Identity ver­i­fi­ca­tion and age ver­i­fi­ca­tion is an in­creasinly com­mon pol­icy con­ver­sa­tion at the mo­ment, in nu­mer­ous coun­tries.

Often, this is in com­bi­na­tion with pro­pos­als to ban chil­dren from vary­ing con­cepts of “social me­dia”, which gen­er­ally means that every­one would have to prove that they were not a child.

I have yet to see a well-con­sid­ered pro­posal.

Worse, the ques­tion that they are try­ing an­swer is rarely stated clearly and con­cisely.

And it is un­usual to see any con­sid­er­a­tion of broader so­ci­o­log­i­cal is­sues, let alone an em­pha­sis on this, with a fo­cus in­stead on per­ceived “quick win” tech­noso­lu­tion­ism.

I was pon­der­ing last night for which ser­vices I, per­son­ally, would ac­tu­ally be will­ing to ver­ify my age or iden­tity.

At least, none that I can think of at the mo­ment.

I ap­pre­ci­ate that I com­pute in an un­usual way (when com­pared with most com­puter users), and that much of what I do on­line is about ac­cess­ing my own ser­vices.

Some of those - my fedi server, my RSS server, my mes­sag­ing ser­vices - are build around en­joy­ing stuff from other peo­ple’s ser­vices.

Would I be will­ing to ver­ify my iden­tity or age to read some­one’s RSS feed? No. While I en­joy the myr­iad blogs that I fol­low, none are cru­cial to me.

I oc­ca­sion­ally watch videos (which started on YouTube, but which I down­load into my Jellyfin in­stance), and per­haps YouTube will be forced to do age ver­i­fi­ca­tion. It would be a shame, but again, I’ll just not watch YouTube videos. Not a big loss. Mostly, I buy sec­ond­hand DVDs, rip them, and watch them from my Jellyfin in­stance. I haven’t been asked to ver­ify my age for a DVD pur­chase (online or of­fline) in a very long time.

Friends have had to at­tempt to block ac­cess to their sites from the UK. While I can still ac­cess their sites via Tor, that’s what I tend to do. I feel sorry for them for the likely sig­nif­i­cant drop in vis­i­tors, likely af­fect­ing their en­joy­ment and in some cases their rev­enue, and, prob­a­bly their in­cen­tive to con­tinue to write / post / record stuff.

I don’t use any in­di­vid­ual fo­rums any more (their demise is a shame; I’d pre­fer this over cen­tralised dis­cus­sion sites), nor do I use Reddit. I oc­ca­sion­ally look at the com­ments on HN if one of my posts is sur­faced there, but if HN forced iden­tify or age ver­i­fi­ca­tion, I’d just stop do­ing it. No big deal for me.

Websites with com­ments sec­tions? I don’t want to see the com­ments any­way, so I block those, which makes for a very pleas­ant brows­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. I don’t com­ment my­self.

Code forges / places to con­tribute to FOSS? Most of my FOSS con­tri­bu­tions are non-code, but even so, I use some or­gan­i­sa­tion’s GitLab re­pos, and oc­ca­sion­ally I con­tribute to pro­jects on other forges. I doubt that my con­tri­bu­tions are mean­ing­ful in them­selves, and it may not be an op­tion to switch in­fra­struc­ture in any case (that might ont make the re­quire­ment go away), but since I am not a mas­sive, or par­tic­u­larly valu­able con­trib­u­tor, I’d feel less bad about sim­ply step­ping away.

For Wikipedia, I’d prob­a­bly re­build my Kiwix in­stance and use that in­stead. Yes, ar­ti­cles would not be quite so up to date, but I rarely ac­cess Wikipedia for rapidly-chang­ing in­for­ma­tion. In any case, there are trade­offs, and per­son­ally I would pre­fer my pri­vacy, the se­cu­rity of my per­sonal data, and, well, just not be­ing part of this kind of cen­sor­ship.

Signal? That would be a pain. I don’t have a workaround for that. I’m hap­pily us­ing XMPP, but as a com­ple­ment to Signal, not an al­ter­na­tive.

Teams/Zoom? I don’t have ac­counts on those ser­vices, but I do join, via my browser, when a client sends me a link. If I was faced with a choice of hav­ing to ver­ify my iden­tity/​age for these ser­vices, then I’d have to con­sider the po­si­tion care­fully. Realistically, I am not in a po­si­tion to say “no, I will not use Teams”, as some long-term clients are not go­ing to change their cor­po­rate ap­proach just be­cause Neil does­n’t like some­thing, and I’d rather not lose them as clients. So that could be a pain, if those ser­vices were within scope.

I’ll still ob­ject to these mea­sures - “I’m okay, Jack” would be a self­ish stance - but, in prac­tice, yes, I’d be sur­prised if they im­pacted me.

Self-imposed (or, at least, self-con­trolled) dig­i­tal iso­la­tion­ism, per­haps.

Or per­haps, in the fu­ture, some ser­vice will pop up that I will re­ally, re­ally want to use, de­spite it re­quir­ing iden­tity / age ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

Apple in­tro­duces MacBook Pro with all‑new M5 Pro and M5 Max, de­liv­er­ing break­through pro per­for­mance and next-level on-de­vice AI

The world’s best pro lap­top raises the bar again with blaz­ing-fast CPU and GPU per­for­mance, plus up to 2x faster SSD speeds and 1TB of start­ing stor­age

Apple to­day an­nounced the lat­est 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the all-new M5 Pro and M5 Max, bring­ing game-chang­ing per­for­mance and AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the world’s best pro lap­top. With M5 Pro and M5 Max, MacBook Pro fea­tures a new CPU with the world’s fastest CPU core,1 a next-gen­er­a­tion GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, and higher uni­fied mem­ory band­width, al­to­gether de­liv­er­ing up to 4x AI per­for­mance com­pared to the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, and up to 8x AI per­for­mance com­pared to M1 mod­els.2 This al­lows de­vel­op­ers, re­searchers, busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als, and cre­atives to un­lock new AI-enabled work­flows right on MacBook Pro. It now comes with up to 2x faster SSD per­for­mance2 and starts at 1TB of stor­age for M5 Pro and 2TB for M5 Max. The new MacBook Pro in­cludes N1, an Apple-designed wire­less net­work­ing chip that en­ables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, bring­ing im­proved per­for­mance and re­li­a­bil­ity to wire­less con­nec­tions. It also of­fers up to 24 hours of bat­tery life; a gor­geous Liquid Retina XDR dis­play with a nano-tex­ture op­tion; a wide ar­ray of con­nec­tiv­ity, in­clud­ing Thunderbolt 5; a 12MP Center Stage cam­era; stu­dio-qual­ity mics; an im­mer­sive six-speaker sound sys­tem; Apple Intelligence fea­tures; and the power of ma­cOS Tahoe. The new MacBook Pro comes in space black and sil­ver, and is avail­able to pre-or­der start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, with avail­abil­ity be­gin­ning Wednesday, March 11.

“MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max re­de­fines what’s pos­si­ble on a pro lap­top, now up to 4x faster than the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion,” said John Ternus, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Hardware Engineering. “With Neural Accelerators in the GPU, the new MacBook Pro en­ables pro­fes­sion­als to run ad­vanced LLMs on de­vice and un­lock ca­pa­bil­i­ties that no other lap­top can do — all while main­tain­ing ex­cep­tional bat­tery life. Combined with even faster uni­fied mem­ory and stor­age, it em­pow­ers users to take their work even fur­ther, un­leash­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties and push­ing the bound­aries of what they can do.”

On the new MacBook Pro, LLMs will run even faster in pop­u­lar apps like LM Studio.

On the new MacBook Pro, im­age analy­sis will run even faster in pop­u­lar apps like QuPath.

