14 DAY TRIAL // Apple’s 2018 device lineup includes a new MacBook Air with a Retina display, and the company has also focused on upgrades under the hood that would keep the laptop in line with its Windows rivals.
Surprisingly, however, there’s no Intel Core i7 processor option, as the device is powered by an 8th generation Intel Core i5 chip running at 1.6 GHz.
And yet, Apple has at least considered launching an i7 version of the new MacBook Air, as a Geekbench benchmark shows what’s believed to be an internal prototype powered by a dual-core eighth-generation Core i7 processor with a base clock speed of 1.8GHz.
Codenamed AAPJ140K1,1, this mysterious laptop is equipped with 16GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 RAM, an option that’s available for the i5 configuration as well.
Judging from the Geekbench scores, the Intel Core i7 MacBook Air is some 8.5 percent faster than the i5 sibling, so Apple not rolling it out to buyers worldwide is quite strange.
Possibly coming as future upgrade
While the listing could very well be fake, MacRumors cites Geekbench founder John Poole as saying that the log looks legitimate, suggesting that there’s a chance it was all just a prototype that Apple built for internal testing.
As for the reasons the company decided not to launch it globally, a lot can be speculated here, from software issues to hardware challenges like the processor running too hot and requiring additional tweaks that Apple didn’t consider worth the resources.
At the same time, there’s a chance that Apple is pondering such an upgrade at some point in the future, though for now, it just looks like the software giant is exploring its options and may keep the device for internal testing.
A possible upgrade to the new MacBook lineup could follow in one or two years, and revisions in the chip lineup will certainly be worth keeping an eye on.