It’s May, 1985. Jean-Louis Gassée is Apple’s newly appointed VP of Product Development.
May, 1985: Apple ][ sales are falling; the Mac has yet to take off. We need to make some changes, pronto, that will attract new customers and keep the old ones coming back.
This is Jean-Louis’s take on the path from the Apple ][ and the early Mac to the first open Mac, the Macintosh II.
From the complaint:
Apple’s computers, including its iMac desktops and MacBook laptops (“Computers”), contain a critical defect that has led to at least two deficiencies in the performance of the Computers (the “Filter Defect”). The components in Apple’s Computers generate a great deal of heat during use, and Apple installed fans and vents to cool them down. But Apple did not install any filters for the vents. As a result of this Filter Defect, the fans suck in dirt and debris that get stuck behind the screen, causing a permanent dark smudging to appear in the corners of the screens. If brought in for repair outside the warranty period (or if Apple refused to honor the warranty), Apple told customers that they must pay upwards of $600 to replace the entire screen. In reality, there is a simple and cheap fix for many of the Computers: the screen can be removed by a suction cup, and then cleaned with a soft rag. Despite the existence of this inexpensive fix, Apple continues to charge non-warranty customers $600 to replace the entire screen.
One part of this is the design decision, a “lack of filters”. But another part is charging $600 to remove and clean a screen. That second part seem egregious, if true.
Looking forward to seeing Apple’s response on this.
[VIDEO] Luna Display is a small hardware dongle you plug into any modern Mac, including the new Mac mini, that wirelessly turns your iPad into a touch display for your Mac.
You can see Luna Display in action in the video embedded in the main Loop post. I love this idea, and it seems a perfect solution for the Mac mini.
Beyond that, it feels like a missing link, that hybrid of macOS and iOS. My sense is that it supports Apple Pencil, but without pressure sensitivity. But that aside, this seems like a wonderful solution if you already have an iPad Pro and have a need for a Mac mini.
This morning, I encountered this post on Reddit, titled PSA: Do not sit your new iPad Pro on top of your MacBook.
From the post:
I unhooked my 2018 15” MacBook Pro from my Thunderbolt Display earlier and sat my new 12.9” iPad Pro on top of it so I could carry them into another room and I heard the fan inside the MacBook making a scraping noise.
The magnets inside the iPad were pulling on it causing the blades to hit the fan housing. I moved the iPad away and it stopped making the noise immediately.
Take this with a grain of salt, but seems to me it could be possible.
As to magnets on the iPad Pro, take a look at this video:
https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1062368253316603905
I love how clearly this shows off the magnet placements. And there are a lot of them. Enough to impact a MacBook Pro fan?
Side note, from Federico Viticci’s continuing iPad Diaries:
Thanks to its 102 built-in magnets, the Smart Keyboard Folio easily aligns with the flush back of the iPad Pro with little guidance required on your end. With the Smart Keyboard Folio completely open on a desk, I haven’t had any trouble placing the iPad on top of it and folding it in typing mode. In fact, I’ve noticed that Apple intelligently placed magnets both inside the iPad and the folio case so that if you try to place the device upside down on top of the case, it won’t attach.
And:
If I had to point out a minor issue with the magnetic connection between the folio and the iPad Pro, I’d say that detaching the keyboard from the iPad now requires paying more attention and a stronger pull. To detach the iPad from the folio case, you have to hold the keyboard down with one hand then pull the iPad somewhat strongly out of one of the two grooves above the numeric keyboard row. Then you have to detach it from the folio case as well.
That’s a lot of magnetic power. I’m interested in finding out more about the iPad Pro magnets impacting the MacBook Pro. This a real thing? Seems to me, the only way this happens is if you place your MacBook on top of your iPad Pro and use it, or place your iPad Pro on the keyboard of an open and running MacBook.
If this does turn out to be a real issue, solution is, don’t do that.
Brian Li:
Prior to moving to Tokyo, I worked as an electronic music designer in New York and Las Vegas, where my job involved building keyboard racks and designing sounds for keyboard players on Broadway shows. More often than not, the racks I built were powered by Mac minis running MainStage
And:
Despite all the razzle-dazzle you see onstage, Broadway shows actually have very tight budgets, especially when it comes to keyboard racks for the electronic music designer. Unfortunately, professional music equipment is really expensive, so this reality often presented a “trilemma” between low price, high reliability, and high flexibility.
