It looks like Apple is readying its perfect laptop for the market. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Friday, Apple has stepped up testing on “new Macs with processors on par with the current M2 chip.” Test logs seen by Bloomberg appear to indicate that Apple is testing what is likely a 15-inch MacBook Air.
Testing involves validity with third-party apps from the App Store, which Apple performs before a Mac is released to market. The chip in the laptop under test has eight processing cores (divided into four performance cores and four efficiency cores) and 10 graphics cores, which matches the profile of Apple’s M2. The laptop was also tested with 8GB of memory, the standard configuration for the current MacBook Air.
Another key specification discovered by Bloomberg is that the laptop under test has a screen resolution equal to that of the 14-inch MacBook Pro. However, the 15-inch MacBook Air (like the current 13.3-inch MacBook Air) will likely use a Liquid Retina (LED) display that doesn’t offer the sharpness and brightness of more expensive Liquid Retina XDR (mini-LED) displays in 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.
Bloomberg notes that the laptop has been tested with macOS 14, the next version of macOS that will be unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. That doesn’t mean the new laptop will be released with macOS 14, which won’t ship until the fall. Apple currently offers macOS Ventura version 13.3.1 with version 13.4 in beta.
Given that these tests take place about six weeks after WWDC, this could mean that Apple will use the keynote to unveil the new machine. It’s also possible that Apple will unveil the 15-inch Air before WWDC.
Apple is also working on an update to the current 13-inch MacBook Air, iMac, and MacBook Pro, as well as an M3 chip created using the 3nm production process. However, the Bloomberg report does not say that these Macs or the M3 were included in the test logs they saw.
