Apple’s most important Mac announcement this week

Apple made a lot of announcements this week, including the launch of the M4 Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and iMac. While each of those products is impressive, there’s one surprise announcement that stands out most to me.

On Wednesday, along with the new MacBook Pro, Apple announced that the MacBook Air now starts at 16GB of RAM and costs the same as before.

The MacBook Air is Apple’s most popular Mac, and Apple consistently touts it as “the world’s most popular laptop.” I’m not sure of the exact breakdown, but my instinct is that a lot of those MacBook Air sales are of the base model. Until this week, the base model MacBook Air had 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

I get asked all the time what Mac I think people should buy, whether it’s a family member, friend, or 9to5Mac reader. For years, the MacBook Air has been my go-to answer for almost everyone. For most of those people, however, I’ve also had to qualify my recommendation and suggest most people upgrade from 8GB of RAM to 16GB.

Selfishly, I’m happy I no longer have to have the RAM talk with people. It’s a tricky topic to explain, and people generally aren’t too receptive to the idea of spending an extra $200 for what they think is an invisible upgrade.

One key benefit of the MacBook Air now having 16GB of RAM is future-proofing. Even as Apple introduces more RAM-hungry Apple Intelligence features, I think a MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM will last most people for a long time–maybe even all the way to 2030.

Would it have been nice for Apple to also boost the base storage from 256GB to 512GB? Of course. Expanding storage after the fact is trivial with an external SSD, but expanding RAM after the fact is impossible.

And again, the absolute best part of this change is that Apple didn’t raise MacBook Air prices at all. Apple billed this as an “exciting week of announcements,” and I think this upgrade to the MacBook Air is the most important change of them all. I can now wholeheartedly recommend the MacBook Air as the best Mac for most people.

• $1,099: Buy the 13-inch M3 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM
• $1,299: Buy the 15-inch M3 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM
• $999: Buy the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM

PSA: if you just went the M2 MacBook Air at the lowest price possible, Best Buy is still selling through its inventory of the 8GB of RAM configuration at a $100 discount.

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