New Mac notebooks promise 'true all-day battery life'

An Intel chip upgrade to the existing MacBook Air range promises up to 12 hours’ use between charges, according to an announcement made by Apple during the keynote at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday.

An Intel chip upgrade to the existing MacBook Air range promises up to 12 hours' use between charges, according to an announcement made by Apple during the keynote at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday.

As hoped, following the official launch of Intel's latest-generation processors, which promise to boost performance and power efficiency, it was announced at WWDC that the company's ultra-light MacBook Air notebooks are getting processor and harddrive updates that mean, in the words of the company's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, "true, all-day battery life."

Thanks to the addition of Intel Haswell chips, the 11-inch MacBook Air will run for nine hours (up from five hours) while the bigger, 13-inch version will run for an incredible 12 hours, up from seven hours.

The 11-inch also gets 128GB of flash memory as standard and a faster wireless internet standard, while the 13-inch sees its price fall by $100.

Apple says that the refreshed notebooks will be available immediately and will cost $999 for the 11-inch with 128 gigabytes of flash storage, while the 13-inch model with 128 gigabytes is $1,099.