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> "But that doesn't really mesh with the fact that its a super expensive computer. Who is this for?" Early adopters and people who need absolute maximum portab

> "But that doesn't really mesh with the fact that its a super expensive computer. Who is this for?" Early adopters and people who need absolute maximum portability and are not particularly price-sensitive. The MacBook is smaller, thinner, and lighter than the MBA, and has a higher quality screen. If you need a laptop that fits the above description and don't mind the cost, it's a good bet. More to the point though - it occupies a similar space as the MacBook Air when it originally came out (recall that the MBA was ~$1500-2000 when it first came out). I think it's fairly obvious that Apple's letting early adopters pay the premium, and once they can get production costs down enough it will simply take over as the lowest-tier Mac laptop entirely, probably at the same $900-1000 price point the MBA is at today. It is the exact same trajectory as the original MacBook Air - introduced as premium ultra-portable product, eventually replacing the plastic MacBooks as the base-level product.

tolmasky 11y ago
> The MacBook is smaller, thinner, and lighter than the MBA, and has a higher quality screen. I just find it hard to say that its a higher quality screen when you have a worse graphics card, and thus the stuff that will actually be on the screen will be worse (more dropped frames, worse effects, etc). What does it mean to want a higher quality screen? If it had 8x as many pixel but was black and white, is it higher quality? If you want a retina screen for awesome gaming, this isn't for you. If you want a retina screen for video editing, this isn't for you. If you want a retina screen for ... web browsing, as long as there are no CSS animations because they'll be horrible... then its for you? > it occupies a similar space as the MacBook Air when it originally came out Sure, I get that, but the difference is that when the Macbook Air came out the Macbook Air didn't already exist. Let's think about it another way, if next year they announce an EVEN thinner Macbook with even stranger performance tradeoffs, would we accept 3 computers in this space? Probably not. I suppose my fear is that the plan here is to replace Macbook Airs with this. What I wanted out of a Macbook Air was more RAM, that's about it. Instead this huge detour was taken on compromise features -- which again is fine, except if the plan is to turn this entire product category into a worse-than-iPad computer, which is definitely not where the Air sat before. The Air before seemed like good compromises, and perhaps the Macbook will get there too.

tolmasky 11y ago

> The MacBook is smaller, thinner, and lighter than the MBA, and has a higher quality screen. I just find it hard to say that its a higher quality screen when you have a worse graphics card, and thus the stuff that will actually be on the screen will be worse (more dropped frames, worse effects, etc). What does it mean to want a higher quality screen? If it had 8x as many pixel but was black and white, is it higher quality? If you want a retina screen for awesome gaming, this isn't for you. If you want a retina screen for video editing, this isn't for you. If you want a retina screen for ... web browsing, as long as there are no CSS animations because they'll be horrible... then its for you? > it occupies a similar space as the MacBook Air when it originally came out Sure, I get that, but the difference is that when the Macbook Air came out the Macbook Air didn't already exist. Let's think about it another way, if next year they announce an EVEN thinner Macbook with even stranger performance tradeoffs, would we accept 3 computers in this space? Probably not. I suppose my fear is that the plan here is to replace Macbook Airs with this. What I wanted out of a Macbook Air was more RAM, that's about it. Instead this huge detour was taken on compromise features -- which again is fine, except if the plan is to turn this entire product category into a worse-than-iPad computer, which is definitely not where the Air sat before. The Air before seemed like good compromises, and perhaps the Macbook will get there too.