Apple announced a series of new products this week, ranging from a budget-friendly MacBook to a new iPhone. The announcements began on Monday with the new iPhone 17e and the M4 iPad Air. On Tuesday, Apple revealed the M5 MacBook Air, new MacBook Pro models, new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, and a new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. The week concluded on Wednesday with the introduction of a more affordable MacBook called the MacBook Neo, which runs on a chip similar to those in the iPad and iPhone.
Apple unveiled the latest version of its budget-friendly iPhone line, the iPhone 17e. It retails for $599 and will be available on March 11. The smartphone features the A19 chip found in the base iPhone 17. The base model comes with 256 GB of storage, doubling the entry storage of the previous iPhone 16e. Notable changes include the addition of MagSafe and Qi2, supporting wireless charging up to 15W. The camera remains a 48-megapixel system, the same as the iPhone 16e. The iPhone 17e also includes the C1X, Apple’s latest-generation cellular modem, which Apple states is up to twice as fast as the C1 in the iPhone 16e and uses 30% less energy than the modem in an iPhone 16 Pro for better battery life. The smartphone is available in black, white, and a new soft pink color.
Apple announced the new iPad Air, powered by the M4 chip. This makes it 30% faster than the M3 iPad Air and 2.3 times faster than the M1 version. Pricing remains the same at $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch model, with a $50 discount for educational customers. Designed for better AI performance thanks to an updated neural engine and more memory, the iPad Air features an 8-core CPU and a 9-core GPU. It comes with 12GB of unified memory, a 50% increase, and memory bandwidth of up to 120GB/s. The device comes in blue, purple, starlight, and space gray, with storage options of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
Alongside the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, Apple unveiled updated MacBook Pro models featuring these chipsets. The chips are designed to make the laptops better at handling intensive AI tasks, with performance for such tasks up to four times faster than their M4 predecessors. The M5 Pro and M5 Max are up to four times faster at LLM prompt processing than the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to eight times faster at AI image generation than the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The MacBook Pro offers up to twice the read/write performance of the last generation, starting at 1TB of storage for the M5 Pro model and 2TB for the M5 Max model. Battery life reaches up to 24 hours, and with a 96W or higher USB-C adapter, the laptop can charge to 50% in 30 minutes. The laptops support Thunderbolt 5 and have a six-speaker sound system. The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro chips start at $2,199 and $2,699, respectively, while models with M5 Max chips start at $3,599 and $3,899, available in black or silver.
Apple’s new MacBook Air was also designed for improved AI task handling. It offers 18 hours of battery life, a six-hour improvement over 2020 Intel-based models. It features a 12MP Center Stage camera, a three-mic array, and a sound system with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos support. Connectivity includes two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MagSafe charging port, and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099 and the 15-inch model starts at $1,299. They are available in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. The base storage is now 512 GB, double the previous model.
Apple introduced a low-cost, entry-level laptop called the MacBook Neo, positioned as an answer to Google’s Chromebook. Starting at $599, it is designed for students and users with less intensive workflows. The 13-inch laptop comes in silver, blush, citrus, and indigo. The base model has 256GB of storage, while a $699 model offers 512GB and Touch ID. It runs on the A18 Pro chip from the iPhone 16 Pro models. The MacBook Neo includes a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, dual microphones, side speakers with Spatial Audio support, and a battery lasting up to 16 hours. It features a 5-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine for gameplay and on-device AI tasks comparable to a recent iPhone.
Apple unveiled a new $1,599 Studio Display and a $3,299 Studio Display XDR. Both 27-inch displays feature upgraded cameras, including a 12MP Center Stage camera with improved image quality and support for Desk View. They come with Thunderbolt 5 ports for connecting accessories and daisy-chaining up to four displays. The Studio Display has a 5K Retina display with over 14 million pixels, 600 nits of brightness, and support for the P3 wide-gamut color standard. The Studio Display XDR features a 5K Retina XDR display with a mini-LED backlight, over 2,000 local dimming zones, up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness, 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and support for the Adobe RGB color standard.
The new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are built on Apple’s new Fusion Architecture, integrating a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. Both chips feature an 18-core CPU, an upgrade from prior generations, with six “super cores” and twelve new performance cores, boosting performance by up to 30% for pro workloads. The M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory with 307GB/s bandwidth, while the M5 Max supports up to 128GB with 614GB/s bandwidth.
Apple has introduced new spring colors for accessories. The silicone case for the standard iPhone 17 now comes in Bright Guava, Vanilla, and Electric Lavender, with Bright Guava and Vanilla also available for the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. The Apple Watch Sport Band is available in Bright Guava, Clementine, and Soft Pink, while the Sport Loop adds Bright Guava, Blue Mist, and Cantaloupe. The Crossbody Strap is now available in Bright Guava and Soft Pink.