Hello and goodbye to the MacBook Air

Hello and goodbye to the MacBook Air

2024-03-07 14:55:19

On The Vergecast: AI laptops, European iPhones, and Nintendo drama.

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On The Vergecast: a requiem for the wedge, Big Tech’s future in the EU, the Elon Musk / OpenAI lawsuit, and much more.

By David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

A picture of a MacBook Air over the Vergecast hosts.

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Apple announced two new MacBook Air models this week, with spec upgrades across the board — and a bunch of confusing ideas about how your laptop can be great at AI. We’ll see how all of that shakes out in our review, but there’s little question that the Air will still be one of the best laptops you can buy. But these new models, and the final death of the wedge design, raise some questions. Questions like: what does the “Air” even mean anymore? And: was Apple right to try to kill the MacBook Air altogether a bunch of years ago?

On this episode of The Vergecast (which is a day early because we’re all about to head to SXSW — come hang with us!), we decide the new Airs don’t warrant too much discussion before proceeding to talk about them for a surprisingly long time. Then, we talk about the upcoming iPad news we’re expecting soon, along with what’s coming from Microsoft’s Surface team in a couple of weeks.

After that, we dig into the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the new-look internet that folks are waking up to all across the EU. The DMA will affect six of the biggest companies in tech — Amazon, Alphabet, ByteDance, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft — but you’re likely to first feel the change the next time you update your iPhone. We also try to figure out why Apple appears to be torching its relationship with developers and why it can’t stop fighting with Epic.

After all of that, it’s time for a lightning round! We talk Apple Podcasts transcriptions, game emulator drama, the deeply weird Lenovo Legion Go, and all the latest Elon Musk / OpenAI drama. It’s a wonky one, folks, but that’s The Vergecast.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the new MacBooks:

And the DMA rollout in the EU:

And Apple’s fights with Spotify and Epic:

And the lightning round: