Mac Book Neo, Air Pods Max 2, i Phone 17e, and everything else Apple announced this month | Tech Crunch
Overview
From a budget-friendly Mac Book to a new i Phone, Apple announced a series of new products this month.
The tech giant started things off on March 2 with the new i Phone 17e and the M4 i Pad Air. A day later, Apple announced the M5 Mac Book Air, new Mac Book Pro models, new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, and a new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. On March 4, Apple announced a cheaper Mac Book called the Mac Book Neo that runs on a chip similar to the i Pad and i Phone.
Details
A week and a half later, Apple dropped a surprise announcement: the Air Pods Max 2, the long-awaited successor to its premium headphones that launched in 2020.
If you didn’t have time to check out all the new products, we’ve compiled all the announcements for you right here.
Apple unveiled the latest version of its budget-friendly i Phone line, the i Phone 17e, which retails for $599 and will be available on March 11.
The smartphone comes with the A19 chip that’s found in the base i Phone 17. The base model comes with 256 GB of storage, which is twice the entry storage from the i Phone 16e.
One of the most notable changes from the previous budget i Phone is the addition of Mag Safe and Qi 2, which supports wireless charging up to 15 W. As for the camera, the i Phone 17e features the same 48-megapixel camera as the i Phone 16e.
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The i Phone 17e also features C1X, Apple’s latest-generation cellular modem, which is up to 2x faster than the C1 in i Phone 16e, according to Apple. The tech giant says C1X uses 30% less energy than the modem in an i Phone 16 Pro, which allows for better battery life.
The smartphone is available in black, white, and a new soft pink color.
Apple announced the new i Pad Air, powered by the M4 chip, making it 30% faster than the M3 i Pad Air and 2.3x faster than the M1 version. The new device still retails for the same price of
The i Pad Air is designed to be faster, thanks to an updated neural engine and more memory, making it better for AI uses.
The i Pad Air also features an 8-core CPU and a 9-core GPU, making it a decent option for gaming or photo editing. It also comes with 12GB of unified memory, a 50% increase from the previous model, and the memory bandwidth is now up to 120GB/s. Apple says these upgrades enable users to run AI models faster than on previous generations.
The device comes in four colors: blue, purple, starlight, and space gray. Storage options are 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
Alongside the release of the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, Apple unveiled updated Mac Book Pro models featuring the latest chipsets. Apple said these new chips were specifically designed to make its laptops better at handling intensive AI tasks. The new Pro laptops can handle AI tasks up to 4x faster than their respective M4 predecessors.
The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are up to 4x faster at LLM prompt processing than the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x faster at AI image generation than the M1 Pro and M1 Max.
The Mac Book Pro features up to 2x faster read/write performance than the last generation and will start at 1TB of storage for the Mac Book Pro with M5 Pro, and 2TB for the Mac Book Pro with M5 Max. The laptops have up to 24 hours of battery life, and with a 96 W or higher USB-C adapter, users can charge to 50% battery in 30 minutes. The laptops support Thunderbolt 5 and have a six-speaker sound system.
The 14-inch and 16-inch Mac Book Pro models with M5 Pro chips start at
As with the new Mac Book Pro models, Apple’s new Mac Book Air was designed to be better at handling AI tasks.
The new Mac Book Air comes with 18 hours of battery life, which is a six-hour improvement over the 2020 Intel-based Apple laptops, and features a 12 MP Center Stage camera for video calls, a three-mic array, and a sound system with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos support. It also features two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a Mag Safe charging port, and a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The 13-inch Mac Book Air starts at
Apple unveiled a low-cost, entry-level laptop called the Mac Book Neo, its answer to Google’s Chromebook. Starting at $599, the Mac Book Neo is designed for students and users whose tasks don’t require intensive workflows like video editing or 3D rendering.
The 13-inch laptop comes in four colors: silver, blush, citrus, and indigo. The base model comes with 256GB of storage, while the $699 model comes with 512GB of storage, plus Touch ID.
