Consumer Tech Apple Confirmed New MacBook Air Details Ewan Spence Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Storyteller exploring digital worlds, mobile, music and podcasting New! Follow this author to improve your content experience. Got it! Jul 6, 2022, 07:27pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Following its Worldwide Developer Conference announcement of the latest Apple Silicon chipset in the M2, Tim Cook and his team also presented the latest macOS laptops in the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. First to the market was the M2-powered MacBook Pro, and it has not received a warm welcome , with its throttled performance, tired design, and muddled positioning all highlighted by reviews. Apple has now confirmed when the M2-powered MacBook Air will be released , and hopes are high that this laptop will have a better reception. M2 MacBook Air, mid-2022. Apple Newsroom Pre-orders for the MacBook Air will open this Friday, July 8th, with the first batch of laptops airing on April 15th. From Apple’s press release: "Beginning Friday, July 8, at 1 p. m. BST, the completely redesigned MacBook Air with M2 will be available to order, and will start arriving to customers worldwide on Friday, July 15. Supercharged by the M2 chip, the all-new MacBook Air features even more performance and a new strikingly thin design, a larger 13. 6-inch Liquid Retina display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a four-speaker sound system, up to 18 hours of battery life,1 and MagSafe charging. Now available in four gorgeous finishes — midnight, starlight, silver, and space grey — MacBook Air with M2 starts at £1249 and £1149 for education. " Although the cardinal number is larger, the M2 chip is not faster than the M1 Pro or M1 Max found in the larger professional-focused MacBook Pro laptops, so the direct comparison will be to the first M1 MacBook Air, and a performance jump of around eighteen per cent is expected. One question will be if this is sustained, given the throttling and performance problems the M2 MacBook Pro is facing. Another will be if Apple has reduced the effective read and write speed of the SSD storage by running single SSD chips instead of paired SSD chips, another issue plaguing some of the M2 MacBook Pro SKUs . MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event Finally, will Apple be able to satisfy demand? Supply issues have seen long lead times across the consumer electronics industry and Apple has been impacted . As the consumer-focused populist laptop, this MacBook Air will no doubt be in high demand, and the delivery dates timescale could rapidly grow when pre-orders open this Friday. A popular laptop with potentially limited supply… If you want to be on the M2 train, get your tickets quickly. Now read why the MacBook Pro should be ignored…. Check out my website . Ewan Spence Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.