Usually when local pricing for a new Apple product is announced it turns up in Stuff‘s inbox without notice or warning. It’s not often found on the local iStore website for all to see, without fanfare. But that’s just what has happened with the local pricing for Apple’s new Macbook Air — it’s just kinda turned up.

The new MacBook Air is now available on the iStore website, starting at R21,500 for the base model Air with a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of flash storage. The only other model, spec-wise, is the 256GB storage edition which matches the base model for processor and RAM stats. That one will set you back R25,000 if you’re looking to pre-order.

And setting up a pre-order seems to be a working option — though we haven’t tested this ourselves because payday’s still a ways off this month. There are just two hardware variants but both of those are available in Space Grey, Gold, and Silver finishes. There’s no sign of any higher-specced models yet, including the 1.5TB MacBook Air — a version we were keen on — and dreading — seeing the price of here in South Africa.

As for a launch date, that’s unknown at the moment. Any of the Air’s product pages gives a vague “mid-November” launch date for the slices of Apple computing, which could be as soon as next week — probably on a Friday, because that’s how Apple rolls.