What follows is a budget breakdown, leaving about “$3,350 for two computers, making a mid to high-end Mac mini the only viable option.”
A fascinating peek into a Broadway tech setup, and a real world use case for the new Mac mini.
This story was doubly-interesting to me.
On one level, this highlighted a core difference between macOS and iOS, one of those things that keeps the Mac in my workflow. The issue here is what you do when someone sends you a zip file containing some data you need for, say, a report you are working on. The zipped data might be a table, it might be some images, it might be a mix of all sorts of things.
On my Mac, when I get a zip file, it’s simple to deal with. Double-click, it’s unzipped, and each individual file is immediately tied to its default opening app.
But a zip file in iOS requires some outside help. It is definitely a second class citizen at best.
But.
The second side of this story is about Shortcuts and, specifically a shortcut you can easily build (the author shows you how) or download to solve this problem. It also gives you the chance to customize that solution in any way you like.
Shortcuts definitely brings me closer to living full time in iOS. Great story.
I’m embedding the video in the main Loop post, but don’t let that stop you from jumping to Jeff Benjamin’s full 2018 Mac mini review. The video is just the icing on a very readable, informative cake.
Jean-Louis Gassée:
It’s November, 1983; I’m sitting in the auditorium at Apple’s worldwide sales meeting in Honolulu. The house lights dim and “1984” begins. Conceived by ad agency Chiat/Day, directed by Ridley Scott of Blade Runner fame, and destined to be aired nationally only once (during the 1984 Super Bowl).
And:
The lights come halfway up. Steve Jobs’ magical brainchild is lowered from the flies, deus ex Macintosh. Halfway through its descent, the Mac boots up and we hear the newborn’s wail, the now familiar Bong.
And:
Apple’s assembled sales organization was delighted by the Mac’s enchanting presentation, its (almost) never-seen-before user interface. But there was a nervous energy under the surface: Would the Macintosh save Apple from the IBM PC and its clones?
A nostalgic look back, with lots of interesting links and some images that will really take you back. Especially that one of young Steve Jobs giving IBM the finger.
Pop the bottom cover, 6 Torx screws to remove the antenna plate, and you’re in. Very similar to the old Mac mini in approach.
I love the way this comes apart. Gives me the chance to repair and replace parts myself.
More of those stretchy adhesive pull tabs. Not as good as screws, but way better than glue.
More good news as far as Apple products and repairability:
Big news for repairability and environmental responsibility: the battery can be individually replaced in the new MacBook Air, according to Apple’s internal Service Readiness Guide for the notebook, obtained by MacRumors.
And:
In all other MacBook and MacBook Pro models with a Retina display released since 2012, when a customer has required a battery replacement, Apple has replaced the entire top case enclosure, including the keyboard and trackpad. This is because the battery is glued into the top case in Mac notebooks with Retina displays.
The battery in the new MacBook Air is still glued into the top case, the aluminum enclosure that houses the keyboard and trackpad, but Apple will be providing Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers with tools to remove the battery and reinstall a new one with no top case replacement required.
Glue is the bane of repairability. I wish Apple would develop a version of the 3M Command strips, the ones that stick to walls, strong enough to hold up a framed picture, but come off by stretching them. They’re even reusable.
Would love to be able to remove a battery by pulling on the adhesive tab to loosen it, replace the battery with the same adhesive strip, all without that gooey mess of melted glue.
UPDATE: Apparently, Apple does use something akin to these Command adhesive strips in some iPhone models, though they are not reusable. More of this! And H/T Gabriel Jordan.
This is a relatively easy thing to do. It’s all screws, no glue or other messy bits to deal with.
If you are considering a Mac mini purchase, check the replacement RAM costs before you order.
UPDATE: As the linked post says, the images are from the 2014 Mac mini, thought the steps are the same. Thanks to Patrick McCarron, here’s a link to another post that accomplishes the same thing, but on the actual 2018 Mac mini.
