Apple launches MacBook Air with M5 and unveils M5 Pro/Max chips for pro workflows

Apple says the new MacBook Air ships with an M5 chip that adds a faster CPU, a next‑generation GPU and a Neural Accelerator in every core, enabling “creative projects to complex AI tasks,” the company’s press release states. The device also doubles its base SSD to 512 GB and supports up to 4 TB, while the N1 wireless chip brings Wi‑Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for “seamless connectivity on the go” (Apple press release).

The Air’s design remains thin, light and aluminum, with a Liquid Retina display, 12 MP Center Stage camera, up to 18 hours of battery life and Spatial Audio. It will be sold in 13‑ and 15‑inch models in sky blue, midnight, starlight and silver, with pre‑orders opening March 4 and shipments beginning March 11 (Apple press release).

In parallel, Apple unveiled M5 Pro and M5 Max chips for the new MacBook Pro. Both chips use a “Fusion Architecture” that couples two dies into a single SoC, integrating a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine and Thunderbolt 5 (Apple press release). The 18‑core CPU includes six “super cores” – described as the world’s fastest CPU cores – plus 12 efficiency cores, delivering up to a 30 % performance boost for pro workloads (Apple press release).

The GPU scales to 40 cores, each with a Neural Accelerator, and offers more than four‑fold AI compute over the previous generation, while delivering up to 35 % higher ray‑tracing performance (Apple press release). Unified memory bandwidth is also increased, further accelerating AI‑heavy tasks.

Apple frames the M5 family as a step change for both consumer and professional users. The Air, paired with macOS Tahoe and Apple Intelligence, targets college students, creative professionals and business users, while the Pro and Max chips aim to “supercharge the most demanding pro workflows” on the new MacBook Pro (Apple press release).