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Table of contents MacBook Air M5 MacBook Pro M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro Apple just announced two new laptops, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, both powered by the new M5 chip. They are faster, smarter, and more expensive. The price increases are real, and we will get into the exact numbers. But the bigger story here is what these machines can now do. The M5 chip is built specifically to handle AI tasks directly on your laptop, without sending anything to the cloud. That means faster responses, more privacy, and no extra monthly bills for computing power. If you are buying in Nigeria, the exchange rate of ₦1,378.32 to the US Dollar makes these machines a significant investment. This article covers the full specs, the pricing, and what you actually get for the money. MacBook Air M5 Image source: apple.com/newsroom The MacBook Air remains Apple’s best laptop for most people. The 2026 model keeps the thin, fanless aluminium design but adds a new “Sky Blue” colour option alongside Midnight, Starlight, and Silver. More importantly, Apple has moved the base storage to 512GB, ending the era of the cramped 256GB entry-level configuration. This is the first MacBook Air to come with Apple’s N1 wireless chip, which brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to a consumer laptop for the first time. MacBook Air M5: Technical specs The M5 chip inside the Air is built on TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process (N3P), which packs in 15% to 25% more transistors than the previous process. That efficiency gain is what keeps the laptop completely fanless and silent, even during demanding tasks that would have throttled older models. Here is what you get: Processor: Apple M5 chip, 10-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores Graphics: Up to 10-core GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading Neural engine: 16-core with per-core Neural Accelerators, 4x faster AI than M4 Unified memory: 16GB (base), 24GB, or 32GB at 153GB/s bandwidth (28% faster than M4) Storage: 512GB (base), 1TB, 2TB, or up to 4TB with 2x faster read/write speeds Display: Liquid Retina (13.6″ or 15.3″), 500 nits brightness, P3 wide colour Networking: Apple N1 chip with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread support Battery: Up to 18 hours of video playback, fast-charge with 70W+ adapter Camera: 12MP Centre Stage with Desk View support Audio: Three-mic array, four-speaker (13″) or six-speaker (15″) system Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C), MagSafe 3, 3.5mm headphone jack Size: 0.44″ thick (13″), 0.45″ thick (15″), fanless aluminium body The 153GB/s memory bandwidth is the number that matters most for AI work. It means data moves almost instantly between the CPU and GPU, eliminating lag when running generative AI models locally. Wi-Fi 7 offers nearly double the throughput of Wi-Fi 6E, which makes a difference if you work from busy offices or co-working spaces. The N1 chip also includes Thread support, positioning the MacBook Air as a hub for Matter-compatible smart home ecosystems. US pricing Pre-orders open on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, at 6:15 a.m. PST (3:15 p.m. WAT) via the Apple Store online and app. In-store availability begins on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, across 31 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. The $100 price increase over the previous generation is offset by the jump from 256GB to 512GB base storage. Nigeria pricing The Nigerian tech market prices Apple products based on import tariffs, value-added taxes, and local resellers’ currency hedging. At ₦1,378.32 per dollar, the raw conversion for the 13-inch base model comes to ₦1,514,773.68. Authorised dealers like iStore, Slot, and iConnect add their local costs on top of that. Here is what to expect at retail: Nigerian stock typically arrives 10 to 14 days after the global launch, as local channels coordinate with European supply hubs. iStore Nigeria and Slot are expected to begin receiving stock in the final week of March 2026, with “Special Experience” events planned to showcase M5’s on-device AI features to the local developer community. MacBook Pro M5 Pro and M5 Max Image source: apple.com/newsroom The MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max is the most significant architectural update for Apple’s professional laptops since the 2021 redesign. These machines are built for high-intensity professional work: high-resolution 3D rendering, large-scale data processing, and training local machine learning models that require serious memory and processing power. Technical specs The M5 Pro and M5 Max are built on a “Fusion