4 ms·

it continues to baffle me that they haven't yet reintroduced this model. It was always an assumption of mine, perhaps incorrectly, that that model was a design/

it continues to baffle me that they haven't yet reintroduced this model. It was always an assumption of mine, perhaps incorrectly, that that model was a design/engineering experiment that was just the wrong side of the line on practicality but served as a market test for that form factor. Anecdotally it seemed very popular, and loved by the people who bought one. Perhaps the numbers said otherwise, because otherwise I have no idea why they didn't reintroduce it as an M1/M2 machine. Perhaps, and this is maybe just being hopeful, they're waiting for the even better efficiency of the M3 etc before reintroducing it because they want to do it, but absolutely nail it when they do without any battery life compromise. After all, they already ran the market demand test, so this would make sense if so. If that turns out to be the case I'll almost certainly buy one.

Eric_WVGG 4y ago
I thought the same thing (got one for a gf), but since the introduction of pointer support in iPadOS, I look at the kinds of things most folks with the 12” books do (word processing, light spreadsheets, web), and I think Apple is correctly betting that that market is going for iPads with keyboard/trackpad folios now.
gumby 4y ago
>Anecdotally it seemed very popular, and loved by the people who bought one. Perhaps the numbers said otherwise, because otherwise I have no idea why they didn't reintroduce it as an M1/M2 machine. I loved mine, and put a couple of hundred thousand miles in carrying it (even wrote a lot of code in Emacs, but I remember the days when every compile was an excuse to stand up and get coffee, so the speed didn't matter to me). AFAICT its target market was actually Asia, same as with the ultralight (for its time) Powerbook 2400c which was actually built by IBM Japan. But it didn't sell as well as expected even there.
ascagnel_ 4y ago
They kinda did? The M1 Air is basically a better version of the 12" skinny Macbook. It's fanless, has a slightly larger screen (13" vs. 12"), and swaps a single USB 3.1 Type-C port for two TB3/USB4 Type-C ports, while knocking $300 off the price and dumping the awful butterfly keyboard. The only downside is that it's a tenth of an inch thicker (0.16"-0.63" vs 0.14"-0.52").
- em500 4y ago
  It's also 0.37kg (0.77lbs) heavier, which is almost +40%.

Eric_WVGG 4y ago

I thought the same thing (got one for a gf), but since the introduction of pointer support in iPadOS, I look at the kinds of things most folks with the 12” books do (word processing, light spreadsheets, web), and I think Apple is correctly betting that that market is going for iPads with keyboard/trackpad folios now.

gumby 4y ago

>Anecdotally it seemed very popular, and loved by the people who bought one. Perhaps the numbers said otherwise, because otherwise I have no idea why they didn't reintroduce it as an M1/M2 machine. I loved mine, and put a couple of hundred thousand miles in carrying it (even wrote a lot of code in Emacs, but I remember the days when every compile was an excuse to stand up and get coffee, so the speed didn't matter to me). AFAICT its target market was actually Asia, same as with the ultralight (for its time) Powerbook 2400c which was actually built by IBM Japan. But it didn't sell as well as expected even there.

ascagnel_ 4y ago

They kinda did? The M1 Air is basically a better version of the 12" skinny Macbook. It's fanless, has a slightly larger screen (13" vs. 12"), and swaps a single USB 3.1 Type-C port for two TB3/USB4 Type-C ports, while knocking $300 off the price and dumping the awful butterfly keyboard. The only downside is that it's a tenth of an inch thicker (0.16"-0.63" vs 0.14"-0.52").

em500 4y ago
It's also 0.37kg (0.77lbs) heavier, which is almost +40%.