Apple has given the MacBook Air a surprise, but welcome, upgrade, increasing the base RAM from 8 to 16GB.

The MacBook Air is Apple’s most popular laptop, used by everyone from students to business professionals to developers. Despite its popularity, Apple has only included 8GB of RAM as the default for years.

As recently as April of this year, Apple defended its decision to default to 8GB in the MacBook Air, citing the benefits of its M-series architecture as the reason.

With the recent MacBook Air refresh, Apple has finally bumped the base RAM to 16GB. Apple Intelligence is the likely reason, as it takes 8GB to run the local AI models.

Whatever the reason, the increased RAM should provide a welcome boost for users, and provide value far beyond AI features.