scheduled for delivery next month, in sidereal gray, silver, gold not rose “Galaxy” and dark blue “Midnight”, the MacBook Air 2022 will be priced in Italy starting from 1,529 euros for the basic version with 256 GB of SSD , 8 GB of unified memory, 8-core GPU, 30W USB-C power supply, and € 1,979 for the version with 512 GB of SSD, 8 GB of RAM, 35W dual-port USB-C power supply, and 10-core GPU.
In terms of design, the MacBook Pro 13 M2 (30.41 x 21.24 x 1.56mm, for 1.4 kg), cadenced in space gray or silver, does not change compared to the past. The IPS panel is a resolute 13.3-inch Retina Display at 2560 x 1600 pixels, with 227 PPI, DCI-P3 color gamut support (with 25% more coverage than sRGB), and 500 nits of brightness. The high frame houses, in addition to the ambient light sensor (to detect the relative color temperature and balance the white of the monitor via True Tone), a 720p FaceTime HD webcam with the support of the ISP to improve the shots: the audio provides the 3.5 mm jack for high impedance headphones, an array of 3 microphones, stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos and, in video or music recording, Space Audio.
The camera body, still with the TouchBar, is surmounted by a backlit keyboard with 66 keys 4 of which for arrows, with Touch ID and trackpad equipped with Force Touch support: on the sides, the connective interfaces include USB 4 (40Gbps max), Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gbps), USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps max), a pair of USB 4 for charging / Thunderbolt, and allow support for an external display up to 6K at 60Hz.
Also contributing to Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity comes the Apple Silicon M2 octacore processor with GPU here at 10 cores, 100 GBps of memory bandwidth, 16 cores for the NPU: according to Cupertino, the encoding and encoding procedures in ProRES are speeded up by about 3 times compared to the past, the overall performance has improved by 40% (in some contexts, as in the case of gaming, perhaps at Baldur’s Gate 3, or editing via Affinity of RAW files). The unified memory, RAM, comes in cuts of 8, 16 or 24 GB, against the maximum 2 TB for SSD storage: in this round, Apple’s MacBook Pro also implements an active heat dissipation system. Also in this case, deliveries start next month, starting from an entry price of 1,629 euros for the Italian market.