I have an aluminum Macbook and sure it's nice... but when I think about Macbooks, I think about that white plastic machine. Shiny, almost see-through. It really stood out to me in a world of dull metal and chunky black plastic and laser-etched designs on laptops. My 2015 looks nice, I guess, but in my mind it doesn't look nearly as nice as that shiny, translucent white Macbook I saw years ago.
Now, I never used one and I'm sure a lot of people here have, and I'm sure there are a lot of negative stories about them cracking or discoloring or being squeaky or something. But I still remember the first time I saw one, and it stuck with me. That was the same when I saw an aluminum Macbook, it was nice. They don't look all that special these days, the design is getting stale. Everyone has a Macbook-looking laptop, from a distance I can't tell the difference between a Samsung Chromebook and an 11" Macbook Air.
I hope they can wow us with a new design again in the future.
I miss that in the new Macs -- my 2013 MBP has picked up a couple of battle scars. But incidentally, I just bought a ThinkPad, and it took a bit of a tumble the other day, and there is zero evidence of this on the case. Once I get past the couple of interface and power-management deficiencies, I could get used to this.
The date nomenclature of Apple's products is the product release date and not its manufacturing date.
The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.
The only reason they have it is likely for education sales, since they have no other reasonable laptop right now.
They don't care what the exact specs are as long as they can use their browser, word processing, watch netflix, and do minor photo editing. They don't know what IPS or TN are, and don't seem to care.
Hell I have a 15" mbp all spec'ed out and most of what I do is browser, terminal, netflix.
I mean, that's the strongest decision when evaluating a new machine for me. If someone wants to replace my machine, they also need to replace the software on the machine, and I don't think the Chromebook is even aimed in the same direction as Mac OS X. It doesn't have the breadth of software, hardware, or even file interaction necessary to get through the classes I took in college, let alone my self education.
If you know exactly what you need from your machine, the chromebook may very well be sufficient. I don't think you can depend on it as a general purpose computer quite yet.
I feel like saying it isn't a viable machine because of old specs isn't necessarily true since people will still buy it.
They've effectively raised the price of their entry-level computer by $200 which would explain a slowdown in sales.
I guess we saw with the different Apple Watch versions, Apple is exploring just how much utility they can capture as margin.
Isn't that normal for almost every product though? You advertise the top of the line knowing that most will come in and look for something similar that fits their budget.
Except it's made from a block of aluminum, has excellent build quality and will easily last 5+ years of day-in-day-out use.
All I wanted was an 11" MBA with a higher res screen.
They could have reused the exact same form factor and dies and tooling, etc. I would have happily upgraded to that.
The 13 air however would easily be their most popular laptop. Those things are literally everywhere.
They don't sell that model any more. 13" is the only MBA now.
It cost me $600.
That all being said, I switched from MacOS to Ubuntu a couple years ago because I was finding the increasingly frequent notifications and general ugliness/usability of newer MacOS versions were becoming very Windows XP-esque.
I might very well be the only person who prefers Unity to MacOS.
Then at one point I needed a new laptop, and the 11-inch Air was the only one that really fit the bill hardware-wise. There was the Yoga, which I almost purchased, but I didn't quite trust it despite its appeal and positive reviews.
After about about a year or so, it seemed like Apple abandoned that small laptop market, and multiple other vendors started releasing really competitive products in that space, especially HP and Dell.
If I was purchasing a new laptop, it would almost certainly be an XPS 13. This sales news isn't anything new.
These things seem to go in cycles--I suspect in 7 years or so we'll be talking about how Dell isn't keeping up with Apple again.
Back then it was the white plastic MacBook but now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot.
That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS.
Instead of replacing the Air, Apple introduced the MacBook at a premium price point. It seems like a marketing failure to me that a lower spec MacBook (1080p, slower SSD) wasn't released and the Air discontinued.