Architecture” that lets you independently configure CPU and GPU core counts, a first for the Mac lineup. M5 Pro: Up to 14-core CPU (10 performance + 4 efficiency cores) Up to 20-core GPU 25% performance uplift over M4 Pro Up to 48GB unified memory at ~250GB/s bandwidth M5 Max: Up to 16-core CPU Up to 40-core GPU Up to 128GB unified memory at ~546GB/s bandwidth (double the Pro model) Full specs side-by-side: Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models now come with Thunderbolt 5 ports, offering up to 120Gbps of bandwidth, triple what Thunderbolt 4 provided. That makes them capable of driving multiple 8K displays or connecting to ultra-fast external storage arrays used in film production. A new “Nano-texture” glass option is available for the Pro line, cutting glare in bright environments without affecting colour accuracy. This matters for on-set colourists and designers working outside a controlled space. The 16-inch model now delivers a record 24 hours of video-streaming battery life, enabled by the N3P process and a 72.4-watt-hour battery in the 14-inch model. Professional audio comes from a six-speaker system with force-cancelling woofers and a studio-quality three-mic array. US pricing The highest-tier MacBook Pro configurations, such as the M5 Max with 128GB of unified memory and 8TB of storage, can go well above $7,000, putting them in the territory of a high-end desktop workstation replacement. Nigeria pricing The MacBook Pro market in Nigeria is split between institutional buyers and high-net-worth creative professionals. At ₦1,378.32 per dollar, the base M5 Pro 14-inch converts to roughly ₦3,030,925.68 before
Read MoreUntil the latter half of 2024, core banking applications (CBAs) attracted little public attention outside Nigeria’s banking industry. That changed when several major commercial banks switched or upgraded their CBAs, disrupting banking services for millions of customers. But five years before core banking was on Nigerians’ lips, the founding team at Kuda, a Nigerian neobank which boasts over seven million customers, knew that building its CBA could be the difference between success and failure. “It was, of course, one of the hardest and probably the most daring decisions I’ve ever taken in my professional life,” Musty Mustapha, Kuda’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said about the decision to build an in-house CBA. “I knew I had to stick my neck on the line with my founding partner, the investors, the board, and everybody else.” Banking’s economic logic has not changed much since its early days: institutions collect deposits from customers, guarantee access to the deposits, and finance the economy by extending credit. What has changed is the mechanics and machinery powering it. Today, the core banking application, an always-on ledger, is the software that records and powers every deposit, loan, and transaction in a bank. As the engine of modern banking, it ensures that accounts are updated in real time, that bank operations are reliable and scalable, and that the bank can launch and manage products. How it happened In 2019, Kuda was still small enough that its key decision-makers could fit on a small table. There were no headline venture capital firms like Target Global yet. The neobank was live and growing fast, but running on a third-party core banking provider. This is the model most financial institutions in Nigeria rely on because building core banking infrastructure takes time, effort, and capital that could be better spent elsewhere. Apart from Kuda, only a handful of Nigerian financial institutions, like Moniepoint and Sterling Bank, have developed their own core banking applications in-house. However, inside Kuda, the third-party CBA was starting to crack under the weight of the neobank’s ambition. More customers and product releases drove demand and a growing intolerance for instability, placing pressure on the CBA. Mustapha knew that this tension could jeopardise his young startup’s future. A series of conversations with his engineers and Kuda’s CEO, Babs Ogundeyi, led to what eventually became NERV, Kuda’s in-house core banking system, named after the human nervous system because it sits underneath everything and quietly controls how Kuda operates. Mustapha insisted on one point above all else during our hour-long conversation in October 2025: when Kuda started building NERV, Nigeria’s banking or fintech market had not built an in-house core banking system like Kuda was attempting to. “At the time when we built NERV, there was no fintech or banking-related company that had built its own core banking system,” he said. “NERV is the pioneer in-house-built core banking solution by a bank in Nigeria.” However, Moniepoint began its in-house core banking