Though we did include this review in yesterday’s list of the new MacBook Air reviews, I wanted to link to John Gruber’s review separately, for his take on Intel.
The elephant in the room at last week’s Apple event was Intel.
Apple introduced two products based on Intel chips — the new MacBook Air and new Mac Mini — but barely mentioned the company’s name. The word “Intel” appeared on a single slide during VP of hardware engineering Laura Legros’s presentation of the new MacBook Air. She also spoke the word once, saying the new Airs have “the latest Intel integrated graphics”. In the presentation of the new Mac Mini, “Intel” never appeared in a slide and wasn’t mentioned.
And:
Apple is not going to throw Intel under the bus — they’re taking an “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” approach, as they should.
Push is slowly coming to shove here. As John points out, the new iPad Pro simply crushes the Intel-powered MacBook Air in GeekBench score, especially that MultiCore score (18,051 to 7,847).
As products, the Mac and the iPad are still on different tracks, not plug replaceable. But it does seem highly likely (a “when”, not an “if”) that Apple will eventually ship a Mac powered by their own bionic chip.
Interesting snippet from this TechCrunch post:
Buried in Apple’s latest range of MacBooks — including the MacBook Pro out earlier this year and the just-announced MacBook Air — is the new T2 security chip, which helps protect the device’s encryption keys, storage, fingerprint data and secure boot features.
Little was known about the chip until today. According to its newest published security guide, the chip comes with a hardware microphone disconnect feature that physically cuts the device’s microphone from the rest of the hardware whenever the lid is closed.
And from the T2 Security Chip Overview itself:
All Mac portables with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures that the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed. This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed. (The camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.)
Good to know.
Here’s the link to the iPad Pro Geekbench page. Note that this testing was done with the high end, 1TB model.
Here’s the link to the MacBook Pro 2018 Geekbench page.
Granted, these comparisons are not apples-to-apples, but still, these iPad Pro results seem impressive. They are both top of their respective line machines and, obviously, the iPad Pro is much less expensive.
If my math is right, the MacBook Pro single-core score is about 6.5% faster than the iPad Pro. That’s not much.
Reddit:
The baseline MacBook costs more than the MacBook Air and is a downgrade in literally every way. Smaller screen, older generation keyboard, 480p camera, no thunderbolt 3, only 1 port, worse CPUs that are from last generation, no Touch ID.
The MacBook no longer makes sense, and it didn’t even make sense compared to the baseline MacBook Pro.
Jim and I spent some time discussing this on yesterday’s Dalrymple Report. I do find the relationship between the MacBook Air and the MacBook a bit confusing.
Two comments from the linked Reddit thread:
I always thought that the Macbook was replacing the Macbook air, similar to what they did with the iPad
And:
You thought correctly. This new laptop is just a bigger MacBook (Retina). It’s not an Air. Apple is just calling it an Air for marketing purposes. It has the same screen type and Y-series CPU as the Retina, not the U-series as the Air uses.
Instead calling the product lineup the MacBook 12″ and MacBook 13″, they’re calling it the MacBook and the New MacBook Air.
One possible motivation for this move, aside from giving the (MacBook Air) people what they want, is addressed in this thoughtful Op-Ed piece from Ben Lovejoy:
When Apple launched the iPhone X, it did more than just change the design language of the iPhone: it also offered a whole new pricing level. Not just for iPhones, but for any smartphone. It was a move that has significantly boosted the average selling price (ASP) of the iPhone range as a whole.
This is a trick Apple is now repeating with the 2018 MacBook Air
Interesting. Is this ASP ladder-climbing, an effort to raise the price of the entry level Mac? Though I do find the branding a bit confusing between the MacBook and MacBook Air, there’s no doubt that Apple is genius when it comes to product pricing.
Emil Protalinski, VentureBeat:
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced during the company’s “More in the Making” event in New York City that Apple has hit a new milestone: 100 million active Mac users. He added that 51 percent of Mac buyers are “new to Mac” and noted that in China that figure is 76 percent, highlighting growth in the world’s most populous country.
And:
By comparison, there are about 1.5 billion active Windows PCs.
Consider this point, made on Twitter by Horace Dediu:
40% of all Macs ever sold are still in use.
