Apple expected to use 8th gen Intel Kaby Lake processors in the 2018 MacBook Air

Apple is expected to refresh the MacBook Air later in September this year and a new report suggests that the 13-inch notebook may ship slower than expected because of a decision made by Apple.

According to a report by Taiwanese publication, Economic Daily News, the new model due later this year will use 8th-generation Kaby Lake Refresh processors, instead of the earlier rumoured 10-nanometer Cannon Lake chips. The decision was reportedly made after Intel delayed production for the 10 nm Cannon Lake chips to late 2019, leaving Apple with little choice.

For a quick recap, the 8th-generation Core i5 and i7 quad-core CPUs were released in 2017 and have base clock speeds ranging from 1.6 GHz to 1.9 GHz. These will obviously be much faster than the current 5th-generation chips being shipped with the MacBook Air but many now wonder whether an upgrade will indeed be warranted.

However, according to a report by Apple Insider, the article by the Taiwanese publication refers to a “13-inch MacBook” which makes it unclear whether the news refers to the MacBook Air lineup or a new model being added to the MacBook Pro series. The confusion is due to the fact that the MacBook lineup has a 12-inch option, while the only notebook made by Apple that has a 13-inch display is the MacBook Air.

The new MacBook Air model is expected to pack a Retina display this time and be priced in line with the current generation MacBook Air’s starting price of $999 in the US for the variant with a 128 GB SSD. A more expensive version with double the onboard storage could likely sell in the range of $1,199.