I love Midnight. If I were buying a laptop right now, I'd get it. I desperately want more color options from Apple. I'm so sick of Space Grey and Silver and other bland options. I just wish I could get a Studio or Mini in a color other than white. The iMac color options are great too.
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In Praise of Midnight
- Thread starter mrmister
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First of all, thanks for the contrarian view. Reading it was refreshing, to say the least. As it turns out the midnight color (and the ridiculously light weight) is/are the reason(s) why I am entranced by the M2 MBA, trying to find excuses to buy one despite already having a 16 inch M1 Pro MBP that meets all of my current needs.
As for the fingerprint issue, I think you hit the nail on the head. If one is truly OCD about electronics, then one is washing one's hands before getting their grubby little mitts on any electronic device. It thoroughly appalls me to see people with crumbs and grubby debris on their keyboards. So this one little natural step (for me and, I suspect, for you) goes a long way to keeping the fingerprints down--that and the occasional wipe-down with a microfiber cloth.
As for the Apple Store needing more frequent wipe-downs, no one that I know of (not even me) washes their hands right before they touch a display model--even if they obsessively disinfect their hands afterwards. (Frankly, I'm not sure disinfecting with gel removes all the grease and grime anyway, at least not to the extent that washing does.)
So there you have it. Fingerprint-gate seems much ado about nothing to the truly OCD.
A mini in colors like the iPad Airs would be wonderful but I'm not sure I'd want anything but silver for a larger desktop Mac like the Mac Studio.
However, I would really love for AAPL to give people the choice. And I do love the midnight color on the MBA--much better than a black they could have offered in its stead--conservative yet not as staid as the usual silver or space gray options.
If you want to get attention on your threads come to me, I think I’ve been on this forum a month or so and I’m already probably top ten even top 5 posters in terms of quality threads, the other users disagree but they aren’t a genius like me so they are obviously bitter like most people who want something they can’t have
And that's fine! Everyone is different. I just want options. I know a lot of people will always want white/silver/beige. Apple should keep offering those forever. But a lot of us would jump at the chance to choose something different.
Fingerprint-gate seems much ado about nothing to the truly OCD.
yes. with the caveat that I'm not delusional—it definitely does show more fingerprints than other finishes. This is a thing where people just need to know themselves. I am already relaxing about it, and I always clean my laptop a lot, anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Without a doubt, but routine preventative measures like handwashing can mitigate the problem. And, unlike my iPhone--which can get pretty grubby over a day of use--it's not hard to do when talking about grabbing/touching a laptop. A phone is quite a bit harder--for me at least.
Precisely. Hence my next sentence in that post: However, I would really love for AAPL to give people the choice.
Leaving fingerprints has nothing to do with how clean your hands are. It is just human nature, some hands are dry, and some hands are moist. All normal. And this Mac Book shows all fingerprints. To say you like it, but you clean it because you leave fingerprints is like you admit to a crime. This is not normal, not in my book. Touching your stuff is normal, and in fact needed. I don't get the need to clean fingerprints...
So you praise the colour but you complain you have to clean it all the time... I don't get it.I didn’t choose Midnight—it was chosen for me, by my girlfriend who bought be a fully loaded (8/10, 24GB, 2TB) MacBook Air M2.
Yes, I’m a very lucky man.
She choose it because she knows me, and she got advice from a good tech friend as well. Her analysis, and mine, of the colors runs like this:
Space Gray: current leader, all my current Macs are Space Gray since 2016. I like it. It’s closer to my original Titanium PowerBook, and was great since I was tired of Silver/Default. It’s a little dull, tbh, but I liked it more than Silver which I was tired of.
Silver: I had this for every MacBook from 2006 to 2016, so I’m still finding myself tired of it. Wears great, no arguments—but for me, it makes me feel like it’s 2008 again, and I’d like to move forward.
Starlight: Look, you can love this all you want, but to me it doesn’t read as gold—it reads as “Silver but the white point is off” or “Silver with a slight tint so it won’t match silver things while still basically being silver”.