I wonder if you ignored the first 10 years of Mac purchases, if that 40% number would drop, even to 39%. To me, this says a ton about the impact the success of the iPhone and the evolution of the Apple ecosystem has had on the Mac.
9to5Toys:
Apple has refreshed its refurbished storefront this morning to now include 2018 MacBook Pros for the first time. Inventory is primarily centered around the latest 13-inch models with prices starting at $1,529. A high-end maxed-out 13-inch model is on sale for $3,139, which is good for $560 off the regular price, marking today’s biggest savings. Most of these deals work out to be around 15% off the new condition price. In recent months we’ve seen as much as $200 off 13-inch models and up to $300 off 15-inch configurations.
Here’s the link to Apple’s refurbished storefront. Have a look around.
Craig Grannell:
The standard macOS interface has quite a few semi-transparent elements, which like frosted glass provide a glimpse of what’s beneath them. At Apple events, execs go giddy about how pretty this is. In use, these elements vary from being distracting to outright dangerous. For example, if you have a motion-sickness issue and an animating web page is sitting behind a semi-transparent element, it can take a while before you realise it’s affecting you, by which time it’s too late and you’re already dizzy.
And:
“Fine”, says Apple, grumpily, “so just turn on Reduce transparency”. Only it’s not that simple. Because when you do, Apple designers get in a strop and hurl logic out of the window. What you’d expect to happen is for macOS to remove the semi-transparent bits. So instead of Finder sidebars or the macOS app switcher showing what’s beneath them, they’d just have a neutral solid background. Nope. Instead, in its infinite wisdom, Apple’s decided those components should instead be coloured by your Desktop background.
Stephen Hackett put together a few screenshots to show off this effect.
To me, this sort of thing happens due to lack of a specific branch of testing. Seems to me, someone at Apple should reach out to Craig Grannell and ask him (and other leaders in the accessibility community) to beta test new software/hardware early in the cycle, so they have time to address these sorts of issues. I believe accessibility testing would be greatly enhanced by voices, hands, eyes of real world experience.
Spaces has been around since Mac OS X Leopard (2007), but if you’ve never used it, you are not alone. Take a few minutes to read through this terrific walkthrough by William Gallagher. It might just make you a Spaces fan.
This piece is on the 1Password blog, so it’s got a bit of marketing woven in, but it does a nice job of highlighting some of the fine work done by the Mac App Store team, and the work on the iOS App Store before it.
I absolutely love the Mac App Store’s evolving look and layout, especially when you’ve got Dark Mode in place.
Take a read through the piece, get a sense of the things that make the new App Store so much better.
Jason Koebler, Motherboard:
Apple has introduced software locks that will effectively prevent independent and third-party repair on 2018 MacBook Pro computers, according to internal Apple documents obtained by Motherboard. The new system will render the computer “inoperative” unless a proprietary Apple “system configuration” software is run after parts of the system are replaced.
According to the document, which was distributed to Apple’s Authorized Service Providers late last month, this policy will apply to all Apple computers with the “T2” security chip, which is present in 2018 MacBook Pros as well as the iMac Pro.
I’m looking forward to reading a response from Apple on this issue. I can’t imagine, if true, that this is an effort from Apple to keep all those sweet, sweet repair dollars all to themselves. I’d expect this has something to do with protecting the chain of security, preventing malware from somehow gaining a foothold.
Grain of salt.
Benjamin Mayo:
Marzipan apps are ugly ducklings. As soon as you use them, you can just know these are not at one with the system. You detect that there’s a translation layer of some kind at work here, just like when you use Slack on the Mac you instinctively feel that it’s a web app in a thin wrapper. The underlying implementation is exposed to the user with a bevy of performance sluggishness, UI quirks and non-standard behaviours. That’s bad.
Lots of detail here to back up Benjamin’s opinion. It’s early days yet, so I’d expect this experience to get better over time.
I debated calling this post ‘Home, News, Stocks and Voice Memos for Mac’ because it’s not really a comment on the Marzipan project initiative. After all, I don’t expect the solution Apple ships next year to have the same laundry list of drawbacks that these Mojave apps do. It’s a critique of the apps that are shipping now to customers of macOS. These apps are preinstalled with the OS. News was even unceremoniously placed into the middle of my Dock upon upgrading. And they are not good, simple as that. I would have been mildly happier if Apple had offered these apps as optional App Store downloads affixed with a beta label.
