The display wiggles and shifts as I type on the shallow keyboard. Typing on the 12″ Macbook retina isn’t very comfortable either. The simple task of taking and uploading these photos couldn’t be accomplished without the use of a secondary computer. USB-C peripherals are almost non-existent at the time of this post. Apple’s obsession with thinner and lighter has reached the extreme in this new Macbook.įrom an end user perspective, there’s no ecosystem in place for this MacBook. In the 12″ Macbook retina, it means less weight, less girth, less keyboard travel and many fewer ports (only one to be exact). It has all those wishlist items and “more.” However, the Apple philosophy of “more” often means less. All-day battery life and a footprint similar to that of the 12″ PowerBook G4 are other must-haves.Įnter the 2015 12″ MacBook 12″ retina. What would a Mac enthusiast like myself want in a new 12″ Mac laptop? A retina screen would be a good start. It might not be as practical for daily use, but it still streams music and can be booted into Firewire Target mode to retrieve data from older Macs. My 12″ PowerBook G4 still works like it did 10 years ago. The PowerBook line of laptops had reached design maturity with amazing build quality, a tactile feel to the keyboard and a backlit Apple logo on the exterior display. The company had recently switched to using Intel processors for its computers, and the iPhone was a top secret project in Cupertino. Ten years ago Apple was cranking out hit product after hit product including the iMac, Power Mac, PowerBook and iPod. Google was nowhere near the household name it has become today. So when Apple announced a new 12″ laptop after a 10-year hiatus, I was excited to see what was in store.Ī decade in the technology world is comparable to a century in a human lifespan. In 2005 Facebook was only available on a few college campuses. It remains to this day one of the best Mac laptops I’ve ever used. My very first Mac was a 12″ iBook that my brother bought me for college, and one of my all-time favorite Macs is the 12″ PowerBook G4.

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