Which brings us to Midnight.
I can not emphasize how fantastic this color is. It’s the black MacBook I never knew I fully wanted…but BETTER, because the blue has depth and texture, and shifts in the light in fantastic ways. I hope they do more dark colors in this treatment, it’s such a compelling modern updated way to have a ‘colorful’ laptop.
It’s the best looking design I’ve ever seen for a laptop from Apple, and I have been here a long time—I have literally seen them all, back to the PowerBook 100 series.
In Midnight this joins a very short list of Apple laptops, like the black MacBook, and the clamshell iBooks, and my beloved original Titanium PowerBook, for pure uniqueness and gorgeousness.
If you haven’t seen it in person, you don’t know, because it can’t actually be captured in video well. You have to be there.
Now. The fingerprints.
I’m pretty OCD about electronics. I try not to be, and I work at it, but I get it. And I knew as soon as I saw pics online that this would be an issue. I was nervous waiting for my MBA.
It’s great. It turns out I needed…an Apple Polishing Cloth!
I kid. I have one now, but mostly I use microfiber cloths I had already bought in the past.
It shows fingerprints, I agree. Then I clean it. My experience so far is that they come off immediately every time, and that it’s just not that big a deal. It’s also kind of good for me—helps me work on my OCD by relaxing into it.
Some people buy it and can’t deal. I get that. That’s what the 2 week return period is for.
I’d urge folks to find out for themselves, though. Because if my girlfriend hadn’t bought it for me, I might have wussed out and chosen Space Gray without even giving it a try. And I can tell you, that would have been a mistake for me.
It’s honestly such an incredible color, I’m dealing with it. And if that’s not an Apple experience, I don’t know what is!
While I don't own any device in that color, I did recently purchase a Midnight Leather Link watch band, which looks absolutely stunning. As far as finger print smudges on the finish, nothing the polishing cloth can't fix.
I didn't complain, but yes—there are things like 'nuance' and 'mixed bags', which is why I explained it all at some length.
I don't get how people can be so dense as to find this hard to understand. I guess we all have challenges!
This...is way more weirdly intense and pathological than it should be. Maybe check your meds, take it down a notch? I think you're reading some weird stuff into something that isn't that complicated.
You check your meds. A whole new thread to post how you praise the colour, but then half of it you explain how you needed a cloth to clean it etc.
And this is precisely why I chose Starlight. It's a warmer, better-looking (in my opinion) silver. I don't own any other Apple devices in silver and so trying to match them is not an issue for me. (My iPad is Space Gray but lives in a case, and my Apple Watch is blue.) Moreover, it looks great in our living room, where most of the metal accents on furniture and lamps are on the warmer side.
Here's my Midnight MacBook Air after being wiped down to zero finger prints, and handled for 10 minutes with hands that were thoroughly cleaned with soap and water. It does not matter how hard I try to clean my hands, finger prints are left behind after every last touch.
Again, this is 10 minutes of handling.
I don’t know why it’s hard to understand that a color can be great, and it can be higher maintenance than other choices. I was really clear about it. Let’s stop talking to one another, it’s not productive or helpful.
There's probably an infinitesimal group in the world right now obsessing over fingerprints. The vast majority are probably using it, loving it, and just plain don't GAF.
the truth finally with photographic proof lol, exactly my experience, clean it, 10 mins later thisHere's my Midnight MacBook Air after being wiped down to zero finger prints, and handled for 10 minutes with hands that were thoroughly cleaned with soap and water. It does not matter how hard I try to clean my hands, finger prints are left behind after every last touch.
Again, this is 10 minutes of handling.
Yup! And apologies, I neglected to say that I'm glad you're enjoying your Midnight Air! That was originally going to be my choice, and I switched at the last moment. They're both good looking colors!
Many users do not spend 10 minutes pawing at their laptop like the apes pawed at the monolith in "2001".