And:
Functionally, they are a win. These apps make the Mac do things it couldn’t before. That shouldn’t excuse them from blame, though. These are mediocre, bordering on bad, experiences. It’s not a good poster child for the future of the Mac.
Interesting for Apple to officially ship something like this, rather than hiding it in a beta until it is ready for prime time.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Apple has recently been sending out surveys to customers who purchased an iMac Pro, asking them about which features drew them to the pro-level machine and what they like or dislike about the iMac Pro.
And:
Apple regularly sends out surveys of this nature to customers, but this line of questioning on the iMac Pro suggests Apple is perhaps trying to suss out key features that pro-level users want to see in future pro machines, such as the Mac Pro machine that’s in the works.
And:
Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi admitted last year that with the 2013 Mac Pro, Apple designed itself into “a bit of a thermal corner” given the restrictive size of the trash can-shaped Mac Pro and its inability to handle the thermal capacity needed for larger single GPUs.
“A bit of a thermal corner”. Love that turn of phrase. This survey seems a solid sign that Apple is doing their best to learn from their mistakes, hit a home run with next year’s Mac Pro.
Patrick Wardle, Objective-See:
You probably trust applications in the Official Mac App Store. And why wouldn’t you?
Yup.
However, it’s questionable whether these statements actually hold true, as one of the top grossing applications in the Mac App Store surreptitiously exfiltrates highly sensitive user information to a (Chinese?) developer. Though Apple was contacted a month ago, and promised to investigate, the application remains available in Mac App Store even today.
Read the post for all the details (good work from Patrick Wardle and Twitter user @privacyis1st) but here’s a good summary from John Gruber, in a Daring Fireball post called The Curious Case of Adware Doctor and the Mac App Store:
What a bizarre story this is. Adware Doctor was a $4.99 app in the Mac App Store from a developer supposedly named Yongming Zhang. The app purported to protect your browser from adware by removing browser extensions, cookies, and caches. It was a surprisingly popular app, ranking first in the Utilities category and fourth overall among paid apps, alongside stalwarts like Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro X.
Turns out, among other things, Adware Doctor was collecting your web browser history from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and uploading them to a server in China. Whatever the intention of this was, it’s a privacy debacle, obviously. This behavior was first discovered by someone who goes by the Twitter handle Privacy 1st, and reported to Apple on August 12. Early today, security researcher Patrick Wardle published a detailed technical analysis of the app. Wired, TechCrunch, and other publications jumped on the story, and by 9 am PT, Apple had pulled the app from the App Store.
So the issue was reported on August 12th but not taken down until 26 days later, on September 7th.
But wait, there’s more.
Guilherme Rambo, in a 9to5Mac post titled Additional Mac App Store apps caught stealing and uploading browser history:
When you give an app access to your home directory on macOS, even if it’s an app from the Mac App Store, you should think twice about doing it. It looks like we’re seeing a trend of Mac App Store apps that convince users to give them access to their home directory with some promise such as virus scanning or cleaning up caches, when the true reason behind it is to gather user data – especially browsing history – and upload it to their analytics servers.
Today, we’re talking specifically about the apps distributed by a developer who claims to be “Trend Micro, Inc.”, which include Dr. Unarchiver, Dr. Cleaner and others.
These apps have been removed from the Mac App Store.
This raises some serious issues. Is this the tip of the iceberg? Are there other apps in the Mac App Store that do the same thing, but are not yet discovered? Is this just one technique of many? And what about the iOS App Store?
I am very reluctant to run any app on my Mac unless I either know and trust the developer or the app comes from the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store is a trusted source. If that trust is broken, either on the Mac or iOS, that’s a real problem for Apple.
I’m hoping we see some formal response from Apple, with some sense that they are aware of the issues involved and have new steps in place to root out existing apps that use this “give us access to your Home directory” (or similar) approach, steps that will prevent this issue from recurring.
