Is there space for a MacBook?
For years now, Apple has had 3 lines of laptop computers. The MacBook Air is now the newest to be renewed, the Macbook which is to me the baseline, it should do just about everything but a bit slower, then the MacBook Pro which is covered in my In Defense Of Apple article.
The MacBook Air was just renewed yesterday, it comes with 1 CPU and that’s a dual core I5. There aren’t any other CPUs that will be shipped with it so far. It’s configurable up to 16 GB RAM and a 1.5 TB SSD. The base model is 8 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD at $1199. The higher up model starts at $1400 before you configure. They still sell the old MacBook Air, that still starts at $999 after years of not being updated with hardware. The highest you can expect to pay for a MacBook AIR is $2,600. That’s more than the base model PRO. But if you didn’t want the 1.5 TB SSD and go for the 512 GB SSD with 16 GB RAM, you’ll still pay $1,800. Oh and look at that, it’s the MacBook Pro starting price.
So between unconfigured models of the unconfigured high-end MacBook Air to the base model MacBook Pro, there is only $400. That’s peasant money to Apple.
So why is there the Macbook? I feel it’s rarely mentioned. It’s not an Air, it’s not a pro it’s just a Macbook. It’s kinda not mentioned much probably because it’s not exciting. It’s just the base model. You can still end up paying thousands for it and still can get a used car for its price, but it’s not talked about or given much love. It’s like a demo. It’s even worse than the Air in the fact that it has ONE USB C port, no thunderbolt, while the Air has 2 full thunderbolt ports. The MacBook just isn’t worth it at this point. Maybe the May event or WWDC 2019 can prove me wrong on that, but with this new Air they will have to step the Macbook’s game up big time, or drop prices about $200 on the Air.
In conclusion, it doesn’t take much research to realize, the MacBook has no place right now. Professionals have their MBPs, and now the target market for the MacBook has much better reason to go to the Air than the device that’s targetted for them.
RIP MacBook.