development in 2020, and several Nigerian companies like Appzone’s Qore already sold core banking products to Nigerian microfinance banks. NERV began as most banks think about CBAs: shopping. Musty approached multiple local and foreign providers, seeking a CBA robust enough for what Kuda wanted to become and cheap enough for what Kuda could afford in 2019. The startup eventually launched in August 2019 on a local core banking provider. Then reality set in as Kuda grew to a million customers quickly, and the system felt brittle under this weight. Mustapha described three issues that kept compounding: it could not scale with customer growth, could not be adapted to Kuda’s needs, and above all, could not be relied upon to stay up. “If you are offering a financial service, the minimum that you can do is to ensure that your systems are stable for your customers,” he said. “If you cannot achieve this, you can as well just pack your load and go home.” So, Kuda did what most institutions avoid: it kept looking for alternatives before deciding there weren’t any that met its needs within the constraints it had. At that point, Mustapha said that the question became existential rather than technical: what kind of company are we building? His answer was simple. “Kuda is an engineering-first company,” he said. “That is the kind of company we’re trying to build: using engineering resources to solve financial services problems in Nigeria.” Mustapha added that Kuda never needed to run a long persuasion campaign, even though building a core banking system could cost tens of millions of dollars and is slow. In September 2019, the company had raised only $1.6 million in a pre-seed round from angel investors and family offices. This lack of institutional capital meant fewer layers of approval, less red tape, and fewer people who could veto a high-conviction decision. But even then, Kuda avoided betting the business on a rebuild while it was still learning to exist. Instead, NERV ran in parallel to the existing CBA. Kuda continued operating on the third-party core while engineers built NERV in the background. That way, if it failed, the bank would not die. It would keep running, find a new provider, or endure the one it had. “It wasn’t like the company stopped operating,” Mustapha said. “We were still on the third-party provider system, still serving customers, still growing, but we’d decided and were treating it as a side project.” Kuda had another advantage; its engineering talent was willing to take on a long, invisible build while still maintaining production systems. “There’s no way I would have even attempted to go ahead with it if that quality was not there,” Mustapha said. “I’m speaking about an actually world-class team.” The mechanics of NERV NERV’s architectural choices were less exotic than the outcome itself. Kayode Ilesanmi, one of the engineers who built it, said the team started with a clear conclusion: if Kuda wanted scalability and flexibility, it couldn’t build a monolith. “We just had to say, ‘You know what, for
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Table of contents iPhone 17e iPad Air M4 Everything else announced Apple kicked off the first week of March 2026 with a major hardware push, a shiftfrom centralised keynote events toward a multi-day rollout of product announcements. This “Big Week” started on Monday, March 2, 2026, through coordinated press releases and product videos on the Apple Newsroom. The physical events will take place at the “Apple Experience” sessions on March 4, 2026, across three cities: New York, London, and Shanghai, starting at 9 a.m. ET (3 p.m. WAT). These are invite-only, in-person sessions giving local media a hands-on look at the hardware. The central theme for this week is “Accessible Intelligence.” Apple is bringing features previously locked behind Pro pricing into its more affordable lineup. The iPhone 17e gets the A19 chip, and the new iPad Air runs on the M4 processor, meaning the full suite of Apple Intelligence features now works across the entire 2026 product line. For buyers in Nigeria and across Africa, where the “e” series and Air models make up a significant part of the premium market, these updates are a meaningful step forward without requiring the price tag of a Pro Max or Ultra device. iPhone 17e Image source: @theapplehub on X Processor and performance A19 chip (3nm), 6-core CPU (4 performance + 2 efficiency cores) Up to 2x faster than iPhone 11 4-core GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing and console-level gaming support 16-core Neural Engine redesigned for large generative AI models Connectivity and battery Apple-designed C1X modem, up to 2x faster than the C1 in iPhone 16e 30% more energy-efficient than previous modems 26-hour battery life