Apple slashed prices on its MacBook Airs by at least $100 last week. This is perhaps the best upgrade loyal Apple users could have asked for.

This is Apple's smallest MacBook Airs; but by lowering the price and putting in a faster Intel processor it could make it more competitive. The Airs that will be undergoing the price reduction will be at its low-end and high-end models.  

The Airs' prices for the 11.6-inch model is now $899, rather than its previous $999; and the 13.3-inch Air also saw a price drop of $100, now $999, previously it was $1,099 VentureBeat.com reported.

Even Apple fans in the U.K. will get a better deal than the U.S. market, with £100 price cuts across all of the Air lines. It also includes 11.6-inch Air starting at £749, and the 13.3-inch model starting at £849. While the entry-level prices 13.3-inch Air dropped by $100 in the U.S., and similarly in the U.K., those models come standard with a 128GB solid-state drive and 4GB of memory, CNET reported.

The higher-end 11.6-inch and the 13.3-inch configurations with a 256GB SSD also saw prices drop $100 in the U.S. and £100 in the U.K.

In terms of the 11-inch and 13-inch Airs its processors will be more powerful. On the low-end, it will have a 1.4Ghz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with 4GB of RAM and 128GB storage; on the high-end option, storage gets bumped up to 256GB. 

And both models will receive battery upgrades for iTunes movie playback. The 11-inch model will give users 8 to 9 hours of movie time, while the 13-inch will reportedly last through 10 to 12 hours of video playback, the Fast Company reported.

While this might sound like a minor performance upgrade to some people, the fourth-generation Intel Core Haswell processor could be more efficient in other ways, in terms of power efficiency or cooling, thanks to manufacturing improvements, VentureBeat.com reported.

With the price cuts and the increase in processors, the MacBook Air line appears to be unchanged. However, at the time of writing this article, there is speculation that there will be a redesigned Air released later this year.