Apple doesn’t need my help selling their computers. But I hope you’ll indulge me for a few paragraphs as I wax enthusiastic about the latest MacBooks Air.

Apple refreshed its venerable consumer laptop in July 2022. After so many years with a signature wedge shape, the new MBA is a level shape that is almost absurdly thin — 11mm (0.4 in)! — and light at 1220g (2.7 lb). I owned one for about half a year, and it was an absolute pleasure to use.

The big criticism leveled against the M2 MacBook Air back in 2022 was its notable price premium over the old-style M1 Air, which remained in the lineup. It’s one of those cringe-y aspects of Tim Cook’s Apple, where the company maximizes its investment in hardware production to meet its margins.

But now we have good news: Apple has launched the M3 MacBook Air today. The flagship consumer laptop now has the fastest Apple Silicon inside, and for the first time in the Apple Silicon era, it supports up to two external displays. It’s a great new machine, and I recommend it heartily.

But the real news, to my mind, is how it bumped the previous model down to an unprecedented price. The M2 MacBook Air, once derided as too expensive, is now available starting at $999 USD ($1,299 CAD). That is an exciting state of affairs for huge swaths of the potential Mac user base.

We can surely quibble still. I’m no fan of the meagre 8GB of RAM, or the positively anemic 256GB SSD. And the costs to upgrade either of these is still preposterous.

But this computer combines a gorgeous, sleek physical design with astounding performance, and breathtaking battery life. There has never been a computer this good, for most people, at this price.

As I sit in this Starbucks and observe the folks pulling out their external wired mouses, squinting at their faded displays on chonky black bricks with IBM and HP logos on them, I feel that small, uncharitable tug inside of me. It’s a feeling I haven’t had since the early 90s, when I knew that the best computer was a Macintosh, while they toiled on DOS or Windows 3.1.

Quietly, and without much fanfare, Apple has turned the personal computer race into a farce. It’s not even close.

It’s the closest thing we have to the perfect computer.