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MacBook Air refreshed with Intel Haswell processors and all-day battery life, available today starting at $999

MacBook Air refreshed with Intel Haswell processors and all-day battery life, available today starting at $999

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As rumored, Apple has announced a refresh for its MacBook Airs today at WWDC, its annual developers conference. The new systems feature the same (near-perfect) chassis first introduced in 2010, and they'll be available in both 11.6- and 13.3-inch variants, as before. The primary change is upgraded silicon: Apple is using Intel's latest processors, known as Haswell, which promise vastly improved battery life and some boosts to integrated graphics performance.

With the new processors, Apple is promising 12 hours of battery life for the 13-inch model, and 9 hours for the 11-inch version, a significant upgrade from the seven hours and five hours quoted, respectively, for last year's models. The new Intel HD Graphics 5000 is also said to bring a 40 percent increase in GPU performance, though it's worth noting the processors Apple is using here don't include the power hungry Iris graphics that are said to offer discrete-like performance. Other than the new power plant, there are some other changes to the MacBook Air. The new models have 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and flash storage is said to be up to 45 percent faster than the last generation.

Both models are available today from Apple's website. Apple has lowered the prices from the last generation: The 13-inch model starts at $1,099 with 128GB of flash storage, and $1,299 for 256GB. The 11-inch model will start at $999 with 128GB, with a 256GB model available for $1,199. All models have a 1.3GHz processor and 4GB of RAM — you'll need to do a custom order to get 8GB of RAM, 512GB of flash storage, or a 1.7GHz Core i7 processor. Unfortunately, your fever dreams haven't yet come true: Apple didn't speak at all about bumping the screen resolution from the last generation.

Updated Macbook Air Liveblog Pictures

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