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Apple Introduced Its Most Controversial MacBook 10 Years Ago Today
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I don't know any details but reading between the lines, I get the impression that the 12" MacBook was Joni Ive's vision for the future of Apple.
I sense that it was Joni who pushed hard for it to be engineered the way it was. And that he was very proud of it. "Form over function" - at all cost.
While this motto will never work for high-end professional devices, it will very much work for the market the 12" MacBook was designed for: people who are willing to pay a premium for small and lightweight devices - as long as they perform adequately.
Sadly the rest of Apple never understood this, I think.
Their marketing strategy for the 12" MacBook was completely off, and in the end people did not know why they should pay *more* for a 12" MacBook than for a 13" MacBook Air which had a bigger screen.
The general inability to understand these premium markets, markets that Ive had a lot of interest in, was in my opinion the main reason why Ive ultimately left Apple.
Jobs would have understood. Cook et al. did not.
Miniaturization is expensive!
That is why a Sony Discman was always *more* expensive than the average home CD player.
Because of its size and portability!
Any new 12" MacBook - should it ever get re-released - will still have to cost more than a 13" MacBook Air, because it will have to use more premium components to get to the smaller size and lighter weight.
Alternatively it would have to compromise so much that it would end up a useless device, like most netbooks were back in the day.
No one wants that.
Yet the premium ultra-portable market is a difficult one and I doubt anyone in today's Apple understands that market.
They will only see that it will cannibalize iPad sales. And to them that is enough reason to never release such a product again.
The idea was indeed marvelous, and continues on in the 11 inch iPad Pro in my opinion.
It’s more portable than any MacBook whatever wish to be.
Yeah, that’s why I use my 11” M2 iPad Pro as my portable device. It is awesome, but if Apple released a 12” MacBook Air, weighing only 900g like the original, with full macOS, I would probably sell my iPad Pro and get the 12” MacBook Air
The 12" MacBook was the spiritual successor to the G4 Cube. Both were design exercises that were a bit ahead of their time. Apple should always be willing to try these new ideas - that's what makes Apple the company it is. Apple's mistake with the 12" MacBook is they tried to apply this design ethos to their professional notebooks before the technology was ready for it. This led to the disastrous 2016 MacBook Pro design that ran hot (ran hot is an understatement, they were pretty much always thermally throttling unless you were just working in Word), had a horrible keyboard, and had bad battery life.
Came here to say it also produced the best ever version of this meme
The biggest single-core performance jump in Apple Silicon brief history, and the adoption of ARM v.9, yes, I consider the M4 the start of a new supercycle that will end probably with the M6 or M7 built at 2nm.
I appreciate people's desire for a laptop of this size, but just hate the direction it set for the rest of Apple's laptop range. Hope Apple offer a similar size again for those who want it 
I mean, I get what you’re saying and this is easy to say in retrospect, but is it really true?
The innovations in the 12 inch MacBook, outside of the forcetouch Trackpad, are gone and were universally hated by consumers.
The single port idea hasn’t been brought back on any laptop since.
The butterfly keyboard is rightfully gone, along with costing Apple millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, the MacBook Air still out sold the MacBook even while it was barely being updated, still non-retina and five years out of date.
To me, it doesn’t sound like they had a good reading on what consumers wanted at all.
Even the MacBook Air of today is more similar to the older MacBook Air than it is the 12 inch MacBook.
I don't disagree at all that Apple made smarter decisions than many others. I had a Netbook around 2006/07, give or take, and the enthusiasm quickly wore off. All I am saying is that Apple iterates as much as it innovates and is not scared to look for inspiration elsewhere.
That being said, I do think that Apple historically was more willing than most to remove core features for one benefit or another. Removing the floppy disk from the iMac G3 comes to mind, for example.
I do think, however, that there were definitely times when Apple was more brutal about cutting things or even putting its own products on the line. I'm fairly convinced, for example, that it would have been 'uniquely Apple' to kill Lightning much sooner to have a single cable across all of its devices, but they didn't.
I’m not the most familiar with Microsoft offerings, but my understanding is that the initial criticism of the surface was less because it had a keyboard and trackpad, and more because it was trying to shove a full desktop operating system built for keyboard and mouse onto a touchscreen.
