The MacBook Error
Farewell MacBook, may you come back to us with ARM power
First off, apologies for the pun title. Second, apologies for recycling the pun title —from over a decade ago! — it’s just too perfect not to use here.
Did you hear the news? The MacBook is dead. Long live the MacBook!¹
At first, I was surprised by the news today that Apple was discontinuing the MacBook (aka the 12” laptop Apple has sold for the past few years — not to be confused with the MacBook Air which is the 13” laptop which Apple has also sold for years, but confusingly is actually thicker and heavier than the “regular” MacBook — we’ll get to that). I actually quite like the MacBook. I’m typing on it right now! It has been my main, personal computer for the past couple of years.
While the first iteration was quite slow (as was the case with the OG Air, back in the day), the latest version is plenty quick enough for the vast majority of what I do (the web, a few apps here and there). It’s also significantly thinner and lighter than the MacBook Pro, which is what I use at work.
Sure, Apple recently revamped the aforementioned Air, including again today with a spec bump and price cut. But again, the “regular” MacBook is still actually thinner and lighter than that machine. So it’s weird to me that Apple would kill their thinnest, lightest notebook.
But when I took to Twitter to voice my displeasure (as one does) about this news, I think we collectively came up with some compelling answers.
First and foremost, it seems likely that the MacBook wasn’t selling all that well. Certainly not compared to the Air. While again, the Air branding may make no sense compared to the MacBook, the price and feature set clearly does to consumers (not to mention the fact that the branding still has cachet). There’s no point keeping a machine around if it’s not selling.
Well, but maybe there is. As Apple had to learn the hard way recently, while machines like the Mac Pro also probably don’t sell that well relative to other devices, there are secondary beneficial effects to keeping it around, and keeping it state-of-the-art. The Mac Pro has both halo and trickle-down effects that are harder to quantify, but quite real. If all creative professionals are using Mac Pros, this is important for aspirational reasons as well as the fact that those people are then more likely to use other Apple products in the other parts of their lives.
I bring this up because that’s sort of how I view the MacBook. It has never been the cheapest laptop Apple has sold, but it has been the thinnest and lightest since it was released. So this puts in more in the state-of-the-art camp, rather than the entry-level camp. And again, that’s the area the Air used to fill before it became the entry-level offering. I figure that progression is what would happen here as well — but instead, Apple resuscitated the Air.
I would have argued to keep the MacBook around as the test bed for what’s next for Apple laptops. Instead, Apple seems to be moving that role to the high-end MacBook Pro, where the Touch Bar debuted (and unfortunately is now fully rolled out across that line as of today) and more importantly, TouchID on the Mac (which recently came to the Air too).
With all this in mind, my thinking was that Apple was simply having a hard time with the svelte hardware of the MacBook. As we all know, it still has but one USB port. And the battery life, while okay, is not nearly as good as it is with the Air. And then there’s the rumors of Apple completely re-doing their laptop keyboards once again. No, not the third iteration of the butterfly keyboard, which came to the Air today, alongside the recent MacBook Pros. But rather, a complete do-over with a new/old key mechanism. Maybe there was no way Apple could fit these in the MacBook envelope.
This may all be true. But also likely true is that Apple is closing in on their first ARM-based MacBook. The big question is: what will be the first machine to get Apple’s own chip? The current thinking has been the MacBook.² So perhaps this is just the MacBook going away for a bit, in order to be reborn as the first ARM Mac!
Given that battery life is undoubtedly going to be a huge component of the move to ARM, this also points to the MacBook being a great first candidate for the chip. Not to mention the fact that Apple would undoubtedly be able to customize more of the components alongside their own CPU, to make any sort of MacBook body even more super svelte. Have you seen the body of the latest iPad Pro? Yeah, think that.
So what about that iPad Pro? As the high-end iPad veers further into MacBook territory with iOS 13 (a real life web browser, at last!) there’s probably an argument to be made that if you want the thinnest, lightest portable computer, you should get the iPad. To some, this will be blasphemy. But to others, like our parents, this is already commonplace.
As such, it’s probably true that Apple doesn’t need to sell three distinct MacBook products and three distinct iPad products. And given the volumes we’re talking about, again, the MacBook was likely the easiest candidate to cut. Especially if a new, larger MacBook Pro is on the way.
But I’m still holding out hope for the MacBook to be resurrected with ARM power.³ Until then, I’m hanging on to mine. That nearly one pound difference to the Air matters to me. And my keyboard hasn’t broken here — yet.⁴
¹ Also a reused joke because Apple has actually killed the MacBook before to replace it with the Air — 8 years ago!
² Or what if it’s the iBook reborn?!
³ What do they call it? The MacBook ARM? The MacBook A14 or some such? I’d guess just the “MacBook” as they’d want the emphasis to be on the fact that it performs just as well or better in every task, despite not having an Intel CPU. You’re not sacrificing by getting this MacBook — it’s the MacBook.
⁴ Yes, my keyboard has failed on the MacBook Pro — multiple times.
