Apple’s larger MacBook Air may come with an ‘M2-like’ chip – Times of India

Apple has been long rumoured to unveil a larger 15-inch MacBook Air this year. Reportedly this larger laptop may come at the company’s annual developer’s conference, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which will be held from June 5-9. This larger MacBook Air may not be much different from its 13-inch counterpart, except for the size.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reports that Apple is speeding up the testing for yet-to-be-released Macs, and these machines feature chips “on-par” with the M2 chip.
Apple has been testing the compatibility of these new Macs with third-party apps from the App Store, and as per the developer logs shows that there is a MacBook with larger, higher resolution display, but with a chip we have seen in the current models. This larger MacBook, codenamed “Mac 15,3” could very well be the rumoured 15-inch model of the Air.

Gurman notes that the chip powering the said MacBook has 8 cores and a 10-core graphics processor, similar to the configuration of M2 chip. The MacBook pairs 8GB RAM, which could be the base-level option for the coming model, similar to the 13-inch MacBook Air.
The 15-inch MacBook Air would have the same screen resolution as the 14-inch MacBook Pro but less sharp than that of the Pro – a tradeaway to create distinction between ‘Air’ and ‘Pro’ lineup.
So, the M2 chip inside the new machine could mean that the M3 chip might not be presented at the developer’s conference, saving it for later.

M3 chip coming later
The M3 chip will mark the transition to 3nm process node from 5nm, which is said to bring improvements to performance and efficiency. Gurman notes that this year’s new iPhones, probably the ‘Pro’ models are also expected to use the chips made with the 3nm process.
Update on other Macs
Aside the larger MacBook Air, an update to the 13-inch model is also said to be underway. It is expected to come later this year with the M3 chip. The M3 series powered 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops will come in early 2024 with the higher end variants of third-generation silicon. Then, there is also a 13-inch MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac under development, slated to release this year.