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Apple's M5 Chips Power New Fatter MacBooks
4 Mar
Summary
- New MacBook Air and Pro models feature Apple's latest M5 chips.
- Base storage is doubled on MacBook Air and increased on MacBook Pro.
- Updates aim to boost sales in a softening PC market.
- New M5 chips offer significant gains in performance and AI.
Apple launched updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models on March 3, 2026, featuring the company's latest M5-series chips. These new models aim to invigorate sales in a cooling personal computer market, which is currently facing higher memory component costs.
The 13-inch MacBook Air now starts with 512 gigabytes of storage, doubling the previous base offering, with its starting price effectively reduced for this storage tier. Higher-end MacBook Pro models are equipped with M5 Pro and M5 Max processors and begin with 1 terabyte of storage.
These enhancements follow Apple's successful transition to its M-series chips, which began in 2020 and have been marketed for their performance and battery efficiency advantages over Windows-based competitors. The PC market has seen uneven demand post-pandemic, leading to aggressive price competition among vendors.
Simultaneously, Apple also released the iPhone 17e on March 2, 2026, a more affordable smartphone model with 256 gigabytes of base storage. This strategy of increasing storage while maintaining competitive pricing is a key focus for Apple's product updates.
