In many of its most recent hardware launches, including iPad Pro and iPhone 17 Pro, Apple has prioritized one thing heavily: thermals. With how powerful Apple Silicon can be, having sufficient passive cooling is important on fanless devices.
There’s one key product line that’s so far missed out on this treatment: the MacBook Air.
Previous thermal upgrades
As mentioned before, iPad Pro and iPhone 17 Pro both received pretty substantial thermal upgrades – to qualm complaints about overheating.
In the case of the iPad Pro, Apple incorporated graphite sheets within the main housing, and also implemented copper within the Apple logo, allowing for far more efficient heat dissipation. With these two upgrades, Apple was able to tote 20% better thermals in the new iPad Pro.
With the iPhone, as overheating complaints ramped up with the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple addressed the problem in two rounds: a new internal design on iPhone 16 for better heat dissipation, and a full-on redesign on iPhone 17 Pro – with a vapor chamber and aluminum unibody.
Despite these thermal strides across the iPad Pro and the iPhone, Apple never brought such improvements to the MacBook Air, one of its thinnest and lightest computers with very demanding silicon.
MacBook Air thermal issues
Apple redesigned the MacBook Air in 2022 with a much thinner and lighter design, and it switched from a large metal heatsink to a thin graphite sheet with no real heat spreader. This was an issue, because it meant that the M2 MacBook Air could thermally throttle faster than the prior MacBook Air model, depending on the workload.
When Apple announced the M4 iPad Pro and its copper heat spreader in the Apple logo, I was hopeful that this was a key indicator of what would later come in the MacBook Air. That’s still yet to come, but Apple still has another shot with the M5 MacBook Air. It doesn’t even have to invest in a copper heat spreader like the iPad Pro. Apple could just go for a vapor chamber like the iPhone.
Despite Apple Silicon getting more and more powerful, the thermals of the MacBook Air haven’t improved at all, resulting in the MacBook Air arguably being underprepared for chips like the M4. That problem will only get worse with M5 if nothing changes.
Wrap up
One could argue that most MacBook Air users don’t need sustained performance – and that may be a fair point. However, if the iPad Pro can have a sophisticated cooling system while running iPadOS, I don’t see why the MacBook Air should miss out.
Apple is about to unveil a new entry-level MacBook model sometime this year with an A18 Pro chip. That device will inevitably be passively cooled, but adding better thermal management to the MacBook Air would give it a leg up compared to the budget MacBook for some buyers.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
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