They will, eventually.īut if you, like me, felt like the last time you connected with a laptop design/price combo was 5-plus years ago when the MacBook Air was new (or new-ish), my advice is to wait. Our smartphones have become so powerful that our laptops need to be designed around them in some way. But none of them feel vital yet.įor me, part of the problem is that we haven't quite settled on what the ideal complement to the smartphone is yet.

Different companies are experimenting with hybrid tablets that could replace them entirely, or low-cost internet machines like Chromebooks. The laptop, as a category, is in a bit of a transition period. I'm not seriously considering getting a new laptop until I run this one into the ground. The degraded battery was the root of my MacBook Air's issues, and now it feels almost like new. And it turned out, this made my MacBook Air work like a charm again. The replacement cost me $129 at Apple, but you can also do it yourself with a kit for $65.99. I ended up replacing my battery, which was well, well past due. Sure, the screen wasn't amazing, but it was something I could live with. It had a keyboard that felt great, and it worked well with my iPhone and iPad. It was portable, stylish, and powerful enough.

That was a nice price point for me, especially since I saw it lasting at least four years. When I bought my MacBook Air in mid-2012, it was $899. I don't really want to shell out that kind of money for either of those, but there was a way I saved my MacBook Air for a few more years, and it can be a good option for many people. Apple appears to have decided that the laptop line should die a slow death, and is pushing customers toward either the MacBook Pro or the MacBook, both of which start at $1,299. That's a minor change, and as my colleague Jeff Dunn pointed out, there are a lot of reasons you should NOT buy a new Air.īut for fans of the MacBook Air, like myself, this leaves us in a bit of a bind. The Air now starts with a 1.8 GHz processor, instead of a 1.6 GHz processor.

Mac air battery replacement price