Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Air has a processor like no other laptop

“Apple on Tuesday unveiled the first Retina MacBook Air, just as we expected, a redesigned machine that should be better in almost every way than its predecessor — the new Air only has USB-C ports and the MagSafe charging port is gone, aligning the Air design to the MacBook and Pro series,” Chris Smith writes for BGR. “But what Apple didn’t tell us on stage is that the new MacBook Air has a processor that’s not available on any other laptop, at least not for the time being.”
“Apple said the new notebook packs an Intel Core i5 chip clocked at 1.6GHz, and ready to go up to 3.6GHz with Turbo Boost,” Smith writes. “There’s no other option for the MacBook Air right now. You can upgrade the RAM up to 16GB and storage up to 1.5TB SSD, but the processor is always the same.”
Smith writes, “It was AnandTech that first observed the new Air features a chip that was nowhere to be found at Intel… AnandTech speculated that the chip is one of Intel’s 5 Watt Y-series chips part of the recently announced Amber Lake family. In addition to offering notable performance gains, the new chip is what helped Apple increase battery life on the new Air.”
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MacDailyNews Note: Juli Clover reports for MacRumors, “Intel has added the new MacBook Air chip to its ARK database. As AnandTech guessed, the MacBook Air is using a Core i5-8210Y Amber Lake Y processor, but at 7W, not 5W.”
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