WWDC 2017 MacBook Opinions
Watching WWDC 2017 as an 11 inch MacBook Air user
WWDC 2017 happened and we now know what Apple’s laptop lineup is for the next year or so, and as a proud user of a MBA11, I am even more disappointed than last year. Frankly, there is, still, no replacement for the MBA11 which was discontinued in 2016. I assumed that this year would be the year where the powers that be at Apple would decide the MacBook Air’s race was run and would finally discontinue the 13” model, allowing for the MacBook to replace it at the sub-£999 price point. Yet here we are with a 13” zombie MBA13 that continues to show life. It even gained a 200MHz boost to its base processor speed. That 6+ year old design still costs £949 – what an absurdity! And Apple mentioned it in passing, without showing it on their slides!
On top of that, the base model MacBook has increased in price to £1249 and is now the same price as. The new, reduced-storage 13” MacBook Pro. The act of wringing every possible bit of money out of each product line is nothing new for Apple, but it just feels very strange. Here are my main thoughts:
- The MBA remains
The cheapest laptop is old tech. Old I/O, old power cable, old display, old keyboard, but is also wider than all of the other notebooks Apple currently sell, even the 15" Pro. Selling this old tech to customers appears to me to be leaving them in the past as soon as they buy the machine. At least the Mac Pro customers know a new model is on the horizon!
2. Anaemic storage on a Pro?
Selling a machine for £1249 with only 128GB of storage is a travesty this close to 2018. I got the base model MBA11 in 2013 with the minimum amount of storage – 128GB. That this could be the case over 4 years later, and calling it a “Pro” is a joke. Of course, a customer could just boost the storage back up to 256GB and the price back up to its original £1499, but I’m sure it would be interesting to see what percentage of customers keep it at 128GB. I’m sure I could be one of them.
3. Expensive MacBook?
The fact that the base MacBook costs the same as the base MacBook Pro suggests to me that the MacBook costs too much. Whether that is Apple inflating its price far beyond its cost to build or the model is super-complicated to create and costs a lot, I do not know. But it reminds me of the original MacBook Air’s release in 2008. The miniaturisation and premium materials made that cost as much as it did, but then the price dropped dramatically as time went on. I assumed that by its third generation, the same would happen to the MacBook. I guess we’re still left waiting.
4. The MacBook still doesn’t have Thunderbolt 3!
The galling thing is that while it shaves off some inches, the only thing the base MacBook has over the base MBP is an extra 128GB of storage. It doesn’t get Thunderbolt 3, an extra port, an i5 processor, larger battery, yet costs the same and received no updates to bring it loser to the Pro. Why should it cost that much?
5. “Pro” hardware
Since this is a spec bump, there are still no discrete graphics or quad core processors in any 13” machines. The real “Pros” out there still have to plumb for the 15” if they want that, and those machines are very, very expensive.
It does seem like a good value, small and powerful machine no longer exists. The MBA11, just like the 12” PowerBook before it, was a portable powerhouse, but it has no direct replacement. Even the lowly plastic MacBook had a notebook class CPU, rather than the low-voltage, fan-less design of the current MacBook. At the low end, I’d need to decide between a MacBook or a Pro and both of them cost £500 more than my MacBook Air did. Perhaps the secondhand market is the way forward at this point. Answers on a postcard!