Scaling up per­for­mance from M5 and of­fer­ing the same break­through GPU ar­chi­tec­ture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max de­liver up to 4x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI im­age gen­er­a­tion than M1 Pro and M1 Max.2 This en­ables AI re­searchers and de­vel­op­ers to train cus­tom mod­els lo­cally, and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als to lever­age AI-powered tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic pro­duc­tion, and de­sign work. Both chips also bring up to a 50 per­cent in­crease in graph­ics per­for­mance com­pared to M4 Pro and M4 Max,3,4 en­abling mo­tion de­sign­ers to work with com­plex 3D scenes in real time and VFX artists to pre­view ef­fects in­stantly. And with a faster and more power-ef­fi­cient Neural Engine and higher uni­fied mem­ory band­width, the new MacBook Pro de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble on-de­vice AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties. The in­crease in uni­fied mem­ory band­width en­ables com­plex work­flows like in­ten­sive AI model train­ing and mas­sive video pro­jects. M5 Pro sup­ports up to 64GB of uni­fied mem­ory with up to 307GB/s of mem­ory band­width, while M5 Max sup­ports up to 128GB of uni­fied mem­ory with up to 614GB/s of mem­ory band­width.

With the power of M5 Pro and M5 Max on MacBook Pro, AI re­searchers and de­vel­op­ers can train cus­tom mod­els lo­cally, and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als are able to lever­age AI-powered tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic pro­duc­tion, and de­sign work.

With the power of M5 Pro and M5 Max on MacBook Pro, AI re­searchers and de­vel­op­ers can train cus­tom mod­els lo­cally, and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als are able to lever­age AI-powered tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic pro­duc­tion, and de­sign work.

With the power of M5 Pro and M5 Max on MacBook Pro, AI re­searchers and de­vel­op­ers can train cus­tom mod­els lo­cally, and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als are able to lever­age AI-powered tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic pro­duc­tion, and de­sign work.

Up to 7.8x faster AI im­age gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 3.7x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 6.9x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 3.9x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 5.2x faster 3D ren­der­ing in Maxon Redshift when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 1.4x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 1.6x faster gam­ing per­for­mance with ray trac­ing in games like Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 8x faster AI im­age gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3.8x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

Up to 6.7x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 4x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

Up to 5.4x faster video ef­fects ren­der­ing per­for­mance in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

Up to 3.5x faster AI video-en­hanc­ing per­for­mance in Topaz Video when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

With up to 2x faster read/​write per­for­mance, reach­ing speeds of up to 14.5GB/s, the new MacBook Pro ac­cel­er­ates work­flows for pro­fes­sion­als work­ing across 4K and 8K video pro­jects.

A MacBook Pro user sits out­side with a tele­scope un­der a starry night’s sky.

A MacBook Pro user works at their desk with two ex­ter­nal dis­plays.

The new MacBook Pro de­liv­ers up to a phe­nom­e­nal 24 hours of bat­tery life, so up­graders can take their pro work­flows any­where.

The gor­geous Liquid Retina XDR dis­play de­liv­ers 1600 nits peak HDR bright­ness and up to 1000 nits for SDR con­tent for stun­ning vi­su­als.

The new MacBook Pro can drive up to two high-res­o­lu­tion ex­ter­nal dis­plays with M5 Pro, and up to four high-res­o­lu­tion dis­plays with M5 Max, pro­vid­ing the flex­i­bil­ity to cre­ate ex­pan­sive work­spaces.

Customers can pre-or­der the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro mod­els with M5 Pro and M5 Max start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, on ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 33 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U. S. All mod­els will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

The 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,199 (U.S.) and $2,049 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion; and the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,699 (U.S.) and $2,499 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion.

The 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,599 (U.S.) and $3,299 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion; and the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,899 (U.S.) and $3,599 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. All mod­els are avail­able in space black and sil­ver.

Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes stan­dard with 1TB of stor­age, and is avail­able in space black and sil­ver, start­ing at $1,699 (U.S.) and $1,599 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion.

With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup or fo­cus on fea­tures that will help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

Apple in­tro­duces MacBook Pro with all‑new M5 Pro and M5 Max, de­liv­er­ing break­through pro per­for­mance and next-level on-de­vice AI

The world’s best pro lap­top raises the bar again with blaz­ing-fast CPU and GPU per­for­mance, plus up to 2x faster SSD speeds and 1TB of start­ing stor­age

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple to­day an­nounced the lat­est 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the all-new M5 Pro and M5 Max, bring­ing game-chang­ing per­for­mance and AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the world’s best pro lap­top. With M5 Pro and M5 Max, MacBook Pro fea­tures a new CPU with the world’s fastest CPU core,1 a next-gen­er­a­tion GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, and higher uni­fied mem­ory band­width, al­to­gether de­liv­er­ing up to 4x AI per­for­mance com­pared to the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, and up to 8x AI per­for­mance com­pared to M1 mod­els.2 This al­lows de­vel­op­ers, re­searchers, busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als, and cre­atives to un­lock new AI-enabled work­flows right on MacBook Pro. It now comes with up to 2x faster SSD per­for­mance2 and starts at 1TB of stor­age for M5 Pro and 2TB for M5 Max. The new MacBook Pro in­cludes N1, an Apple-designed wire­less net­work­ing chip that en­ables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, bring­ing im­proved per­for­mance and re­li­a­bil­ity to wire­less con­nec­tions. It also of­fers up to 24 hours of bat­tery life; a gor­geous Liquid Retina XDR dis­play with a nano-tex­ture op­tion; a wide ar­ray of con­nec­tiv­ity, in­clud­ing Thunderbolt 5; a 12MP Center Stage cam­era; stu­dio-qual­ity mics; an im­mer­sive six-speaker sound sys­tem; Apple Intelligence fea­tures; and the power of ma­cOS Tahoe. The new MacBook Pro comes in space black and sil­ver, and is avail­able to pre-or­der start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, with avail­abil­ity be­gin­ning Wednesday, March 11.

“MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max re­de­fines what’s pos­si­ble on a pro lap­top, now up to 4x faster than the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion,” said John Ternus, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Hardware Engineering. “With Neural Accelerators in the GPU, the new MacBook Pro en­ables pro­fes­sion­als to run ad­vanced LLMs on de­vice and un­lock ca­pa­bil­i­ties that no other lap­top can do — all while main­tain­ing ex­cep­tional bat­tery life. Combined with even faster uni­fied mem­ory and stor­age, it em­pow­ers users to take their work even fur­ther, un­leash­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties and push­ing the bound­aries of what they can do.”

M5 Pro and M5 Max are built us­ing the new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture and en­gi­neered from the ground up for AI. This in­no­v­a­tive de­sign com­bines two dies into a sin­gle sys­tem on a chip, pro­vid­ing tremen­dous per­for­mance boosts. M5 Pro and M5 Max fea­ture a new up-to-18-core CPU with 6 su­per cores, the world’s fastest CPU core,1 and 12 all-new per­for­mance cores, op­ti­mized for power-ef­fi­cient, mul­ti­threaded pro work­loads — al­to­gether de­liv­er­ing up to 30 per­cent faster per­for­mance.3 M5 Pro is de­signed for users run­ning com­plex work­flows, like coders op­ti­miz­ing al­go­rithms and pho­tog­ra­phers pro­cess­ing mas­sive im­age li­braries, while M5 Max is for those push­ing the ab­solute lim­its, such as en­gi­neers run­ning rig­or­ous sim­u­la­tions.

Scaling up per­for­mance from M5 and of­fer­ing the same break­through GPU ar­chi­tec­ture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max de­liver up to 4x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI im­age gen­er­a­tion than M1 Pro and M1 Max.2 This en­ables AI re­searchers and de­vel­op­ers to train cus­tom mod­els lo­cally, and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als to lever­age AI-powered tools for video edit­ing, mu­sic pro­duc­tion, and de­sign work. Both chips also bring up to a 50 per­cent in­crease in graph­ics per­for­mance com­pared to M4 Pro and M4 Max,3,4 en­abling mo­tion de­sign­ers to work with com­plex 3D scenes in real time and VFX artists to pre­view ef­fects in­stantly. And with a faster and more power-ef­fi­cient Neural Engine and higher uni­fied mem­ory band­width, the new MacBook Pro de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble on-de­vice AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties. The in­crease in uni­fied mem­ory band­width en­ables com­plex work­flows like in­ten­sive AI model train­ing and mas­sive video pro­jects. M5 Pro sup­ports up to 64GB of uni­fied mem­ory with up to 307GB/s of mem­ory band­width, while M5 Max sup­ports up to 128GB of uni­fied mem­ory with up to 614GB/s of mem­ory band­width.

