Yes, and there’s a lot of people willing to put up with cumbersome extra steps, that’s not new. Your average non-technically minded person just wants “the one that gives me Facebook everywhere, like on my phone” and the Mac doesn’t do that (unless a person stays at home or otherwise around WiFi networks).
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Apple May Still Be Planning to Reintroduce 12-Inch MacBook
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That was the old 12" MacBook. It clearly was intended to be the new MBA but Apple could not get the price low enough on the retina display to match the price of the MBA and people just kept buying the 13" MBA instead.
With Apple Silicon machines and parity on display tech, Apple does not need to charge extra for a 12" laptop which will probably be called an "Air" unless Apple decides to rename all of their consumer laptops to just "MacBook".
No, the purpose of the 13" MBP is so that the MBPs can be "Starting from $1299" when reality the /real/ MBPs start at $1999.
Mostly due to the size, but I agree. Plenty of power even with the regular M1 but that’s what’s great about Apple Silicon. If they make a value Mac (which I doubt Apple would go below $999) it likely won’t run an M-series processor even just for the sake of branding and I could see them going with the A series, would make the most sense in such hypothetical scenario. But they want the iPad to fill this spot and that’s why they gave it a keyboard with trackpad and essentially made it a mac without the macOS.
I still use my day 1 MacBook very regularly. I can do everything I need to for work when I'm on the boat, on the beach, or wherever. Since I'm such a scrooge I haven't paid to update the accounting software we use, so I still need it to run Windows XP, which it does very happily with VirtualBox. It lives pretty much permanently in my bag, and mirrors all the data that matters through iCloud. It works too well to replace at the moment...
I think it made sense at a time when Apple was having difficulty getting enough stock of the M2 MBA and needed an M2 laptop out the door right away. Today, I can’t think of who might want one.
All Macs will run an M-Something processor. Apple tossing it in their mid-range iPads shows they don't have any reservations about spreading it around their product line or hold it an any high regard about being a Mac-only processor. Beefing up an A series chip with all the goodies to support desktop stuff like thunderbolt (though I do suspect this is coming to the phones soon), more GPU and performance CPU cores, etc, would be a waste of R&D for a single product line. It would also be hard to justify a new Mac with less CPU giddy-up than a iPad Air.
A 12" Apple Silicon MacBook would be an instant buy for me. Still have a 2015 12" rMB and it runs respectably barring the badly worn battery.
Yes the 12" MacBook had multiple issues, yet it was still the very best ultraportable on the market at the time. My friend was a VP and had a company issued 12" Dell which was absolutely hopeless, 3-4 hours on battery at the very best. He was always envious that as a subcontractor I could choose my own hardware with more than double the runtime, better performance and faster charging.
Think if you had the need and used a 12" Retina MacBook, only then will you understand the attraction to this formfactor. Honestly if Apple put the base M1 SOC in a 12" Retina MacBook and priced it sensibly they would have a runaway sale on their hands. Perfect for students & business travellers. Even to this day the 12" Retina MacBook still impresses. My daughters iPad Air with Apple KB is far heavier & bulkier and only runs iPadOS..
My friends comment in the day was "does it ever run out of battery" I said "rarely runs dry with a solid 8-10 hours of use"...
Q-6
Yes the 12" MacBook had multiple issues, yet it was still the very best ultraportable on the market at the time. My friend was a VP and had a company issued 12" Dell which was absolutely hopeless, 3-4 hours on battery at the very best. He was always envious that as a subcontractor I could choose my own hardware with more than double the runtime, better performance and faster charging.
Think if you had the need and used a 12" Retina MacBook, only then will you understand the attraction to this formfactor. Honestly if Apple put the base M1 SOC in a 12" Retina MacBook and priced it sensibly they would have a runaway sale on their hands. Perfect for students & business travellers. Even to this day the 12" Retina MacBook still impresses. My daughters iPad Air with Apple KB is far heavier & bulkier and only runs iPadOS..
