Apple has never been one to shy away from making their devices conspicuous, but the metal colors really take this up a notch.Īpple’s internal component choice also reflects this design philosophy. Externally this is backed by the use of Apple’s common glass & metal design philosophy, but I think it’s also very telling that this is the first Mac to come in various colors like iOS devices, silver, grey, and gold. But despite being thin and light it’s not really small, as the 12” screen makes it larger than the smallest Air, never mind any kind of iPad comparisons.Ī lot of the time the MacBook ends up feeling like a Macintosh tablet, combining the form factor of a laptop and OS X with the design cues of the iPad. It’s thin too, its 13.1mm thickness making it thinner than the original iPad (13.4mm), and yet it’s a clamshell laptop with a keyboard and trackpad. At 2lbs it’s light, lighter than even the 2.38lb 11” Air, never mind the 2.96lb 13” model. In terms of design, the MacBook is best described as what would happen if you crossed an iPad with a MacBook Air. The end result is a device that like the original Air is hard to pin down in this time frame, as it straddles a couple different product segments. The MacBook isn’t just a new Air – though in a sense it’s an heir to the Air – but it’s something new that isn’t entirely removed from its predecessors while not being exactly the same either. With the announcement this week of the suffix-less MacBook (2015), I’m left to wonder if Apple is doing the same thing for a new market segment. What Apple eventually kicked off was a distinct market segment, though as a market it did take some time to materialize. Though the ultra-portable laptop itself wasn’t a new idea, there is in retrospect a distinct line dividing the Air – the first of what we now classify as Ultrabooks – from previous attempts at ultra-portables. When Apple first introduced the MacBook Air back in 2008, I’m not sure anyone knew quite what to expect in the long-run from the little, low-powered Mac.

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