Up to 7.8x faster AI im­age gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 3.7x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 6.9x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 3.9x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 5.2x faster 3D ren­der­ing in Maxon Redshift when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 1.4x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 1.6x faster gam­ing per­for­mance with ray trac­ing in games like Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

Up to 8x faster AI im­age gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3.8x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

Up to 6.7x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 4x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

Up to 5.4x faster video ef­fects ren­der­ing per­for­mance in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

Up to 3.5x faster AI video-en­hanc­ing per­for­mance in Topaz Video when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

The new MacBook Pro de­liv­ers up to 2x faster read/​write per­for­mance com­pared to the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion,4 reach­ing speeds of up to 14.5GB/s5 and ac­cel­er­at­ing work­flows for pro­fes­sion­als work­ing across 4K and 8K video pro­jects, LLMs, and com­plex datasets. MacBook Pro with M5 Pro now comes stan­dard with 1TB of stor­age, while MacBook Pro with M5 Max now comes stan­dard with 2TB. And the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes stan­dard with 1TB of stor­age.

Even More Value for Upgraders

The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max mark a ma­jor leap for pro users. There’s never been a bet­ter time for cus­tomers to up­grade from a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion of MacBook Pro with Apple sil­i­con or an Intel-based Mac.

Enhanced AI per­for­mance with Neural Accelerators in the GPU: Users up­grad­ing from M1 mod­els will ex­pe­ri­ence up to 8x faster AI per­for­mance.2

Exceptional bat­tery life: The new MacBook Pro gets up to 24 hours of bat­tery life, giv­ing Intel-based up­graders up to 13 ad­di­tional hours, and users com­ing from M1 mod­els will get up to three more hours, so they can get more done on a sin­gle charge.2 And un­like many PC lap­tops, MacBook Pro de­liv­ers the same in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance whether plugged in or on bat­tery. Users will be able to fast-charge up to 50 per­cent in just 30 min­utes us­ing a 96W or higher USB-C power adapter.2

Best dis­play in a pro lap­top: Upgraders will en­joy the Liquid Retina XDR dis­play, which fea­tures 1600 nits peak HDR bright­ness and up to 1000 nits for SDR con­tent, and of­fers a nano-tex­ture op­tion.

Comprehensive con­nec­tiv­ity: The new MacBook Pro has a wide ar­ray of con­nec­tiv­ity op­tions, in­clud­ing three Thunderbolt 5 ports for high-speed data trans­fer, HDMI that sup­ports up to 8K res­o­lu­tion, an SDXC card slot for quick me­dia im­port, and MagSafe 3 with fast-charge ca­pa­bil­ity. Upgraders can also drive up to two high-res­o­lu­tion ex­ter­nal dis­plays with M5 Pro, and up to four high-res­o­lu­tion dis­plays with M5 Max, pro­vid­ing the flex­i­bil­ity to cre­ate ex­pan­sive work­spaces.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6: With the Apple N1 chip, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 bring im­proved per­for­mance and re­li­a­bil­ity to wire­less con­nec­tions.

Advanced cam­era, mics, and speak­ers: Featuring a 12MP Center Stage cam­era with Desk View sup­port and stu­dio-qual­ity mics, the new MacBook Pro will al­low users to look and sound their best while tak­ing calls. They will also ex­pe­ri­ence an im­mer­sive six-speaker sound sys­tem with sup­port for Spatial Audio.

ma­cOS Tahoe trans­forms the MacBook Pro ex­pe­ri­ence with pow­er­ful ca­pa­bil­i­ties that tur­bocharge pro­duc­tiv­ity.6 Major up­dates to Spotlight make it eas­ier to find rel­e­vant apps and files and im­me­di­ately take ac­tion right from the search bar. Apple Intelligence is even more ca­pa­ble while pro­tect­ing users’ pri­vacy at every step.7 Shortcuts get even more pow­er­ful with in­tel­li­gent ac­tions and the abil­ity to tap di­rectly in to Apple Intelligence mod­els. Integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and the Phone app, Live Translation helps users eas­ily com­mu­ni­cate across lan­guages, trans­lat­ing text and au­dio.7 Additionally, de­vel­op­ers can bring Apple Intelligence ca­pa­bil­i­ties into their ap­pli­ca­tions or tap in to the Foundation Models frame­work for spe­cial­ized on-de­vice in­tel­li­gence tasks. Continuity fea­tures in­clude the Phone app on Mac, which lets users re­lay cel­lu­lar calls from their nearby iPhone, and with Live Activities from iPhone, they can stay on top of things hap­pen­ing in real time.6 ma­cOS Tahoe also fea­tures a beau­ti­ful new de­sign with Liquid Glass, and users can per­son­al­ize their Mac in even more ways with an up­dated Control Center, in ad­di­tion to new color op­tions for fold­ers, app icons, and wid­gets.

MacBook Pro was built with the en­vi­ron­ment in mind, and brings Apple even closer to reach­ing its am­bi­tious plan to be car­bon neu­tral across its en­tire foot­print by 2030. It is made with 45 per­cent re­cy­cled con­tent,8 in­clud­ing 100 per­cent re­cy­cled alu­minum in the en­clo­sure and 100 per­cent re­cy­cled cobalt in the bat­tery. It is man­u­fac­tured with 50 per­cent re­new­able elec­tric­ity, such as wind and so­lar, across the sup­ply chain. The new MacBook Pro is de­signed to be durable and re­pairable, and also of­fers in­dus­try-lead­ing soft­ware sup­port, while meet­ing Apple’s high stan­dards for en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and safer chem­istry. The pa­per pack­ag­ing is 100 per­cent fiber-based and can be eas­ily re­cy­cled.9

Customers can pre-or­der the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro mod­els with M5 Pro and M5 Max start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, on ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 33 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U.S. All mod­els will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

The 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,199 (U.S.) and $2,049 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion; and the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,699 (U.S.) and $2,499 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion.

The 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,599 (U.S.) and $3,299 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion; and the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,899 (U.S.) and $3,599 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. All mod­els are avail­able in space black and sil­ver.

Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes stan­dard with 1TB of stor­age, and is avail­able in space black and sil­ver, start­ing at $1,699 (U.S.) and $1,599 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion.

With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup or fo­cus on fea­tures that will help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

About Apple

Apple rev­o­lu­tion­ized per­sonal tech­nol­ogy with the in­tro­duc­tion of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in in­no­va­tion with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six soft­ware plat­forms — iOS, iPa­dOS, ma­cOS, watchOS, vi­sionOS, and tvOS — pro­vide seam­less ex­pe­ri­ences across all Apple de­vices and em­power peo­ple with break­through ser­vices in­clud­ing the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV. Apple’s more than 150,000 em­ploy­ees are ded­i­cated to mak­ing the best prod­ucts on earth and to leav­ing the world bet­ter than we found it.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2026 us­ing ship­ping com­pet­i­tive sys­tems and se­lect in­dus­try-stan­dard bench­marks.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026. See ap­ple.com/​mac­book-pro for more in­for­ma­tion.

Results are com­pared to pre­vi­ous-gen­er­a­tion 16-inch MacBook Pro with Apple M4 Pro, 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 48GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and a 4TB SSD.

Results are com­pared to pre­vi­ous-gen­er­a­tion 16-inch MacBook Pro with Apple M4 Max, 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and an 8TB SSD.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in January and February 2026 us­ing pre­pro­duc­tion 16-inch MacBook Pro sys­tems with Apple M5 Max, 18-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and an 8TB SSD. Tested with FIO 3.41, 1024KB re­quest size, 10GB test file and IO depth=8. Performance tests are con­ducted us­ing spe­cific com­puter sys­tems and re­flect the ap­prox­i­mate per­for­mance of MacBook Pro.

ma­cOS Tahoe is avail­able as a free soft­ware up­date. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or in all lan­guages. See re­quire­ments at ap­ple.com/​os/​ma­cos.

Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

Product re­cy­cled or re­new­able con­tent is the mass of cer­ti­fied re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial rel­a­tive to the over­all mass of the de­vice, not in­clud­ing pack­ag­ing or in-box ac­ces­sories.