My friends comment in the day was "does it ever run out of battery" I said "rarely runs dry with a solid 8-10 hours of use"...
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Small, thin, light laptops usually cost more to manufacture than their bulkier cousins. That's why the original 12" Macbook was more expensive than the Air. It's not going to change in 2023.
It could if Apple chooses to do so. Everything is lined up from the M1 Air. As said if Apple released a 12" MacBook starting at $999 with M1 SOC they would have a runaway sale on their hands.
Many prioritise portability over performance. CPU/SOC's are now so very fast that even the base models are extremely capable. If Apple decides to go with a 12" I think it will be with the M3 die shrink due to the power budget, TDP, cooling etc. as Apple always looks to the future, not the past.
What Apple shouldn't do is price the 12" as a premium product as that's what killed it in the past - Too much $$$$ for too little performance & utility...
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not 2 years, almost 4
it was introduced in early 2015, and receive update in 2016 and late 2017. Im still use my 2017 macbook for as my daily machine for pro tasks.
Wish I'd upgraded my 2015 12" in 2017 as there's nothing like it on the market today. Yes the 12" Retina MacBook has issues, however it's benefits in portability have yet to be surpassed...
Today I have an M1 MBP, but wish Apple can find a way to bring back the 12" would be a killer product at the right price.
Q-6
immediate buy of 4 units. Get it a touch screen with pen support, and I’m adding a 5th. Make sure you allow at least 32g ram and min 1tb ssd.
Favorite device in my family!
Favorite device in my family!
If Apple can stuff the required guts into a one pound iPad, they can probably do the same with a two pound, 11"-wide macbook.
Motherboard, thermal management and battery could all be smaller than the 2017 version to make it less of an engineering feat.
Since Apple has been rumored to be working on OLED screens, on touch screens, and on a smaller laptop, I wonder if they might bring these together into a foldable screen with touch in a small size running a variant of Mac OS. The foldable rumors suggest an all touch-screen that, when folded in laptop mode has a touch-based keyboard. When it folds out the whole screen is touch enabled.
I know that this would be controversial to many who don’t like touch screens and would not like a touch keyboard, but it is a direction that I could imagine Apple going to explore a radically different approach to laptops. Just an interesting concept to explore.
I know that this would be controversial to many who don’t like touch screens and would not like a touch keyboard, but it is a direction that I could imagine Apple going to explore a radically different approach to laptops. Just an interesting concept to explore.
The computer half of the 12” MacBook was thinner (by almost half) than the current iPad Air and it accommodated a physical keyboard. While, it’s very doable now with Apple Silicon as it was with Intel, it’s still not a cakewalk. Nor was the iPad Air for that matter.
He's great at ops and supply chains... but not so much on where the puck is heading... they've had the folks that had that covered, but it seems the hunger has gone a bit, it's more internally/politically focused... much I'm not up on the current state as all the folks I know personally have left and not friends enough with the current to get anything useful.
But there are enough people who want to work on a 12" Macbook? What kind of serious work are you doing on a 12" Macbook that you can't do on an iPad Pro? If you're doing actual work, then why not get a 13" Air?
Programming. Video editing. Writing texts. Debug mobile apps. List is endless.
I can just imagine doing video editing with a 12" MacBook with a M chip...of course not like my MacBook Pro 2021 (great machine), but a small and light MacBook that can do video editing decently for being a small machine...that would be something! Typing right now this thread on MacBook 12" 2015....
Yes..but the Air is not as light as the 12". If Apple just puts a M chip in the old current 12" form and improve the keyboard...what a machine that would be!
So you're looking for a slightly smaller Macbook Air to do work that you can't do on an iPad Pro. And you're willing to pay a few hundred dollars more than the 13" Air. Ok.
They can just price it like how the iPad mini is more expensive than the regular iPad?
Maybe give it a M1 so it can fit in between the 13" M1 ($999) and 13" M2 ($1199) at $1099?