Will we be seeing the return of a 12" Macbook? 
How about a 17" one as well?
How about a 17" one as well?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Seeming there is a 16", 15", 14" & 13" Mac laptops...
- Thread starter Longplays
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Prosumer = 16" and 14"
Consumer = 15" and 13"
People loved the 2x2 grid. This is it.
Consumer = 15" and 13"
People loved the 2x2 grid. This is it.
Last edited:
I think they'd go for an 18" in what would previously be considered a 17" chassis (like the 16" laptop is essentially the size of the previous 15"). And I believe the 17" size didn't sell very well compared to the 15". So no, I don't expect any kind of larger MacBook.
Other than that last-gen base model iPad that's still in the lineup, I think Apple has done a good job of culling things back and simplifying hardware choices for people. Things were getting crazy there for a minute.
EXCEPT for the Mac.
In the Pro and Air lines we still have those 13" entry level M2 models. Is this necessary for a product line that already has 6 different main sub-categories as opposed to the 4 that all the other ones have now? I imagine those are still there mostly for school and business purchases, but who's to say?
With the 15" Air now in existence, I hope they kill that old stuff off for good with M3. To my eye it just references back to a pretty meh time for the Mac. Kill those old designs, embrace the future.
Those will likely disappear soon. It’s the “cheaper” option Apple likes to keep around recently. They should be gone after the next refresh.
Will we be seeing the return of a 12" Macbook?
How about a 17" one as well?
We need to wait for at least TC to step down.
I'd love a 15'' or 17'' Air with a full size keyboard. Really the only flaw I can pick out with the 15'' Air. I like my number pad. I work a lot with spreadsheets so its just super handy to have
The world might have passed by smaller laptops what with tablets and all. I had an 11.6'' laptop back in 2010 and I really loved the little guy.
The world might have passed by smaller laptops what with tablets and all. I had an 11.6'' laptop back in 2010 and I really loved the little guy.
No. The market for a 12" wasn't there 8 years ago. The market is even smaller today.Will we be seeing the return of a 12" Macbook?
A 12" Macbook makes no sense in Apple's lineups today.
It sounds crazy, but Apple might one day make an 18" laptop that houses an Ultra SoC. Maybe when we get to 2nm chips. It could be a pretty good experience if they use a vapor chamber for cooling, throttle sooner, and maybe lower base clocks a bit.
The left is the last 17" Macbook and the right is the 16" 2019 MBP. They definitely have room to make it an 18.3" screen while fitting within the same chassis profile.
Perhaps there will be demand for mobile workstations if/when local LLMs become popular and require bigger chips and more RAM. I don't think there's demand today.
Last edited:
I was looking BHPhoto's laptop page and you are right.
Virtually no demand for 12"
Just like the MP you may as well not service the niche use cases as it may be a loss leader.
LG gram appears to be the in the same space as the MBA.
They have 14" 15" 16" & 17"
So a MBA 17" at under $1999 in the mix?
Last edited:
Bear in mind that the lower-end MacBooks probably sell in substantially larger volume than any other Mac, so Apple can afford a bit more product overlap there, whereas, say, having a 27" iMac alongside the Studio might leave one or both with unsustainably low sales (by Apple's standards).
I'm convinced that the 13" MacBook Pro is some sort of obligatory product needed for some large government/education contract: its the latest in the line of entry-level MBPs starting with the last non-retina/spinning rust 13" MBP (2012-2016!) then the 2016 & 2017 "MacBook Pro without touch bar and only 2 TB3 ports" and the 2019 "now with touch bar" - that have all occupied a paper-thin niche between the Air and the "real" Pro.
The M1 Air is, I think, just there to prop up the price of the M2 Air so that Apple can have a MacBook starting below $1000.
As for 17" - since the demise of the 17" everything has switched to retina displays which are far more flexible in terms of screen scaling & displaying small details. In short, a 16" retina can display substantially more information than a 17" non-retina, so I'm not sure that the extra bulk of a larger screen would be worth it.
81% of students have laptops to help them through college. Of these, 72% choose a laptop based on price and spend $761.32 on average. Additionally, 8% of students are willing to go with laptops that cost more than $1,500, and 13% have a range of $1,200 to $1,500 when looking for a laptop computer. For laptops that are within the $900 to $1,200 price range, 22% of students were looking at these. Furthermore, 24%, 20%, and 138% look at laptops that are priced below $300, $300 to $600, and $600 to $900, respectively. Clearly, laptops rule the educational space, serving students no matter the education degrees they’re pursuing.
Source: https://research.com/education/best-student-laptops
If a MBA 17" at under $1999 were to appear what would be its resolution at the 218ppi practiced by Apple?
Well, if they keep the ppi constant, a better way of looking at it is that the screen would be the same level of detail but about 0.7" extra space horizontally and 0.4" extra vertically.
That actually raises another point - the old 17" MBP was 133ppi vs. its 15" contemporary at 110ppi - whereas the current 14" and 16" MBPs are both the same 254ppi. On the old 17" the standard text and
icons were quite noticeably smaller than the 15" so it wasn't just about screen size - you could fit more per inch. OTOH, unlike a retina display, any attempt to choose a non-native resolution for a particular job looked awful.
I think the 17" (1920x1200) was the same scale as the 15" non retina with the matte HD display (1680x1050) - which is actually what the 15" MBPs defaulted to after 2016 (though the physical resolution remained at 2880x1800 so it was no longer integer scaled). From 2019 with the 16" machines, they stay at this effective scale with added resolution because of the larger size, and further the Apple Silicon machines restore integer scaling by upping the display's physical resolution. A 17" would probably therefore still have roughly a 1920x1200 'looks like' resolution in MBA form factor. Just adjusted for the non standard aspect ratio. The physical resolution would probably be ~3360x2100 (MBA, non integer) or ~3840x2160 (MBP, integer).
