I'm curious to see the lineup with M4, for sure it will come with 12GB of RAM at this point they can't just keep going with 8GB.
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The rumored 12-inch MacBook with Apple Silicon - a 2024 perspective (Speculation Megathread?)
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They can, just with extreme amounts of backlash that apple won't care about because they cant
I created an account here just because I am a proud MacBook 12 owner. I have an Air M2 at home from work and a personal Studio, but the equipment I use the most is the MacBook 12, even as a screen for the studio (I always say that It's my little guy's muscle.
I have modified the computer over the years, the last update was in December, I applied a thermal mod and changed the motherboard from an i5 to an i7 with 16GB of ram 2017. I really love that computer and I have spent more on it than on The sum of the Studio and its monitor, I would continue doing it as long as I can make sure it works, nothing beats it.
If a new 12" came out I would buy it without thinking, it weighs much less than the 13" Air at work and you can really feel the difference.
If for some strange reason the iPad could use macos, I would definitely switch to the 11 with a keyboard. But I am macos dependent for work and that is where the 12 inch macbook beats the ipad and anything larger. I am aware that my iPad mini is more powerful, but it is iPadOS.
Completely agree. I'd buy a new 12" in a heart beat. It almost doesnt matter the specs. It would be faster than my 2017 12" regardless of what combo of HD, Ram, Processor, etc they put in it & I only have one port (well 2 if you count the headphone jack) so even if they stuck with 1, it wouldn't be a loss.
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I have said it many times...imo if Apple made a 12" Macbook with an M1 chip they would own the entire entry level market.
Yeah I would buy day 1 without issues as well, as I previously stated I know a lot of girl friends and family members who own it and aren't switching as it's the only computer that fits in a larger woman purse
These days I doubt it, I only know music producers who actually use it daily. But since it’s such a small port I don’t think anyone minds having it tag along for the ride tbh
One of the things that bugged me the most about the 12” MacBook was that it actually had two ports but didn’t make them both USB-C. You can make a USB-C port into a stereo jack with a $10 dongle but you can’t make a stereo jack into a USB port (iPod shuffle notwithstanding).
Where was the courage?
There have been... Upwards of 250 comments and you decide to comment on the First?
You can always get the larger screen MacBooks or plug the 12-inch into a much larger screen at home/office. What folks here are looking for is an extremely portable machine that is also very powerful at the same time, which the current iPad "Pro" devices have failed to become.
From an engineering perspective, if Apple took the current M2 MacBook Air and thought: "How much can we shrink this down without making any big compromises on functionality and performance?" I wonder how much size/weight could be stripped off?
The 12" MacBook made a lot of concessions, and it was quite the feat of engineering simply to get that spec in that size machine. I'm not sure if/when Apple will ever revisit the 12" form factor, but I'm pretty certain that they wouldn't entertain making so many concessions again, so it'd be interesting to first of all know what's physically possible, before then trying to wonder if Apple would bother.
My hunch is that the they wouldn't be able to go a great deal lower than the current 1.22kg weight of the M2 Air, so they might simply reduce that weight in increments over the years, so every year they can say "Even Lighter", and maybe in 10 years time we have a 12.5-12.9" MacBook Air that's around 1.1kg.
The 12" MacBook made a lot of concessions, and it was quite the feat of engineering simply to get that spec in that size machine. I'm not sure if/when Apple will ever revisit the 12" form factor, but I'm pretty certain that they wouldn't entertain making so many concessions again, so it'd be interesting to first of all know what's physically possible, before then trying to wonder if Apple would bother.
My hunch is that the they wouldn't be able to go a great deal lower than the current 1.22kg weight of the M2 Air, so they might simply reduce that weight in increments over the years, so every year they can say "Even Lighter", and maybe in 10 years time we have a 12.5-12.9" MacBook Air that's around 1.1kg.
Except that a 12" Macbook was NOT an entry level laptop. It was a premium laptop over the Air.
A smaller laptop is not automatically entry level. In the case of 12", Apple had to engineer some workarounds and used more expensive components to get to a smaller size.
What they can actually do to own the entire entry level market is to release a Macbook SE using the M1 Air chassis but with an M2/M4 and sell it for $750 MSRP permanently.
I think the 12" Macbook would be like the iPhone Mini. A vocal minority kept saying they want it. Apple built it and no one bought it. Granted, I bought one myself and love it. But clearly it's a small market and not worth the effort.
