Apple’s redesigned MacBook Air (M2, 2022) will be up for pre-order later this week.
MacBook Air pre-orders will ship on July 8 at 5 am PT (8 am ET, 1 pm BST), Apple announced, and those who place an order will begin receiving their machines starting July 15.
That’s what the rumor mill believed to be the case for the release date, and it turned out to be a hit – as was our hunch as to when pre-orders would start (though of course it was always a week in advance).
The new MacBook Air has been highly anticipated since its reveal at WWDC 2022, and while it was the MacBook Pro that was also unveiled at the recent conference that went on sale first, the latter hasn’t offered much in the way of change (except to adopt the new M2 SoC).
Generally speaking, people are much more excited about the MacBook Air, as you can imagine, which changes the design a lot – and of course adds this new M2 chip too.
The MacBook Air starts at $1,199 / £1,249 for the base model and will be available in midnight, starlight, silver and space grey.
For those ready to pounce, check out our dedicated Macbook Air pre-order article, with links to all the major retail stores that will be stocking the laptop soon.
Analysis: A rush to buy – with any caution?
The question now with the MacBook Air is not when it will appear on shelves, but how quickly it will disappear from shelves. From what we’ve seen so far online, there’s a lot of excitement to pick up one of these new Apple laptops, so expect pre-order competition to be relatively fierce.
And with some question marks previously posed over Apple’s ability to maintain production levels of suitably rugged laptops – with interference witnessed due to lockdowns in China – there are concerns that the stock could quickly disappear.
Certainly the cheaper models could turn out to be popular, although another issue might raise your head there – namely, doubts as to whether the SSD for the entry-level MacBook Air could have taken the same shortcut seen with the M2 MacBook Pro (i.e. , using a differently configured unit that is cheaper but slower on the base model).
Because of this concern, we may see some hesitation over the immediate rush for the entry-level Air, until it’s confirmed whether or not the laptop takes the same storage approach as the M2 Pro.
