For those wondering what are the differences, Intel basically has chipsets that are designed to be high-powered as part its U-series which you can find in the MacBook Pros. Then you have the lower-powered Y-series chipsets which is what the new MacBook Airs are using. This means that a Core i5 MacBook Air and Core i5 MacBook Pro are two very completely different beasts.
What does this mean for would-be customers? Basically the lowered powered Amber Lake CPUs aren’t necessarily designed for professionals who need to render images and videos at high-resolutions. However as an everyday laptop for work, watching videos, surfing the web, maybe even light gaming, then these chipsets should do just fine. Plus they also have the added advantage of consuming less power, which according to Apple translates into 12 hours of web browsing time, or 13 hours of watching movies on iTunes.