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Well, the bolded statement isn't really a perfect analogy. You yourself said the 12" MacBook was expensive, whereas the iPhone SE was the budget model. It was not sold as an entry level laptop. Overall, the problems with the 2015-2017 MacBooks were:
1. It was expensive.
2. It had only one USB-C port, which didn't even support Thunderbolt, and which often was occupied by a charger.
3. It was slow.
4. It had a crappy keyboard.
5. The trackpad wasn't the best either.
While I do agree with you that a new Apple Silicon 12" MacBook would also sell kinda poorly like the iPhone SE, I think it would do significantly better if:
1. It costs less than the 13.6" MacBook Air.
2. It has two Thunderbolt ports, or at least one Thunderbolt port and one charging port.
3. It runs M2, so it's fast.
4. It has a good keyboard.
5. It has a good trackpad.
However, as previously mentioned, I'm out of this market now as I use the iPad Pro M4 more. That is a bit pricey, but I was willing to pay the premium to get the (tandem) OLED. It should be noted though that it has one Thunderbolt port and one charging port (on the Magic Keyboard), it has M4 which has the fastest single-core speed in a mobile CPU in the world, it has an excellent keyboard (albeit small in the 11"), and it has an excellent trackpad (albeit small in the 11").
Why would it cost less than a 13.6" Macbook Air? That's one of the biggest, among many, problems in all of this.
People here want a 12" Macbook because they want it to be even lighter and more compact than a 13" Macbook Air. In order to engineer and manufacture such a laptop, it'd cost more than a Macbook Air.
There is no market for this laptop. 11 pages later and countless other posts later, some people still won't admit it. There are like a 100 people total who are okay with a tiny screen on a Mac, but not ok with an iPad Pro, and thinks the already super portable 13" Air is not portable enough. Apparently, all of them are on Macrumors making threads about a 12" Macbook.
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No, that's false. Don't forget that one of the main reasons the 12" MacBook was more expensive than the 13" MacBook Air was because at the time, the 12" MacBook was Retina and 256 GB, whereas the 13" MacBook Air was non-Retina and 128 GB. Apple is also no longer reliant upon semi-custom configured boutique Intel chips. With current Apple Silicon technology, along with Apple's design expertise and supply chain prowess, there is no reason for a 12" MacBook to be more costly to manufacture than a 13.6" MacBook Air. In fact, it would most likely be significantly cheaper to manufacture, due to the smaller battery, smaller case, smaller screen, etc., and because cooling is no longer a significant issue.
One analogy here is the iPad Air 13" and 11". The 11" has a way smaller footprint than the 12" MacBook yet runs the M2 at full speed just like its bigger 13" sister while maintaining good battery life. And at only $599, the 11" iPad Air is $200 less than the 13" iPad Air.
However, I still don't think Apple will make another 12" MacBook anytime soon, because the demand just isn't there. Anecdotally, out of every single Mac owner I know personally, outside of myself, I have never met anyone with a 12" MacBook. In contrast, a bazillion of them owned MacBook Airs and another large group of them owned MacBook Pros, and not a single one of them wanted to go smaller than 13".
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You're basically saying take the 13", don't spend any extra R&D, and just shrink it by 1", and sell it for cheaper. What kind of market do you think is there for something like this? There is barely any differentiation between something like this and a 13" Air.
The 13" Air is already only 2.7 pounds. How much less weight could shrinking it by 1" but keep everything else the same really net you? Maybe .5 pounds? So essentially, you think Apple wants to sell a 12" Macbook for less than the 13" Air and the only difference is that it's 1" smaller and .5 pounds lighter?
We all agree that there is no market for something like this.
Suggesting that it'd be "significantly" cheaper is weird. Everything about it would require a new supply chain, such as manufacturing 12" displays which is very uncommon and at very low volume.
Therefore, if Apple were to make another 12" Macbook, it'd be a premium over the current 13" Air. They'd add some special tech to it to make it standout over the 13" Air. This is exactly what they did with the original 12" Macbook, which failed spectacularly already. No one wants to buy a tiny Macbook when the iPad is much cheaper, more portable, and in someways, more capable due to cameras, sensors, and touch optimized for a small screen.
That's the whole point. There is no market for this... but there is even less of a market for a more expensive smaller model.
Most of Apple's displays are custom or semi-custom to Apple, or at least started out that way.
But that's just it. There is no reason to make it premium over the current 13" Air. That would be foolish. Nobody wants that. There is a small vocal population that just wants something smaller, but they don't want to pay more for it, and they don't need some special differentiating feature. Making it premium over the current 13" Air would only serve to make a small niche group like us even smaller and even more niche.
A realistic but still unlikely option would indeed just be to shrink the Air from say 13.6" to 11.8", making a three tier Air product line with the 11.8" model being the cheapest, but I don't see Apple doing this because there is just isn't any demand for it. But to reiterate, the demand for a higher end more expensive model than the 13.6" would have even less demand.
Anyhow, personally for me, that ship has sailed. I won't be buying a 12" MacBook. Right now the only significant issue I have for my usage with my 11" iPad Pro is that the trackpad of the Magic Keyboard is not compatible with my work VPN, Citrix Workspace. However, a beta that supports that is already out and apparently it works fine, so that issue would be solved once the beta goes to release. I'm out of the MacBook market for the next few years at least.