The announcement is now official: Apple’s first MacBook featuring its custom-designed silicon has arrived. The company’s celebrated thin and lightweight laptop is coming soon, powered by the new M1 chip—Apple’s inaugural in-house desktop CPU. The device maintains a similar design to recent Air generations, with the most significant advancements occurring internally.

According to Apple’s reported figures, this system delivers performance 3.5 times greater than previous models and surpasses 98% of PC laptops sold within the past year. Notably, the new ARM-based chip enables operation without requiring a cooling fan. The company has consistently emphasized battery efficiency as a key advantage of its new chip, and this appears to be realized, with an estimated 15 hours of web browsing and 18 hours of video playback on a single charge. These figures, if accurate, represent a substantial improvement over the 12-hour battery life claimed for earlier versions.

Apple states that the system possesses the capability to handle demanding tasks such as editing multiple streams of 4K ProRes video within Final Cut Pro, thanks to its updated specifications. I am eager to thoroughly test this claim and evaluate the performance of the fanless system under load.

The device does not include a TouchBar—a feature that many users will likely find acceptable. However, the TouchID functionality, present in the latest Intel-based Air, is retained. The webcam hardware, unfortunately, appears to remain unchanged. While an upgrade would have been welcome, especially with the increase in video conferencing, Apple does mention software enhancements to the 720p camera. The laptop features two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports. It is configured with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard, with options to upgrade to 16GB and 2TB, respectively.

According to Apple,

The new system has a starting price of $999—or $899 for educational customers. Like the new MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, preorders are being accepted today, and shipments will begin next week.