Apple Unveils MacBook With Faster Skylake Core M Processors, Longer Battery Life, Rose Gold Finish
Apple views its 12-inch MacBook as "the future of the notebook," and if that's the marketing pitch, you can't go around selling the thing with old hardware, right? Of course not, though up until now that's exactly what Apple was doing. Not anymore—Apple went and updated the MacBook with Skylake processors, while also giving it longer battery life and a new rose gold option.
The MacBook now rocks Intel's sixth-generation Core M processors ranging in speed from 1.1GHz to 1.3GHz, with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 3.1GHz. These chips bring burlier integrated graphics to the table that Apple says increases graphics performance by 25 percent. Apple also used the opportunity to upgrade the RAM from 1600MHz modules to 1866MHz modules, and claims the PCIe-based flash storage is faster, too.
These are welcome upgrades, though the bump in performance alone might not be enough to convince current MacBook owner to ditch their year-old laptops and jump to the new one. To further entice potential buyers, Apple increased the battery life by a full hour—the new generation MacBook promises up to 10 hours of wireless web browsing and up to 11 hours of movie playback.
As with the original MacBook, the refreshed model sails into town with a single port, that being USB-C for charging and data transfers. It also features 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, the idea being that wireless is the way of the future. The benefit of that is an extremely thin and light system measuring a scant 0.14-0.52 inches and weighing just 2 pounds.
The base model sports a 1.1GHz Core M3 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage for $1,299. At the other end of the spectrum, the $1,599 model upgrades the processor to a 1.3GHz Core M7 CPU and doubles the storage to 512GB.
The MacBook now rocks Intel's sixth-generation Core M processors ranging in speed from 1.1GHz to 1.3GHz, with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 3.1GHz. These chips bring burlier integrated graphics to the table that Apple says increases graphics performance by 25 percent. Apple also used the opportunity to upgrade the RAM from 1600MHz modules to 1866MHz modules, and claims the PCIe-based flash storage is faster, too.
These are welcome upgrades, though the bump in performance alone might not be enough to convince current MacBook owner to ditch their year-old laptops and jump to the new one. To further entice potential buyers, Apple increased the battery life by a full hour—the new generation MacBook promises up to 10 hours of wireless web browsing and up to 11 hours of movie playback.
As with the original MacBook, the refreshed model sails into town with a single port, that being USB-C for charging and data transfers. It also features 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, the idea being that wireless is the way of the future. The benefit of that is an extremely thin and light system measuring a scant 0.14-0.52 inches and weighing just 2 pounds.
The base model sports a 1.1GHz Core M3 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage for $1,299. At the other end of the spectrum, the $1,599 model upgrades the processor to a 1.3GHz Core M7 CPU and doubles the storage to 512GB.