TL
NR: for a desktop display viewed from 2' or more, 4k is effectively retina and scaled modes work perfectly well in the majority of use cases.The original concept of the "retina" display - which was very approximate and simplistic - was based on angular resolution - the ability of the human eye to resolve details separated by 1 arc minute, which corresponds to the definition of "20/20 vision".
1/300" at 12" away (so, about where you'd hold a book or an iPhone) works out to 0.95 arc minutes - hence the 300dpi rule of thumb for print quality (going back to the Apple Laserwriter) and Apple's adoption of the "retina" branding when the iPhone 4 came out with a 330ppi display. However, the viewing distance is crucial - for small angles, double the distance, halve the required ppi.
For a laptop display at, say 18", its >~200ppi and for a desktop display at say 24" its >~150ppi, for a large-screen-TV-type display its even lower. So a 4k display at a reasonable viewing distance is retina by Apple's original justification, even if it isn't branded as such, and is perfectly usable in non-integer "scaled" modes - any artefacts will be very hard to see - and will give a "perfect" display with no scaling artefacts, in "best for retina 2:1" mode, at the expense of somewhat over-large (but hardly unusable) UI elements.
However - 20/20 vision is normal/typical vision - not 'best' so even Apple's definition doesn't mean "pixels are invisible" or that you won't be able to notice the difference in sharpness between 4k and 5k. The artefacts from display scaling you see reported are real - but watching a YouTube video showing extreme close-ups of a 1px hatch-pattern being scrolled gives a totally disproportionate impression of their impact (and nobody ever mentions that temporarily switching to 2:1 mode when you need to tweak pixels solves the problem, as will getting 30"+ 4k display that's usable in 1:1 mode).
If the price difference wasn't so huge it would still be a no-brainer to get 5k, but when you can get a quad 4k display setup for the price of a single Studio Display, 4k is an acceptable compromise.
Question is, are you buying a 4k display to do useful stuff without blowing your budget, or are you planning to climb up on your desk with a magnifying glass and do A/B comparisons with a Pro XDR (which is literally what some YouTube reviewers are doing - see also obsessively measuring peak SSD data transfer speeds)?
The concern is more about how macOS supports it.TL
The original concept of the "retina" display - which was very approximate and simplistic - was based on angular resolution - the ability of the human eye to resolve details separated by 1 arc minute, which corresponds to the definition of "20/20 vision".
1/300" at 12" away (so, about where you'd hold a book or an iPhone) works out to 0.95 arc minutes - hence the 300dpi rule of thumb for print quality (going back to the Apple Laserwriter) and Apple's adoption of the "retina" branding when the iPhone 4 came out with a 330ppi display. However, the viewing distance is crucial - for small angles, double the distance, halve the required ppi.
For a laptop display at, say 18", its >~200ppi and for a desktop display at say 24" its >~150ppi, for a large-screen-TV-type display its even lower. So a 4k display at a reasonable viewing distance is retina by Apple's original justification, even if it isn't branded as such, and is perfectly usable in non-integer "scaled" modes - any artefacts will be very hard to see - and will give a "perfect" display with no scaling artefacts, in "best for retina 2:1" mode, at the expense of somewhat over-large (but hardly unusable) UI elements.
However - 20/20 vision is normal/typical vision - not 'best' so even Apple's definition doesn't mean "pixels are invisible" or that you won't be able to notice the difference in sharpness between 4k and 5k. The artefacts from display scaling you see reported are real - but watching a YouTube video showing extreme close-ups of a 1px hatch-pattern being scrolled gives a totally disproportionate impression of their impact (and nobody ever mentions that temporarily switching to 2:1 mode when you need to tweak pixels solves the problem, as will getting 30"+ 4k display that's usable in 1:1 mode).
If the price difference wasn't so huge it would still be a no-brainer to get 5k, but when you can get a quad 4k display setup for the price of a single Studio Display, 4k is an acceptable compromise.
Question is, are you buying a 4k display to do useful stuff without blowing your budget, or are you planning to climb up on your desk with a magnifying glass and do A/B comparisons with a Pro XDR (which is literally what some YouTube reviewers are doing - see also obsessively measuring peak SSD data transfer speeds)?
Apple offered an optional higher-resolution 1680x1050 display on the 15" for a few years.
When it's 27" perhaps, when it's 42" surely not, unless your "or more" includes TV viewing distances. Does it?
OK I should have said 'for a 27" display' - double the screen size, double the viewing distance. (From this retina calculator "retina" viewing distance is 21" for a 27" 4k or 33" for a 42" screen). 33" isn't what I'd call "TV viewing distance": UI designs for set-top-boxes etc are known as "10 foot interfaces" for a reason... However, a 4k screen that size would be quite usable in 1:1 mode, so even if you can see pixels when you lean in, you don't have to worry about artefacts from fractional scaling.
That's your opinion... A 2 pounds laptop does make sense regardless of the screen size (my opinion).
Fortunately I am in the Windows world and can have a 13" laptop with cellular at that weight.
Every one of my posts is my opinion. What matters is Apple's opinion. Thus far, we know that Apple canceled the Macbook 12" due to a lack of sales after only 3 iterations. They admitted it was a big mistake to make that laptop. I'm guessing they won't make that mistake again.
Keep in mind that a 12" Macbook would have be more expensive than a 13" MBA and a 12.9" iPad as the original 12" was an engineering marvel and required prices to be above the Air. Guess what laptop Apple just released that is more expensive than the 13" MBA?