Breakdown of U.S. re­tail pack­ag­ing by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coat­ings are ex­cluded from cal­cu­la­tions.

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* Up to 7.8x faster AI im­age gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 3.7x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

* Up to 6.9x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 3.9x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

* Up to 5.2x faster 3D ren­der­ing in Maxon Redshift when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, and up to 1.4x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

* Up to 1.6x faster gam­ing per­for­mance with ray trac­ing in games like Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M4 Pro.

* Up to 8x faster AI im­age gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3.8x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

* Up to 6.7x faster LLM prompt pro­cess­ing when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 4x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

* Up to 5.4x faster video ef­fects ren­der­ing per­for­mance in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

* Up to 3.5x faster AI video-en­hanc­ing per­for­mance in Topaz Video when com­pared to MacBook Pro with M4 Max.

* Enhanced AI per­for­mance with Neural Accelerators in the GPU: Users up­grad­ing from M1 mod­els will ex­pe­ri­ence up to 8x faster AI per­for­mance.2

* Exceptional bat­tery life: The new MacBook Pro gets up to 24 hours of bat­tery life, giv­ing Intel-based up­graders up to 13 ad­di­tional hours, and users com­ing from M1 mod­els will get up to three more hours, so they can get more done on a sin­gle charge.2 And un­like many PC lap­tops, MacBook Pro de­liv­ers the same in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance whether plugged in or on bat­tery. Users will be able to fast-charge up to 50 per­cent in just 30 min­utes us­ing a 96W or higher USB-C power adapter.2

* Best dis­play in a pro lap­top: Upgraders will en­joy the Liquid Retina XDR dis­play, which fea­tures 1600 nits peak HDR bright­ness and up to 1000 nits for SDR con­tent, and of­fers a nano-tex­ture op­tion.

* Comprehensive con­nec­tiv­ity: The new MacBook Pro has a wide ar­ray of con­nec­tiv­ity op­tions, in­clud­ing three Thunderbolt 5 ports for high-speed data trans­fer, HDMI that sup­ports up to 8K res­o­lu­tion, an SDXC card slot for quick me­dia im­port, and MagSafe 3 with fast-charge ca­pa­bil­ity. Upgraders can also drive up to two high-res­o­lu­tion ex­ter­nal dis­plays with M5 Pro, and up to four high-res­o­lu­tion dis­plays with M5 Max, pro­vid­ing the flex­i­bil­ity to cre­ate ex­pan­sive work­spaces.

* Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6: With the Apple N1 chip, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 bring im­proved per­for­mance and re­li­a­bil­ity to wire­less con­nec­tions.

* Advanced cam­era, mics, and speak­ers: Featuring a 12MP Center Stage cam­era with Desk View sup­port and stu­dio-qual­ity mics, the new MacBook Pro will al­low users to look and sound their best while tak­ing calls. They will also ex­pe­ri­ence an im­mer­sive six-speaker sound sys­tem with sup­port for Spatial Audio.

* Customers can pre-or­der the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro mod­els with M5 Pro and M5 Max start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, on ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 33 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U.S. All mod­els will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

* The 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,199 (U.S.) and $2,049 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion; and the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,699 (U.S.) and $2,499 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion.

* The 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,599 (U.S.) and $3,299 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion; and the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,899 (U.S.) and $3,599 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. All mod­els are avail­able in space black and sil­ver.

* Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

* The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes stan­dard with 1TB of stor­age, and is avail­able in space black and sil­ver, start­ing at $1,699 (U.S.) and $1,599 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion.

* With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

* AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

The Condé Nast-owned Ars Technica has ter­mi­nated se­nior AI re­porter Benj Edwards fol­low­ing a con­tro­versy over his role in the pub­li­ca­tion and re­trac­tion of an ar­ti­cle that in­cluded AI-fabricated quotes, Futurism has con­firmed.

Earlier this month, Ars re­tracted the story af­ter it was found to in­clude fake quotes at­trib­uted to a real per­son. The ar­ti­cle — a write-up of a vi­ral in­ci­dent in which an AI agent seem­ingly pub­lished a hit piece about a hu­man en­gi­neer named Scott Shambaugh — was ini­tially pub­lished on February 13. After Shambaugh pointed out that he’d never said the quotes at­trib­uted to him, Ars‘ ed­i­tor-in-chief Ken Fisher apol­o­gized in an ed­i­tor’s note, in which he con­firmed that the piece in­cluded “fabricated quo­ta­tions gen­er­ated by an AI tool and at­trib­uted to a source who did not say them” and char­ac­ter­ized the er­ror as a “serious fail­ure of our stan­dards.” He added that, upon fur­ther re­view, the er­ror ap­peared to be an “isolated in­ci­dent.” (404 Media first re­ported on the re­trac­tion.)

Shortly af­ter Fisher’s ed­i­tor’s note was pub­lished, Edwards, one of the re­port’s two by­lined au­thors, took to Bluesky to take “full re­spon­si­bil­ity” for the in­clu­sion of the fab­ri­cated quotes.

In the post, Edwards said that he was sick at the time, and “while work­ing from bed with a fever and very lit­tle sleep,” he “unintentionally made a se­ri­ous jour­nal­is­tic er­ror” as he at­tempted to use an “experimental Claude Code-based AI tool” to help him “extract rel­e­vant ver­ba­tim source ma­te­r­ial.” He said the tool was­n’t be­ing used to gen­er­ate the ar­ti­cle, but was in­stead de­signed to “help list struc­tured ref­er­ences” to put in an out­line. When the tool failed to work, said Edwards, he de­cided to try and use ChatGPT to help him un­der­stand why.

“I should have taken a sick day be­cause in the course of that in­ter­ac­tion, I in­ad­ver­tently ended up with a para­phrased ver­sion of Shambaugh’s words rather than his ac­tual words,” Edwards con­tin­ued. He em­pha­sized that the “text of the ar­ti­cle was hu­man-writ­ten by us, and this in­ci­dent was iso­lated and is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ars‘ ed­i­to­r­ial stan­dards. None of our ar­ti­cles are AI-generated, it is against com­pany pol­icy and we have al­ways re­spected that.”

Edwards also stressed that his col­league Kyle Orland, the site’s se­nior gam­ing ed­i­tor who co-by­lined the re­tracted story, had “no role in this er­ror.”

The con­tro­versy was met with a wave of push­back and spec­u­la­tion from Ars read­ers, many of whom ex­pressed deep frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment in a lengthy com­ment thread on the web­site. On February 27, Ars cre­ative di­rec­tor Aurich Lawson, while clos­ing the com­ment thread, said that “Ars has com­pleted its re­view of this mat­ter” and that “the ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­nal steps have been taken.”

“In the com­ing weeks, we’ll pub­lish a reader-fac­ing guide ex­plain­ing how we use and do not use AI in our work,” Lawson wrote. “We do not com­ment on per­son­nel de­ci­sions.”

As of February 28, Edwards’ bio on Ars was changed to past tense, ac­cord­ing to an archived ver­sion of the web­page. It now reads that Edwards “was a re­porter at Ars, where he cov­ered ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and tech­nol­ogy his­tory.”

Futurism reached out to Ars, Condé Nast, and Edwards to in­quire about the re­porter’s em­ploy­ment sta­tus. Neither the pub­li­ca­tion nor its owner replied. Edwards said he was un­able to com­ment at this time.

Ars‘ re­trac­tion is­n’t the first AI con­tro­versy to rock a news­room, nor to anger a pub­li­ca­tion’s read­ers. It also comes at a mo­ment in which many me­dia bosses are push­ing staff to find uses for AI — as are ex­ec­u­tives across most in­dus­tries — even while clear guide­lines around use of the tech­nol­ogy that up­hold ed­i­to­r­ial ethics re­main elu­sive.

These edicts to in­te­grate AI, mean­while, are back­dropped by a com­pli­cated, ever-shift­ing land­scape: con­tentious copy­right bat­tles be­tween news gi­ants and AI com­pa­nies; si­mul­ta­ne­ous deal-strik­ing by news gi­ants and AI com­pa­nies; an in­ter­net in­creas­ingly full of AI-generated slop news and mis­in­for­ma­tion; and a traf­fic cliff tied to Google’s “AI Overviews,” which now para­phrase news in­stead of point­ing read­ers to a list of blue links.