The laptop runs on the A18 Pro chip, which powers the i Phone 16 Pro models, rather than the more powerful, pricey M5 chip that the latest Mac Book Air uses.
The Mac Book Neo comes with a 1080p Face Time HD camera and dual microphones, along with speakers on each side that support Spatial Audio. The battery can last up to 16 hours on a single charge, delivered through one of its two USB-C ports.
The Mac Book Neo features a five-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine, which supports similar levels of gameplay and on-device AI tasks as a recent i Phone.
The laptop is also the most repairable Mac Book in “about fourteen years,” according to a teardown by how-to website i Fixit.
Apple’s new over-the-ear headphones, the Air Pods Max 2, cost $549, and feature active noise cancellation, Apple’s audio-specific H2 chip, support for live translation, better sound quality, and more. The headphones are available in midnight, starlight, orange, purple, and blue.
Apple says the new headphones’ active noise cancellation (ANC) is up to 1.5x more effective than their predecessor. And the Adaptive Audio feature lets the headphones automatically adjust the levels of ANC and Transparency based on the user’s surroundings to optimize the listening experience.
The company says Transparency mode is now more natural, thanks to a new digital signal-processing algorithm optimized for the H2 chip and the Air Pods Max microphone array, so users can stay aware of their surroundings and the people around them.
The headphones also support Camera Remote, a feature that lets you trigger the i Phone or i Pad’s camera shutter from a distance, along with a Loud Sound Reduction feature that helps protect users from loud environmental noise while preserving the sound signature of what they’re listening to.
Apple unveiled a new
The displays come with Thunderbolt 5 ports, so they can be connected to accessories and be used to daisy-chain up to four displays (a Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable comes included).
The Studio Display’s 5K Retina display has over 14 million pixels, 600 nits of brightness, and supports the P3 wide-gamut color standard that covers a broader range of the visible color spectrum than standards like s RGB.
The Studio Display XDR features a 5K Retina XDR display (5120 x 2880 resolution) that has a mini-LED backlight and more than 2,000 local dimming zones. It can go up to 1,000 nits of SDR brightness and 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness, and has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It also supports the Adobe RGB color standard.
The new chips are engineered around Apple’s new Fusion Architecture, an advanced design that includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities.
Both chips feature an 18-core CPU, marking an upgrade from the 14-core configuration in the M4 Pro and the 16-core in the M4 Max.
The CPU now features six “super cores,” which is Apple’s term for its highest-performance cores, alongside 12 all-new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30% for pro workloads.
M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory, up from 48GB on M4 Pro, with bandwidth of 307GB/s. M5 Max continues to support up to 128GB of unified memory, with bandwidth increased to 614GB/s.
Apple has introduced new spring colors for i Phone cases, Apple Watch bands, and the Crossbody Strap. Apple’s silicone case for the standard i Phone 17 now comes in three new colors: Bright Guava, Vanilla, and Electric Lavender. Bright Guava and Vanilla are also available for the i Phone 17 Pro and Pro Max.
The Apple Watch Sport Band is now available in Bright Guava, Clementine, and Soft Pink, while the Sport Loop adds Bright Guava, Blue Mist, and Cantaloupe to its color lineup.
The Crossbody Strap is now available in Bright Guava and Soft Pink.
Key Takeaways
- From a budget-friendly Mac Book to a new i Phone, Apple announced a series of new products this month
- The tech giant started things off on March 2 with the new i Phone 17e and the M4 i Pad Air
- A week and a half later, Apple dropped a surprise announcement: the Air Pods Max 2, the long-awaited successor to its premium headphones that launched in 2020
- If you didn’t have time to check out all the new products, we’ve compiled all the announcements for you right here
- Apple unveiled the latest version of its budget-friendly i Phone line, the i Phone 17e, which retails for $599 and will be available on March 11
