The iconic Brooklyn Academy of Music, Howard Gilman Opera House in New York, witnessed a full house yesterday, with an audience enthusiastic about Apple’s special event. Beginning with a melody from Judy Garland’s popular song ‘I happen to like New York’, CEO Tim Cook kicked off the event with a montage of several globally popular celebrity icons using the Mac.

Elaborating on the numerous achievements and landmark figures that MacBook had scaled over the years, Tim Cook introduced a new MacBook Air, notably with a Retina Display. What’s more is that the aluminium bezel on the screen was done away with, and the newer bezels have been narrowed by almost 50%.

There’s also been the addition of Touch ID, another highlight enabled by the T2 chip. The Apple T2 chip does a whole lot more than provide a secure enclave for Touch ID; it also contains the SSD controller and other vital components like an image signal processor.

Other features include a backlit keyboard with individual lighting for each key based on the third-generation Butterfly mechanism that’s said to be four times more stable. There is also a brand new Force Touch trackpad giving it 20% larger area, apart from pressure-sensing capabilities, Laura Lagrove, VP of Hardware Engineering at Apple said.

New MacBook Air specs

The all-new MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch Retina display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The company is also touting louder stereo speakers with more bass than before, and it features a three-mic array. The all-new MacBook Air is also just 15.6mm-thick, which makes it 10% thinner than the previous model. It weighs 1.25 kg, down from 1.34 kg.

In terms of design, the company says the new MacBook occupies 17% less volume than the previous generation MacBook Air. Apple also says it now uses custom alloy from excess aluminium, ensuring the laptop is built with 100% recycled aluminium, instead of high-grade aluminium in previous generations, which helps reduce the carbon footprint be nearly 50%.

MacBook Air price in India

The base model for the all-new MacBook Air features 8GB of 2133MHz RAM (up to 16GB), an Intel Core i5 processor with Intel UHD Graphics 617, and a 128GB SSD (up to 1.5TB). It is priced at $1,199 in the US and goes up for pre-orders in the US today, with availability from November 7th. It’s out in India the same day priced at Rs. 1,14,900, a significant price increase from its predecessor.

The new MacBook Air will be available in Gold, Silver, and Space Gray colour variants. A $1,399 model was also detailed, which has much the same specifications, except 256GB SSD storage. The India price for that model is not known at this stage.