It’s a com­bus­tive, dis­ori­ent­ing mo­ment in the his­tory of me­dia and tech­nol­ogy, when lines in the sand are be­ing drawn by both jour­nal­ists and their au­di­ences. And the Ars fall­out un­der­lines a phe­nom­e­non we’ve seen again and again, as even peo­ple who are deeply fa­mil­iar with AI and its short­com­ings can end up re­ly­ing on it at a crit­i­cal mo­ment — and in the process, fall vic­tim to some­thing much older than gen­er­a­tive AI: hu­man er­ror.

“The irony of an AI re­porter be­ing tripped up by AI hal­lu­ci­na­tion is not lost on me,” Edwards said in his February 15 Bluesky post. “I take ac­cu­racy in my work very se­ri­ously and this is a painful fail­ure on my part.”

More on AI and me­dia: Google’s AI Is Actively Destroying the News Media

The world’s most pop­u­lar lap­top gets even bet­ter with the in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance of M5, dou­ble the start­ing stor­age, and im­proved wire­less con­nec­tiv­ity, packed into a thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign

Apple to­day an­nounced the new MacBook Air with M5, bring­ing ex­cep­tional per­for­mance and ex­panded AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the world’s most pop­u­lar lap­top. M5 fea­tures a faster CPU and next-gen­er­a­tion GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, en­abling MacBook Air to power through a va­ri­ety of work­flows, from cre­ative pro­jects to com­plex AI tasks. MacBook Air now comes stan­dard with dou­ble the start­ing stor­age at 512GB with faster SSD tech­nol­ogy, and is con­fig­urable up to 4TB, so cus­tomers can keep their most im­por­tant work on hand. Apple’s N1 wire­less chip de­liv­ers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for seam­less con­nec­tiv­ity on the go. MacBook Air fea­tures a beau­ti­fully thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign, stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play, 12MP Center Stage cam­era, up to 18 hours of bat­tery life, an im­mer­sive sound sys­tem with Spatial Audio, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports with sup­port for up to two ex­ter­nal dis­plays. Combined with the power of ma­cOS Tahoe and Apple Intelligence, MacBook Air de­liv­ers un­matched value for col­lege stu­dents and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, and it’s the most pop­u­lar lap­top for busi­ness users. Available in 13- and 15-inch mod­els in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver, the new MacBook Air with M5 is avail­able for pre-or­der start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, with avail­abil­ity be­gin­ning Wednesday, March 11.

“The new MacBook Air with M5 brings in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance and even more ca­pa­bil­ity to the world’s most pop­u­lar lap­top,” said John Ternus, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Hardware Engineering. “With M5, MacBook Air pow­ers through a wide range of tasks, from every­day pro­duc­tiv­ity to cre­ative work­loads, and is even faster for AI. Now fea­tur­ing dou­ble the start­ing stor­age, as well as Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, in a sleek and durable de­sign with long bat­tery life, MacBook Air is the per­fect lap­top for any­one who val­ues the un­ri­valed com­bi­na­tion of per­for­mance and porta­bil­ity.”

A MacBook Air user slides their de­vice into a back­pack while sit­ting next in a hall­way.

Two peo­ple watch the Apple TV show “Shrinking” on MacBook Air while ly­ing on a bed.

MacBook Air de­liv­ers the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of per­for­mance and porta­bil­ity for every­one from col­lege stu­dents to cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, as well as con­sumers — and it’s the most pop­u­lar lap­top for busi­ness users.

MacBook Air de­liv­ers the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of per­for­mance and porta­bil­ity for every­one from col­lege stu­dents to cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, as well as con­sumers — and it’s the most pop­u­lar lap­top for busi­ness users.

MacBook Air de­liv­ers the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of per­for­mance and porta­bil­ity for every­one from col­lege stu­dents to cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, as well as con­sumers — and it’s the most pop­u­lar lap­top for busi­ness users.

M5 de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance for every­thing users want to tackle, from cre­ative pro­jects to AI tasks — whether us­ing Apple Intelligence or run­ning LLMs on de­vice.

M5 de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance for every­thing users want to tackle, from cre­ative pro­jects to AI tasks — whether us­ing Apple Intelligence or run­ning LLMs on de­vice.

With en­hanced shader cores and a third-gen­er­a­tion ray-trac­ing en­gine, M5 su­per­charges tasks like gam­ing and 3D ren­der­ing. M5 also fea­tures faster uni­fied mem­ory with 153GB/s of band­width — a 28 per­cent im­prove­ment over M4 — en­abling even smoother mul­ti­task­ing and faster app launches. All com­bined, MacBook Air with M5 brings even greater per­for­mance com­pared to pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, of­fer­ing:

Up to 6.9x faster AI video en­hance­ment per­for­mance in Topaz Video when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.9x faster than MacBook Air with M4.2

Up to 6.5x faster 3D ren­der­ing with ray-trac­ing per­for­mance in Blender when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than MacBook Air with M4.4,5

Up to 2.7x faster im­age pro­cess­ing per­for­mance in Affinity when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than MacBook Air with M4.2

Web brows­ing is up to 50 per­cent faster when com­pared to a PC lap­top with an Intel Core Ultra X7 proces­sor, and more de­mand­ing tasks get up to 2x faster per­for­mance.2

MacBook Air shows a vi­brant im­age of a per­son in neon-green clothes sit­ting on a match­ing bi­cy­cle in front of a bright-pink trailer.

MacBook Air shows a FaceTime call with a Desk View win­dow that fea­tures a hand­writ­ten math prob­lem on a sheet of pa­per.

The ports are shown on two sep­a­rate MacBook Air de­vices.

The 13-inch MacBook Air in starlight is shown be­side the 15-inch MacsBook Air in sky blue.

The beau­ti­fully thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign fea­tures a stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play, 12MP Center Stage cam­era, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories, and is avail­able in 13- and 15-inch mod­els in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

The beau­ti­fully thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign fea­tures a stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play, 12MP Center Stage cam­era, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories, and is avail­able in 13- and 15-inch mod­els in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

The beau­ti­fully thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign fea­tures a stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play, 12MP Center Stage cam­era, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories, and is avail­able in 13- and 15-inch mod­els in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

The beau­ti­fully thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign fea­tures a stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play, 12MP Center Stage cam­era, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories, and is avail­able in 13- and 15-inch mod­els in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

Customers can pre-or­der the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 be­gin­ning at 6:15 a.m. PST on Wednesday, March 4, on ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 33 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U. S. All mod­els will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

The 13-inch MacBook Air with M5 starts at $1,099 (U.S.), and $999 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion, and the 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 starts at $1,299 (U.S.) and $1,199 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. Both are avail­able in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup, or fo­cus on fea­tures that will help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

The world’s most pop­u­lar lap­top gets even bet­ter with the in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance of M5, dou­ble the start­ing stor­age, and im­proved wire­less con­nec­tiv­ity, packed into a thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple to­day an­nounced the new MacBook Air with M5, bring­ing ex­cep­tional per­for­mance and ex­panded AI ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the world’s most pop­u­lar lap­top. M5 fea­tures a faster CPU and next-gen­er­a­tion GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, en­abling MacBook Air to power through a va­ri­ety of work­flows, from cre­ative pro­jects to com­plex AI tasks. MacBook Air now comes stan­dard with dou­ble the start­ing stor­age at 512GB with faster SSD tech­nol­ogy, and is con­fig­urable up to 4TB, so cus­tomers can keep their most im­por­tant work on hand. Apple’s N1 wire­less chip de­liv­ers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for seam­less con­nec­tiv­ity on the go. MacBook Air fea­tures a beau­ti­fully thin, light, and durable alu­minum de­sign, stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play, 12MP Center Stage cam­era, up to 18 hours of bat­tery life, an im­mer­sive sound sys­tem with Spatial Audio, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports with sup­port for up to two ex­ter­nal dis­plays. Combined with the power of ma­cOS Tahoe and Apple Intelligence, MacBook Air de­liv­ers un­matched value for col­lege stu­dents and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, and it’s the most pop­u­lar lap­top for busi­ness users. Available in 13- and 15-inch mod­els in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver, the new MacBook Air with M5 is avail­able for pre-or­der start­ing to­mor­row, March 4, with avail­abil­ity be­gin­ning Wednesday, March 11.

