While excitement for Apple Inc.’s new iPhones has helped boost the company’s share price to record highs, a nearly 40-year-old workhorse with stagnating sales in recent years is notching impressive growth: the Mac.
Sales of the computer line rose 29% in the past quarter to a record $9 billion. Apple has seen huge interest in many of its products, from iPads to headphones, as students and workers stay home because of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday, the Mac lineup got its biggest jolt in years during a virtual event streamed online and filmed at the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Apple introduced a new M1 microchip that the tech giant designed in-house to give devices faster performance, better battery life and, maybe, bigger profits.
The new chip will go first into a new, super-thin MacBook Air laptop, starting at $999, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, starting at $1,299, and the Mac Mini computer, starting at $699.
Among the accolades listed during the Apple presentation, the company said the new chip would allow the MacBook Air to be 3.5 times faster than the previous generation and run silently because it wouldn’t need a fan to keep it cool.
WSJ
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