The 15-inch MacBook Air offers superb battery life and portability at an aggressive price
Kif Leswing/CNBC
Apple announced a 15-inch MacBook Air last week. It hits store shelves on Tuesday and costs $1,299 for the base model or as much as $,2499 with upgraded RAM and storage.
The MacBook Air has come in 11-inch and 13-inch versions in the past, but this is the first time it’s had a 15-inch screen, which is the most popular laptop size. It could seriously boost Mac sales, which have been falling for the past two quarters.
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If you upgraded your laptop or PC in the past two years — like hundreds of millions of people did during the pandemic — this new model isn’t worth an upgrade. But if you held out and need a new laptop, the 15-inch MacBook Air hits the sweet spot for most people in terms of price, capability, and portability.
It’s probably the best laptop for most people if you like the MacOS operating system and plan to use it for everyday tasks like writing documents and spreadsheets, going to school, or using the internet.
My quick takeaways:
Like:
- Battery life is great.
- The big screen is better for doing work on the road.
- It’s thin and light enough to barely be noticeable in a backpack, despite the larger size.
Don’t like:
- The midnight finish is a fingerprint and smudge magnet.
- The speakers are mounted in the computer’s hinge near the screen, and are only OK.
- Many people don’t mind Apple’s notch. I always notice it on a laptop.
Worth upgrading to 512GB hard drive
The 15-inch MacBook Air is a very capable and powerful-feeling computer with battery life so long you won’t need to think about it: It lasts an entire day and only needs overnight charging.
It’s fast, can handle what feels like infinite windows and apps at the same time, and has nearly all of the software I need to use. Some apps, like the FactSet financial database I use at work, don’t have Mac versions. But Mac does support native Microsoft Office and Google Chrome, as well as Apple’s own built-in alternatives, iWork and Safari, which covers many people’s primary needs.
The extra screen size makes a difference versus the 13-inch MacBook Air. It’s easier to put two documents side-by-side at the same time. The physical screen is not only bigger, but it has a 2880×1864 resolution, higher than the 13-inch model, which means you can fit more on the screen.
The 13-inch M2 MacBook Air (silver) versus the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air (dark blue.)
Kif Leswing/CNBC
There isn’t much of a portability tradeoff from the extra screen size in my experience, either, mainly because it’s so thin. The 15-inch MacBook Air fits easily into a backpack or briefcase, and I didn’t really notice the extra 3.3 pounds while I was commuting with it on public transportation.
While $1,299 is fairly expensive for a laptop, it does represent value in Apple’s lineup, especially for people who want a bigger screen. The 15-inch screen is now the second largest display Apple offers in a laptop, behind the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which starts at $2,499 and has a lot of features most people don’t need, like a more powerful processor, fans, and ports for external camera cards.
However, I believe that most people will want more storage and should upgrade to 512GB of hard drive space, which brings the price to $1,499.
Even gaming, which isn’t a primary focus for Apple, is pretty good on the Mac. While new titles like Diablo 4 aren’t yet available, a huge portion of my Steam library runs on the computer, including titles like Civilization 6 and Stardew Valley.
Kif Leswing/CNBC
On the 15-inch MacBook Air, there are only two USB-C ports, but I don’t mind — recently, I’ve found myself using USB-A accessories much less. The more expensive MacBook Pro models come with HDMI ports to directly plug into TVs and monitors.
Meanwhile, the 13-inch MacBook Air got a price cut to $1,099, which makes it a good deal for people who don’t care about the larger screen, or people who plan to primarily use it while plugged into a monitor. However, I don’t think the smaller laptop is significantly more portable — they’re both light enough to stick in your bag and forget about.
Kif Leswing/CNBC
The two MacBook Air sizes have most of the same components, including similar M2 processors, which is currently Apple’s state-of-the-art offering for low-power laptops and tablets. Apple has now transitioned from Intel processors completely.
Apple also fixed the keyboards, and now they come with deep, clicky keys that are a joy to type on. There’s no more “Touch Bar,” which has been replaced by handy physical function keys that give one-button access to brightness, volume, and play/pause. Apple’s screens and webcams look great, and are usable even in broad daylight — although many models, including the 15-inch MacBook Air, come with a notch cut out at the top, like on the iPhone, which you might find distracting.
Kif Leswing/CNBC
All in all, the 15-inch MacBook Air is one of the first laptops from Apple since the M-series transition to be priced aggressively, and represents a great option for people who want a daily use laptop. It should be particularly attractive to people who haven’t recently upgraded.
An Electron rocket launches the Baby Come Back mission from New Zealand on July 17, 2023.
Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab stock soared 8% Monday, building on a strong run fueled by space innovation.
Shares of the space infrastructure company have nearly doubled over the last two months following a slew of successful launches and a deal with the European Union.
The stock is up 63% year to date after surging nearly sixfold in 2024.
Last month, Rocket Lab announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to launch satellites for constellation navigation before December.
Rocket Lab also announced the successful launch of its 66th, 67th and 68th Electron rockets in June. The company successfully deployed two rockets from the same site in 48 hours.
Rocket Lab competes with a growing list of companies in a maturing and increasingly competitive space industry with growing demand. Some of the main competitors in the sector include Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, which filed its prospectus to go public on Friday.
“For Electron, our little rocket, we’ve seen increased demand over the last couple of years and we’re not just launching single spacecraft — these are generally entire constellations for customers,” CEO Peter Beck told CNBC last month.
He said the company is producing a rocket every 15 days.
Beck, a New Zealand-native, founded the company in 2006. Since its debut on the Nasdaq in August 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, the Long Beach, California-based company’s market value has swelled to more than $19 billion.
WATCH: Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck: One thing I don’t worry about at night is demand
Technology
Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to $200 million for AI work from Defense Department
A view of the Pentagon on December 13, 2024, in Washington, DC. Home to the US Defense Department, the Pentagon is one of the world’s largest office buildings.
Daniel Slim | Afp | Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday said it’s granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.
The DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said the awards will help the agency accelerate its adoption of “advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges.” The companies will work to develop AI agents across several mission areas at the agency.
“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Doug Matty, the DoD’s chief digital and AI officer, said in a release.
Elon Musk’s xAI also announced Grok for Government on Monday, which is a suite of products that make the company’s models available to U.S. government customers. The products are available through the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, which allows federal government departments, agencies, or offices to purchase them, according to a post on X.
OpenAI was previously awarded a year-long $200 million contract from the DoD in 2024, shortly after it said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
In June, the company launched OpenAI for Government for U.S. federal, state, and local government workers.
WATCH: US needs an allied strategy for AI investment in military and defense: Palantir
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said he plans to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into artificial intelligence compute infrastructure, and that Meta plans to bring its first supercluster online next year.
A supercluster is a large, complex computing network that’s designed to train advanced AI models and handle their workloads.
“Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “I’m looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier!”
Zuckerberg said Meta’s first supercluster is called Prometheus, and that the company is building several other multi-gigawatt clusters. One cluster, called Hyperion, will be able to scale up to five gigawatts over several years, he said.
Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar AI hiring spree in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. He announced a new organization in June called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers.
Zuckerberg had grown frustrated with Meta’s progress in AI, especially after the release of its Llama 4 AI models in April received a lukewarm response from developers. He is revamping Meta’s approach to better compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google.
“For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” Zuckerberg wrote Monday.
WATCH: Meta announces several multi-gigawatt data centers, first planning to come online in 2026
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