“The new MacBook Air with M5 brings in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance and even more ca­pa­bil­ity to the world’s most pop­u­lar lap­top,” said John Ternus, Apple’s se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Hardware Engineering. “With M5, MacBook Air pow­ers through a wide range of tasks, from every­day pro­duc­tiv­ity to cre­ative work­loads, and is even faster for AI. Now fea­tur­ing dou­ble the start­ing stor­age, as well as Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, in a sleek and durable de­sign with long bat­tery life, MacBook Air is the per­fect lap­top for any­one who val­ues the un­ri­valed com­bi­na­tion of per­for­mance and porta­bil­ity.”

Incredible Performance with M5 — for AI and Beyond

M5 de­liv­ers in­cred­i­ble per­for­mance for every­thing users want to tackle, from every­day pro­duc­tiv­ity to cre­ative work­flows. MacBook Air with M5 fea­tures a 10-core CPU with the world’s fastest CPU core for even more re­spon­sive­ness.1 Combined with an up-to-10-core GPU with a pow­er­ful Neural Accelerator in each core, MacBook Air with M5 de­liv­ers up to 4x faster per­for­mance for AI tasks than MacBook Air with M4, and up to 9.5x faster than MacBook Air with M1.2 This makes it an in­cred­i­bly ca­pa­ble plat­form for AI — whether us­ing Apple Intelligence across apps and sys­tem ex­pe­ri­ences at home, or run­ning LLMs on de­vice in an en­ter­prise.3

With en­hanced shader cores and a third-gen­er­a­tion ray-trac­ing en­gine, M5 su­per­charges tasks like gam­ing and 3D ren­der­ing. M5 also fea­tures faster uni­fied mem­ory with 153GB/s of band­width — a 28 per­cent im­prove­ment over M4 — en­abling even smoother mul­ti­task­ing and faster app launches. All com­bined, MacBook Air with M5 brings even greater per­for­mance com­pared to pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, of­fer­ing:

Up to 6.9x faster AI video en­hance­ment per­for­mance in Topaz Video when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.9x faster than MacBook Air with M4.2

Up to 6.5x faster 3D ren­der­ing with ray-trac­ing per­for­mance in Blender when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than MacBook Air with M4.4,5

Up to 2.7x faster im­age pro­cess­ing per­for­mance in Affinity when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than MacBook Air with M4.2

Web brows­ing is up to 50 per­cent faster when com­pared to a PC lap­top with an Intel Core Ultra X7 proces­sor, and more de­mand­ing tasks get up to 2x faster per­for­mance.2

MacBook Air with M5 now comes stan­dard with 512GB of stor­age — dou­ble that of the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion — and can be con­fig­ured up to 4TB for the first time, pro­vid­ing am­ple space for large pro­jects and games. The new SSD also de­liv­ers 2x faster read/​write per­for­mance com­pared to the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, sig­nif­i­cantly ac­cel­er­at­ing file ac­cess and speed­ing up work­flows for users, such as cre­ators im­port­ing large photo li­braries and stu­dents run­ning AI work­loads on de­vice.5

Tremendous Value for Upgraders with the World’s Most Popular Laptop

There’s never been a bet­ter time for cus­tomers up­grad­ing from a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion of MacBook Air with Apple sil­i­con or an Intel-based Mac. In ad­di­tion to the blaz­ing per­for­mance of M5, the new MacBook Air de­liv­ers a broad range of com­pelling fea­tures, in­clud­ing:

A stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play: A brilliant 13.6- or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina dis­play with 500 nits of bright­ness and sup­port for 1 bil­lion col­ors makes con­tent look vivid with sharp de­tail, and text ap­pears su­per crisp.

Exceptional bat­tery life: Up to 18 hours of bat­tery life — six ad­di­tional hours when com­pared to an Intel-based MacBook Air — with fast-charge ca­pa­bil­ity means users can work, cre­ate, or play all day with­out plug­ging in.2

Beautiful de­sign and col­ors: The 13-inch MacBook Air pro­vides the ul­ti­mate in porta­bil­ity for users on the go, while the 15-inch model of­fers even more screen real es­tate for mul­ti­task­ing. Both mod­els fea­ture a thin, light, and com­pletely silent fan­less de­sign that’s avail­able in four gor­geous col­ors: sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

Advanced cam­era, mics, and speak­ers: A 12MP Center Stage cam­era with sup­port for Desk View keeps users look­ing great and en­ables more en­gag­ing video calls; a three-mic ar­ray brings en­hanced voice clar­ity; and an im­mer­sive sound sys­tem with sup­port for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos cre­ates an en­joy­able three-di­men­sional sound­stage for mu­sic and movies.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6: N1, the new Apple-designed wire­less net­work­ing chip, en­ables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, de­liv­er­ing im­proved per­for­mance and re­li­a­bil­ity.

Seamless con­nec­tiv­ity: MacBook Air fea­tures two Thunderbolt 4 ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories with sup­port for up to two ex­ter­nal dis­plays — ideal for pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents who need to ex­pand their work­space. MagSafe en­ables ded­i­cated charg­ing and peace of mind when users are plugged in.

ma­cOS com­pletes the MacBook Air ex­pe­ri­ence, with in­cred­i­ble fea­tures and built-in apps, such as Safari, Photos, Messages, and FaceTime, that en­able users to get even more done. With ma­cOS Tahoe, a beau­ti­ful de­sign with Liquid Glass lets users per­son­al­ize their Mac in new ways with color op­tions for fold­ers, app icons, and wid­gets.6 Apple Intelligence adds pow­er­ful fea­tures with ground­break­ing pri­vacy at every step — in­clud­ing Live Translation in Messages to com­mu­ni­cate across lan­guages, up­dates in Reminders that au­to­mat­i­cally cat­e­go­rize the most rel­e­vant ac­tions, and more pow­er­ful Shortcuts ac­tions that tap di­rectly in to Apple Intelligence mod­els to cre­ate au­toma­tions, such as ex­tract­ing in­for­ma­tion from a PDF and adding key de­tails to a spread­sheet.3 Continuity fea­tures in­clude the Phone app on Mac, which lets users re­lay cel­lu­lar calls from their nearby iPhone, and they can stay on top of no­ti­fi­ca­tions with Live Activities, which open in iPhone Mirroring so users can take im­me­di­ate ac­tion right from their Mac.7 Additionally, for video calls, a new Edge Light ef­fect pro­vides a pleas­ing fill light to evenly il­lu­mi­nate a user’s face in any light­ing con­di­tion.

MacBook Air with M5 was built with the en­vi­ron­ment in mind, and brings Apple even closer to reach­ing its am­bi­tious plan to be car­bon neu­tral across its en­tire foot­print by 2030. It is made with 55 per­cent re­cy­cled con­tent,8 in­clud­ing 100 per­cent re­cy­cled alu­minum in the en­clo­sure and 100 per­cent re­cy­cled cobalt in the bat­tery. It is man­u­fac­tured with 50 per­cent re­new­able elec­tric­ity, such as wind and so­lar, across the sup­ply chain. MacBook Air is de­signed to be durable and re­pairable, while meet­ing Apple’s high stan­dards for en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and safer chem­istry. The pa­per pack­ag­ing is 100 per­cent fiber-based and can be eas­ily re­cy­cled.9

Customers can pre-or­der the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 be­gin­ning at 6:15 a.m. PST on Wednesday, March 4, on ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 33 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U.S. All mod­els will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

The 13-inch MacBook Air with M5 starts at $1,099 (U.S.), and $999 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion, and the 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 starts at $1,299 (U.S.) and $1,199 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. Both are avail­able in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup, or fo­cus on fea­tures that will help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

About Apple

Apple rev­o­lu­tion­ized per­sonal tech­nol­ogy with the in­tro­duc­tion of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in in­no­va­tion with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six soft­ware plat­forms — iOS, iPa­dOS, ma­cOS, watchOS, vi­sionOS, and tvOS — pro­vide seam­less ex­pe­ri­ences across all Apple de­vices and em­power peo­ple with break­through ser­vices in­clud­ing the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV. Apple’s more than 150,000 em­ploy­ees are ded­i­cated to mak­ing the best prod­ucts on earth and to leav­ing the world bet­ter than we found it.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2025 us­ing ship­ping com­pet­i­tive sys­tems and se­lect in­dus­try-stan­dard bench­marks.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2026. See ap­ple.com/​mac­book-air for more in­for­ma­tion.

Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

Results are com­pared to MacBook Air with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and a 2TB SSD.

Results are com­pared to MacBook Air sys­tems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and a 2TB SSD.

ma­cOS Tahoe is avail­able as a free soft­ware up­date. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or in all lan­guages. See re­quire­ments at ap­ple.com/​os/​ma­cos.

Requires that iPhone, with an ac­tive car­rier plan, and Mac are signed in with the same Apple Account, iPhone and Mac are near each other, signed in to FaceTime with the same Apple Account, have Wi-Fi turned on, and are con­nected to the same net­work.

Product re­cy­cled or re­new­able con­tent is the mass of cer­ti­fied re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial rel­a­tive to the over­all mass of the de­vice, not in­clud­ing pack­ag­ing or in-box ac­ces­sories.

Breakdown of U.S. re­tail pack­ag­ing by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coat­ings are ex­cluded from cal­cu­la­tions.

Copy text

* Up to 6.9x faster AI video en­hance­ment per­for­mance in Topaz Video when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.9x faster than MacBook Air with M4.2

* Up to 6.5x faster 3D ren­der­ing with ray-trac­ing per­for­mance in Blender when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than MacBook Air with M4.4,5

* Up to 2.7x faster im­age pro­cess­ing per­for­mance in Affinity when com­pared to MacBook Air with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than MacBook Air with M4.2

* Web brows­ing is up to 50 per­cent faster when com­pared to a PC lap­top with an Intel Core Ultra X7 proces­sor, and more de­mand­ing tasks get up to 2x faster per­for­mance.2

* A stun­ning Liquid Retina dis­play: A brilliant 13.6- or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina dis­play with 500 nits of bright­ness and sup­port for 1 bil­lion col­ors makes con­tent look vivid with sharp de­tail, and text ap­pears su­per crisp.

* Exceptional bat­tery life: Up to 18 hours of bat­tery life — six ad­di­tional hours when com­pared to an Intel-based MacBook Air — with fast-charge ca­pa­bil­ity means users can work, cre­ate, or play all day with­out plug­ging in.2

* Beautiful de­sign and col­ors: The 13-inch MacBook Air pro­vides the ul­ti­mate in porta­bil­ity for users on the go, while the 15-inch model of­fers even more screen real es­tate for mul­ti­task­ing. Both mod­els fea­ture a thin, light, and com­pletely silent fan­less de­sign that’s avail­able in four gor­geous col­ors: sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

* Advanced cam­era, mics, and speak­ers: A 12MP Center Stage cam­era with sup­port for Desk View keeps users look­ing great and en­ables more en­gag­ing video calls; a three-mic ar­ray brings en­hanced voice clar­ity; and an im­mer­sive sound sys­tem with sup­port for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos cre­ates an en­joy­able three-di­men­sional sound­stage for mu­sic and movies.

* Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6: N1, the new Apple-designed wire­less net­work­ing chip, en­ables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, de­liv­er­ing im­proved per­for­mance and re­li­a­bil­ity.

* Seamless con­nec­tiv­ity: MacBook Air fea­tures two Thunderbolt 4 ports for con­nect­ing ac­ces­sories with sup­port for up to two ex­ter­nal dis­plays — ideal for pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents who need to ex­pand their work­space. MagSafe en­ables ded­i­cated charg­ing and peace of mind when users are plugged in.

* Customers can pre-or­der the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 be­gin­ning at 6:15 a.m. PST on Wednesday, March 4, on ap­ple.com/​store and in the Apple Store app in 33 coun­tries and re­gions, in­clud­ing the U.S. All mod­els will be­gin ar­riv­ing to cus­tomers, and will be in Apple Store lo­ca­tions and Apple Authorized Resellers, start­ing Wednesday, March 11.

* The 13-inch MacBook Air with M5 starts at $1,099 (U.S.), and $999 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion, and the 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 starts at $1,299 (U.S.) and $1,199 (U.S.) for ed­u­ca­tion. Both are avail­able in sky blue, mid­night, starlight, and sil­ver.

* Additional tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, con­fig­ure-to-or­der op­tions, and ac­ces­sories are avail­able at ap­ple.com/​mac.

* With Apple Trade In, cus­tomers can trade in their cur­rent com­puter and get credit to­ward a new Mac. Customers can visit ap­ple.com/​shop/​trade-in to see what their de­vice is worth.

* AppleCare de­liv­ers ex­cep­tional ser­vice and sup­port, with flex­i­ble op­tions for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Mac, or in the U.S., AppleCare One to pro­tect mul­ti­ple prod­ucts in one sim­ple plan. Both plans in­clude cov­er­age for ac­ci­dents like drops and spills, theft and loss pro­tec­tion on el­i­gi­ble prod­ucts, bat­tery re­place­ment ser­vice, and 24/7 sup­port from Apple Experts. For more in­for­ma­tion, visit ap­ple.com/​ap­ple­care.

* Every cus­tomer who buys di­rectly from Apple Retail gets ac­cess to Personal Setup. In these guided on­line ses­sions, a Specialist can walk them through setup, or fo­cus on fea­tures that will help them make the most of their new de­vice. Customers can also learn more about get­ting started and go­ing fur­ther with their new de­vice with a Today at Apple ses­sion at their near­est Apple Store.

* Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple us­ing Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 per­cent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 per­cent Daily Cash back — all up front. More in­for­ma­tion — in­clud­ing de­tails on el­i­gi­bil­ity, ex­clu­sions, and Apple Card terms — is avail­able at ap­ple.com/​ap­ple-card/​monthly-in­stall­ments.

* Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2025 us­ing ship­ping com­pet­i­tive sys­tems and se­lect in­dus­try-stan­dard bench­marks.

* Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2026. See ap­ple.com/​mac­book-air for more in­for­ma­tion.

* Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

* Results are com­pared to MacBook Air with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and a 2TB SSD.

* Results are com­pared to MacBook Air sys­tems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and a 2TB SSD.

* ma­cOS Tahoe is avail­able as a free soft­ware up­date. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or in all lan­guages. See re­quire­ments at ap­ple.com/​os/​ma­cos.

* Requires that iPhone, with an ac­tive car­rier plan, and Mac are signed in with the same Apple Account, iPhone and Mac are near each other, signed in to FaceTime with the same Apple Account, have Wi-Fi turned on, and are con­nected to the same net­work.

* Product re­cy­cled or re­new­able con­tent is the mass of cer­ti­fied re­cy­cled ma­te­r­ial rel­a­tive to the over­all mass of the de­vice, not in­clud­ing pack­ag­ing or in-box ac­ces­sories.

* Breakdown of U.S. re­tail pack­ag­ing by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coat­ings are ex­cluded from cal­cu­la­tions.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2025 us­ing ship­ping com­pet­i­tive sys­tems and se­lect in­dus­try-stan­dard bench­marks.

Testing was con­ducted by Apple in February 2026. See ap­ple.com/​mac­book-air for more in­for­ma­tion.

Apple Intelligence is avail­able in beta with sup­port for these lan­guages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some fea­tures may not be avail­able in all re­gions or lan­guages. For fea­ture and lan­guage avail­abil­ity and sys­tem re­quire­ments, see sup­port.ap­ple.com/​en-us/​121115.

Results are com­pared to MacBook Air with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16GB of uni­fied mem­ory, and a 2TB SSD.

The high court had also sought a re­port from the ju­nior judge who had used the AI-generated rul­ings. She told the court that this was her first time us­ing an AI tool and she had be­lieved the ci­ta­tions to be “genuine”. She had no in­ten­tion to mis­quote or mis­rep­re­sent the rul­ings and that “the mis­take oc­curred solely due to the re­liance on an au­to­matic source”, the high court wrote.