Apple has explicitly not done this, even using an iPad with a keyboard and mouse is a significantly different experience than using a MacBook.
The iPad doesn’t require a trackpad for anything, everything is still touch optimized, it’s just a second option.
Meanwhile, my understanding is that windows, even 13 years after that first surface, is still mainly keyboard and mouse first, touch is just there.
Naa, bring back the 11in Air, and give it two ports.
I skipped this entire era. Went from a 2012, non-retina MBP, to the M1.
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I definitely hope that they are working on something.
This. I am also contemplating of getting the iPad Pro for the exact same reason. The thing is... I don't need the touchscreen, nor the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard would probably be attached 99% of the time.
If they put the battery of the iPad Pro under the keyboard and kept the OLED and the FaceID and made a normal hinge... there you have a new Macbook (Pro) 11''. I would easily pay premium for that.
I remember that glorious POS when I struggled to get a warranty repair on the keyboard. For me it was when I finally decided to stop drinking Kool-Aid. 🥤
I’m of two minds on this, part of me thinks that they absolutely loved having their own proprietary port.
Another part of me thinks that they would have switched to USB-C eventually no matter what.
But I truly think that their plan was to continue using Lightning until they could make the phones thin enough where there wouldn’t be any port at all, or if there was one, it would be some type of proprietary magnetic connector.
Really hard to say, though, because I don’t think that their wireless charging plans have gone the way that they hoped they would.
I think they were hoping that wireless charging would be close enough to as fast and efficient as wired within a decade of the introduction of the iPhone X, but that just simply hasn’t happened.
The cancellation of AirPower probably didn’t help.
Ah yes, the beginning of the Dark Years for MacBooks, 2016-2019.
Still use it today … love the size, the thin design and great on the move. Getting slow and M4 ordered but would love a refresh of this style and size
Apple announced the infamous 12-inch Retina MacBook a decade ago today, an experimental new Mac that was as controversial as it was revolutionary.
Apple unveiled the 12-inch MacBook on March 9, 2015, at the "Spring Forward" event in San Francisco, California. The event was primarily focused on the Apple Watch, which was being fully detailed ahead of its launch the following month, so the debut of the brand-new MacBook line took many by surprise. Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the new MacBook as a "reinvention" of the notebook.
The device was extremely controversial due to its underpowered performance, single USB-C port for both charging and data transfer, short battery life, unreliable butterfly keyboard, and high price point ($1,299 starting price in 2015—the same as a MacBook Pro at the time).
However, the 12-inch MacBook offered a glimpse at what was to come in the Mac lineup. It was the first Apple device with a USB-C port, terraced battery, butterfly keyboard, and haptic trackpad. It was also the first MacBook with a design focused on efficiency, a Retina display in a non-Pro model, multiple color options, and without a fan or an illuminated Apple logo.
In 2016, Apple refreshed the 12-inch MacBook to add Intel Skylake Core m3, m5, and m7 processors, improved battery life and faster PCIe storage, and a Rose Gold color option. In 2017, it introduced Intel Kaby Lake Core m3, i5, and i7 processors, and a second-generation butterfly keyboard for slightly better reliability.
It was discontinued upon the introduction of the 2019 MacBook Air. The 12-inch MacBook was functionally replaced by the 2018 MacBook Air, which effectively adopted its design, but with an additional USB-C port, a single fan for active cooling, and a larger display.
What do you think about the 12-inch MacBook a whole decade later? Let us know in the comments.
Article Link: Apple Introduced Its Most Controversial MacBook 10 Years Ago Today
After 3 or 4 years of being an iPad Pro user, past week I finally purchased an Apple Pencil, and honestly, I hope to discover new uses for it. We’ll see.
As for the keyboard, I ended up getting an ultra slim keyboard (just 5mm thick) which I can carry in the bag without noticing any significant increase in bulk or weight, as it weighs only 200g. The iPad Smart Keyboard Folio is another interesting solution to have a compact and lightweight keyboard, but honestly, it is almost 200€ while I got this slim keyboard for just 20€.
12” MacBook 2025 ‘ designed for travel ‘ m4 16 gb ram 1 tb storage c1 modem wifi 7 space gray or silver …… no other sku …. Keep it simple sell it fast