Along with the announcement of the upcoming Mac Pro, Apple also unveiled a MacBook Air refresh with the big feature being extended battery life – the 11.6″ models get 9 hours and the 13.3″ models get up to 12 hours run time.
Additionally, the new MacBook Air models received an updated Intel Core i5 (Haswell) processor and a PCIe SSD drive instead of SATA, which boosts the read/write performance to around 800MB/s. That is a big increase over the 2012 models, which came in around 500MB/s. The graphics processor is also about 30% faster than the previous generation.
I/O connectivity includes a single Thunderbolt port, dual USB 3.0 ports and a SDXC card slot. SSD drives start at 128GB on the low end models, along with 4GB standard RAM.
Unlike the Mac Pro, which is coming sometime later in 2013, the new MacBook Air models are already shipping. The 11.6″ model starts at $999, while the 13.3″ model starts at $1099. Check them all out here at B&H Photo.