While some may have initially scoffed at the lack of ports on the new MacBook, it’s hard to not fall in love with the thinner, quieter, and more fashionable Ultrabook from Apple.
United Colors of Apple
The first thing that catches your eye about the latest MacBook are the color options. You could tell with the previous iPads and iPhones that Apple would eventually get around to offering a silver, space gray, and gold laptop, but damn, those same colors on a MacBook are THE business.
Thin Is In
Another eye-catching feature is how thin the new MacBook is, At 13mm thin, it’s the thinnest laptop in the world, beating out the new Dell XPS 13 and Apple’s own MacBook Air. Speaking of which, the new MacBook is lighter than the current 11-inch MacBook Air, coming in at only 2lbs. In order to make the New MacBook lighter, Apple is using a less power-hungry processor, which meant the fan could also be removed. That’s right, this MacBook doesn’t have a fan…so no noise will be coming out of this laptop at all.
“Smaller but bigger”
Even though Apple has improved on some features to make the new MacBook smaller, it has improved on some features to make the new MacBook bigger? First and foremost, the new MacBook is thinner that the 11-inch MacBook Air but sports a larger 12-inch Retina Display that has a 2304×1440 resolution with 3 Million pixels…That’s a gang of pixels for the non-geeks.
The new MacBook also has a 40% thinner but 17% larger, individually-lit LED keyboard…Imma let you figure that one out. Not only did the keyboard get better, the new Force Touch trackpad has haptic feedback and pressure points and can respond differently based on how much hard or soft you touch the trackpad. To finish off the “smaller but bigger” size comparisons, the new Macbook houses a 35% larger battery, for up to 9 hours of daily web usage.
Look Ma’ No Ports
A new innovation that sounds good but will need to be put to real-world use would be the removal of just about all the ports with the exception of a 35mm headphone jack on one side, and the new USB-C port on the other. That’s right, no separate charging, display, or auxiliary ports. Apple’s reasoning (which makes sense) is that with all the wireless and cloud technology we currently employ, the need to physically connect to devices (mobile devices, printers, external storage, etc) is becoming less of a…need. What Apple has done is utilized one reversible USB-C port that with additional adapters, you can charge your MacBook and have ports available for a display (Mini Display, HDMI or VGA) as well as a USB 3.0 port for any other devices.
Of course folks are gonna scratch their head at the lack of ports. Personally, the only time I connect my MacBook Pro Retina to…anything is when I need to charge it and occasionally connect to an external Hard Drive for backup purposes. BUT it is nice to have ports on deck for those few times I do need them. Additionally, and I’m sure how I feel about buying more “not included” adapters just to make my Mac functional. Eventually, USB-C will catch on and other manufacturers will adopt this new standard, and our lack of ports reservations will disappear the more we adopt wireless and network connectivity to get things done.
Gotta Cop That
Port confusion aside, I’m sure many fans who have been waiting on a super-slim, Retina MacBook will jump on this new jawn when it ships on April 10th in two configurations:
- $1299 for a 1.1GHz Intel Dual-Core M processor with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Flash storage
- $1599 for up to 1.3GHz Intel Dual-Core M processor with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of Flash storage
I just bough my 13″ Retina MacBook Pro late last year and personally, I’m good. But Mrs. Tech’s “old and busted” MacBook is on it’s last leg so I may have to move some money around.
#BallinOnABudget
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2 replies on “New MacBook Impressions”
I’m thinking about the Mac Pro. I’m leaning towards buying a refurbished I7 or I8 (?) from Apple. Can you explain the importance of RAM and GB? I’ll primarily use the laptop for a small business and online education.
Hello Kallia. The largest MacBook screen you can get is an older 17″. The newer ones come in only 15″ As far as the RAM and GB is concerned, they are very important. The RAM is what the processor uses to find everything on the computer. The GB refers to the actual storage space you have on the computer for your stuff. In both cases, the more RAM and GB you can get, the better the computer will be. As a minimum, I would shoot for no LESS than 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Hard drive storage space. Hope this helps