About time. This also applies to their older models such as M2 and M3 laptops.
In the U.S., the MacBook Air lineup continues to start at $999, so there is no price increase associated with the boost in RAM.
The M2 macbook air now starts at $1000 for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Limited storage aside, that’s surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops.
Just in time for 32gb to become the necessary standard, so they can still sell you egregiously overpriced ram upgrades.
I can’t imagine that being the case for most users. I’m absolutely a power user and I keep being surprised at how consistently high the performance is of my base model M1 Air w/16GB even when compared to another Mac workstation of mine with 64GB.
I can run two VMs, a ton of live loading development tooling, several JVM programs and so much more on that little Air and it won’t even sweat.
I’m not an Apple apologist - lots of poor decisions these days and software quality has taken a real hit. While 16GB means everyone’s getting a machine that should last much longer, I can’t see a normal user needing more any time soon, especially when Apple is optimizing their local machine learning models for their 8GB iOS platforms first and foremost.
I think the next thing people should complain about is the abysmal 256 GB of storage. That’s barely enough to fit the OS plus updates at this point. Should be at least 512 GB, given how basically free NVMe storage is these days.
my windows gaming laptop had a 256gb nvme drive in it. I didnt find it to obtrussive outside of the inability to willy nilly install things from steam. I did eventually upgrade to a 512gb samsung nvme, but almost entirely cause i found a sale that was too good to let pass.
I dont know how much space iOS takes up, though.
The M2 macbook air now starts at $1000 for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Limited storage aside, that’s surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops.
What do you mean limited storage aside?
If we disregard the fact that it’s terrible value for money, it’s a good deal. No laptop sold in 2025 and costing over a grand, should have anything less than a terabyte.
Apple finally caught up with 2018 technology
watch how (corporate) operating systems will now be heavier accordingly.
Yes it’s described as being for “Apple intelligence” which I’m sure won’t be bloated nor hard to disable at all… sigh
Cool cool cool cool. Can I buy 16GB now and upgrade my Mac later ?