Over drinks a few weeks ago, a friend told me he’d been of­fered a pro­mo­tion, to an Engineering Manager role. He planned to de­cline it, but wanted to hear my take first.

Until re­cently, my an­swer in such con­ver­sa­tions was al­ways “100% go for it”. My logic was that it’s a su­per valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence, even if some­one is not look­ing for the man­age­ment ca­reer path. I told every en­gi­neer that a cou­ple of years as an EM would teach them valu­able skills, and they could al­ways go back af­ter­ward.

This time, we had a long dis­cus­sion about the trade­offs, and I fi­nally agreed with him that he should not take that step.

Here are the main ar­gu­ments from our con­ver­sa­tion:

AI cod­ing tools are fast, ca­pa­ble, and com­pletely con­text-blind. Even with rules, skills, and MCP con­nec­tions, they gen­er­ate code that misses your con­ven­tions, ig­nores past de­ci­sions, and breaks pat­terns. You end up pay­ing for that gap in re­work and to­kens.

It builds or­ga­ni­za­tional con­text from your code, PR his­tory, con­ver­sa­tions, docs, and run­time sig­nals. It maps re­la­tion­ships across sys­tems, rec­on­ciles con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion, re­spects per­mis­sions, and sur­faces what mat­ters for the task at hand. Instead of guess­ing, agents op­er­ate with the same un­der­stand­ing as ex­pe­ri­enced en­gi­neers.

* Generate plans, code, and re­views that re­flect how your sys­tem ac­tu­ally works

* Reduce costly re­trieval loops and tool calls by pro­vid­ing bet­ter con­text up front

* Spend less time cor­rect­ing out­puts for code that should have been right in the first place

WTF is OpenClaw? I’ve been on pa­ter­nity leave for a few weeks, and an­other com­pletely new pro­ject ex­ploded…

The pace of change in the last year has been com­pletely crazy, and it’s not stop­ping.

But even if you don’t give in to the con­stant FOMO - it’s im­pos­si­ble to ar­gue that the way we worked has­n’t changed. Almost every part of our work looks dif­fer­ent, and will con­tinue to evolve.

You’ve prob­a­bly seen this tweet - the cre­ator of Claude Code ask­ing why Anthropic still needs soft­ware en­gi­neers:

My friend was afraid that as a man­ager, he’d have less time to ex­per­i­ment and adapt. Especailly with a big­ger team (he was of­fered to man­age 6), you don’t have much time to play around.

I could def­i­nitely re­late to his fear. There are so many ideas I want to work on, tech I want to play with, and so lit­tle time to ac­tu­ally do it.

The clas­sic EM lad­der used to look like: EM → Senior EM → Director → VP.

But com­pa­nies have been flat­ten­ing for two years now. Amazon in­creased its IC-to-manager ra­tio by 15%, and other com­pa­nies fol­lowed.

This means there are fewer Director and VP roles to grow into (and much less Senior EM ones). You can be a great EM for years and find your­self stuck.

Companies still need some­one to run teams, but from Senior EM up­ward, it be­comes much more com­pet­i­tive. You’re com­pet­ing with ex­pe­ri­enced lead­ers who were laid off from those ‘flattened’ com­pa­nies.

Also, there is less op­por­tu­nity for in­ter­nal growth. As an EM, to get pro­moted, you mostly need to start man­ag­ing more en­gi­neers, which might not be pos­si­ble right now. It’s more likely you’ll just get big­ger scope with the same team - not a feat wor­thy of pro­mo­tion.

As an IC, be­ing ex­cel­lent at build­ing things can get you much fur­ther.

While my friend was of­fered a bump with the pro­mo­tion to EM, the to­tal com­pen­sa­tion was less than the of­fers he re­ceived for Senior/Staff Engineer at other star­tups.

This sur­prised him. The as­sump­tion has al­ways been that man­age­ment pays more. It does, if you com­pare an EM to a Senior Engineer at the same com­pany. But when you com­pare across the in­dus­try, be­ing a Staff en­gi­neer is bet­ter paid. I be­lieve it’s be­cause those en­gi­neers are in huge de­mand (and will con­tinue to be so).

For my friend specif­i­cally, stay­ing on the IC track, be­com­ing a Staff en­gi­neer and switch­ing com­pa­nies would have given him ~20-30% more than the EM pro­mo­tion he was of­fered.

First of all, I’m very op­ti­mistic about ex­pe­ri­enced Engineering Managers (who stayed hands-on), as I wrote in Engineering Management in the Age of Agents.

While we are prob­a­bly less sharp tech-wise, there are tons of rel­e­vant skills the job taught us over the years, that will still be rel­e­vant.

And while it’s hard, I think I’ll man­age to keep up.

But the main rea­son is that I en­joy my job.

While ra­tio­nally I be­lieve that be­ing an IC is a smarter choice in 2026, I know I would en­joy it less.

James Stanier wrote a great ar­ti­cle about what to do when the lad­der dis­ap­pears, to help you fig­ure out where you should aim. I highly rec­om­mend the ex­er­cise there!

If you are a se­nior en­gi­neer, the bot­tom line is that I would­n’t rec­om­mend the jump to man­age­ment right now. I would wait a cou­ple of years to see how things will look like.

BUT, and it’s a big but - if your gut tells you to do it (and not your brain), if it’s truly a path you want to pur­sue - then go for it!

3 air­craft lost to friendly fire (Feb 28): $270,000,000 — equiv. to 3,375 teacher salaries for a year

U. S. na­tional debt in­ter­est: $1,000,000,000,000 pro­jected for 2026 alone

Every $1,000,000 in mil­i­tary spend­ing cre­ates ~5 jobs. The same $1,000,000 cre­ates ~13 in ed­u­ca­tion, ~9 in health­care.

Running es­ti­mate uses a three-phase bot­tom-up cost model: ~$380,000,000/day for ini­tial strikes (Days 0–3), ~$220,000,000/day for sus­tained op­er­a­tions (Days 3–10), ~$155,000,000/day for air dom­i­nance/​ISR-heavy phase (Day 10+). Each phase is built from seven sourced com­po­nents: per­son­nel ($40,000,000/day, ~50,000 de­ployed), naval forces ($22,000,000/day for 2 CSGs, 7 DDGs, 6 LCS), air­craft op­er­a­tions ($48,000,000/day across 12 air­frame types at full O&S per-hour rates), fuel & lo­gis­tics ($15,000,000/day), non-tracked ord­nance ($35,000,000/day), C4ISR/cyber/space ($10,000,000/day), and over­head/​un­mod­eled costs ($50,000,000/day). Naval + air­craft com­bined: ~$70,000,000/day dur­ing ac­tive op­er­a­tions.

Discrete one-time costs (aircraft losses, high-value cruise mis­siles, bunker busters) are tracked sep­a­rately and added to the run­ning to­tal. Munitions costs use DoD pro­cure­ment unit costs; ac­tual re­place­ment/​re­plen­ish­ment costs are 10–20% higher due to surge pro­duc­tion pre­mi­ums and sup­ply chain con­straints.

On the “overhead” cat­e­gory: Bottom-up de­fense cost mod­els typ­i­cally cap­ture 60–75% of true costs (per CBO and RAND method­ol­ogy notes). The re­main­der in­cludes clas­si­fied pro­grams, ~25,000 con­trac­tor per­son­nel, al­lied force co­or­di­na­tion, surge de­ploy­ment over­head, com­bat search & res­cue, MEDEVAC, base hard­en­ing, and other fric­tion costs that are real but not di­rectly ob­serv­able from open sources.

Not in­cluded: Long-term vet­eran health­care (historically 2–4× di­rect war costs over decades), eco­nomic op­por­tu­nity costs, in­di­rect costs from en­ergy mar­ket dis­rup­tion (oil up ~15%), al­lied na­tion ex­pen­di­tures, or en­vi­ron­men­tal re­me­di­a­tion. These omis­sions mean the true to­tal tax­payer cost will be sig­nif­i­cantly higher than shown.