for video playback Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, USB-C Display 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED (60Hz) Ceramic Shield 2 front cover, 3x better scratch resistance than previous gen Anti-reflective coating, peak HDR brightness up to 1,200 nits Camera 48MP Fusion rear camera with 2x optical-quality Telephoto 12MP TrueDepth front camera with Face ID, 4K Dolby Vision Storage and Accessories Starts at 256GB (512GB option available) MagSafe (15W) and Qi2 support, first time in an “e” model Standout features Apple emphasised Ceramic Shield 2 and an IP68 rating make it the most durable “e” model yet Storage doubles from the previous gen at the same starting price, addressing a common pain point with high-resolution photos and 4K video MagSafe inclusion opens access to a wide ecosystem of magnetic accessories, including wallets, car mounts, and fast wireless chargers Action button now available on the “e” model for the first time, customizable for flashlight, camera, or Visual Intelligence New matte finish in soft pink, black, and white Design changes in iPhone 17e vs. iPhone 16e Same 6.1-inch form factor, but with a new matte finish that resists fingerprints Still uses a notch for TrueDepth camera and Face ID (no Dynamic Island) IP68 water and dust resistance retained An action button was added, which was previously exclusive to Pro and standard iPhone 17 models New colour added: soft pink, alongside black and white Specs summary Pricing 256GB: $599 globally 512GB: $799 globally Nigeria pricing for the iPhone 16e ranged from ₦1,200,000 to ₦1,400,000 at launch (2025) With double the base storage and the current exchange rate of approximately ₦1,370.89 per $1, the iPhone 17e is expected to retail between ₦1,500,000 and ₦1,700,000 at authorised resellers like iStore and iConnect. Availability and release date Pre-orders open globally on Wednesday, March 4, at 6:15 a.m. PT (2:15 p.m. WAT) In-store availability and shipping begin Wednesday, March 11, 2026 iPad Air M4 Image source: @theapplehub on X Chip and performance M4 chip with 8-core CPU and 9-core GPU Multi-core performance up to 30% faster than the M3 model and up to 2.3x faster than the M1 GPU supports second-generation hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, with 3D rendering over 4x faster than M1 16-core Neural Engine, 3x faster than M1, for near-instant AI features like Image Wand and Clean Up Memory and storage 12GB unified memory, up 50% from the previous generation 120GB/s memory bandwidth Storage options: 128GB up to 1TB Connectivity Apple N1 chip enabling Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread support Cellular variants use the C1X modem, up to 50% faster cellular data than the previous model, and 30% more energy-efficient Available in Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular configurations Display Liquid Retina IPS LCD, 500 nits brightness, P3 wide colour, True Tone Available in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes 60Hz refresh rate (no ProMotion) Camera 12MP front-facing camera with Centre Stage, now repositioned to the landscape edge for more natural eye contact during video calls Standout features Apple emphasised Positioned as an “AI powerhouse” with full Apple Intelligence support out of the box 12GB RAM removes the bottleneck for running large AI models and creative apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7 for significantly faster and more reliable wireless speeds C1X modem on cellular models is ideal for professionals in Lagos and Abuja relying on 5G for mobile work Landscape camera placement improves the video call experience when using a keyboard Changes vs. iPad Air M2 Jumped directly from M2 chip to M4 chip, skipping the M3 entirely in this product line RAM increased from 8GB to 12GB Front camera moved to the landscape edge (both 11-inch and 13-inch models) N1 networking chip added, replacing the previous Wi-Fi solution Maintains the same thin and light design with no exterior changes Full specs comparison Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard compatibility Fully compatible with Apple Pencil Pro: supports squeeze for tool palette, barrel roll for precise brush control, and haptic feedback Also supports the more affordable Apple Pencil (USB-C) Compatible with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Air, which includes backlit keys, a 14-key function row, a large Multi-Touch trackpad, and connects via Smart Connector (no Bluetooth pairing or separate charging needed) Magic Keyboard available in black and white to match the four iPad Air colour options: Space Gray, Blue, Purple, and Starlight Global pricing (same as previous generation): 11-inch
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