Patrick Wardle, Objective-See (via Michael Tsai):
Once the target is visits our malicious website, we trigger the download of an archive (.zip) file that contains our malicious application. If the Mac user is using Safari, the achieve will be automatically unzipped, as Apple thinks it’s wise to automatically open “safe” files.
This is a pretty long read, but it all comes down to the way macOS Safari treats downloaded files, and one specific setting in Safari Preferences:
Preferences > General > Open “safe” files after downloading
Here’s a picture of that setting, a checkbox down at the bottom of the General tab. I’ve unchecked mine. You might want to take a look at yours.
Key to all this is the word archives at the end. That includes .zip files, which can contain, well, bad stuff.
Read the linked article. As I said, I’ve unchecked my setting, have not yet encountered a problem set that way. This as bad as it seems?
UPDATE: This issue has, apparently, been around since the dawn of time, but that the default is supposed to be unchecked. I just unboxed a new Mac, factory settings, no migration, and the setting was on/checked. Public version of High Sierra.
Back in the day, before my iPhone or iPad was usable as a hotspot, I used to use my Mac as a hotspot. I’d plug it into, say, a hotel’s ethernet cable, then open up my WiFi for the folks around me.
I haven’t done this in years, since my iPhone hotspot works pretty well and since WiFi is so easily found. That said, in general, the performance you’ll get from an ethernet plugged-in hotspot is much better than you’ll get from your sometimes spotty cellular service.
Nice walkthrough from Jonny Evans. Tuck this one away and pass it along.
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
Apple will add 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models released in Mid 2012 to its vintage and obsolete products list on August 31, according to an internal document distributed to Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers and obtained by MacRumors from a reliable source.
But:
Normally, this would mean the 2012 MacBook Air is no longer eligible for hardware service, except where required by law. However, Apple has decided to include the notebook in its recently launched pilot program that allows for repairs to continue into the vintage period, subject to parts availability.
Apple says 2012 MacBook Air models will remain eligible for service at Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers worldwide through August 31, 2020, a full two years after the notebook is classified as vintage. Mail-in service will also be an option in the United States and Japan through that date.
I appreciate Apple making this available, helping keep select older models on the road for that much longer. They could easily have not done this, which would have pushed people to buying new machines instead of repairing their existing machines.
Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels:
These images came from the OS, running on actual hardware; I didn’t use virtual machines at any point. I ran up to 10.2 on an original Power Mac G4, while a Mirror Drive Doors G4 took care of 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5. I used a 2010 Mac mini for Snow Leopard and Lion, then a couple different 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros to round out the rest.
This is simply remarkable work. Here’s a link to the screenshot library home page.
One vivid memory this brings to mind: I was working at Metrowerks, makers of CodeWarrior, and I had the chance to play with the first beta of Mac OS X. It was jarringly different. Finder windows used this multi-column browser approach, very different from the disclosure triangle, single-column of the original Finder. The colors were different, the window controls were skeuomorphic, had depth to them.
To be honest, I thought the beta was ugly. But over time, I got used to the change, and grew to love the power, functionality, and especially, the accessible Unix underpinnings of the new Mac OS.
Remarkable stepping through all these screenshots, watching macOS subtly evolve over time.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball:
For most of the modern era at Apple, the company’s Mac portable lineup has been simple, dating back to Steve Jobs’s 4-square product matrix in 1998. iBooks and PowerBooks. Then, in the Intel era, plastic MacBooks and aluminum MacBook Pros. Lower-priced for consumers, higher-priced for pros.
The original MacBook Air threw a monkey wrench in this simple lineup, though. When it debuted in 2008, the MacBook Air was a premium portable, starting at $1799 with an 80 GB hard drive, and going up to $3098 for a version with a faster CPU and 64 GB of SSD storage. It was a different type of premium portable than a MacBook Pro, focused on a remarkably svelte (for the time) form factor. When Steve Jobs revealed that first MacBook Air by pulling it from a manila envelope on stage at Macworld Expo, there were gasps.
And:
This is one of those columns where I started with one idea, but in the course of writing it, drastically changed my mind. I find none of these scenarios satisfying, but I started out with the idea that the one thing Apple wouldn’t do is simply update the MacBook Air, as we know it or very similar, and just give it a retina display. I’ve been saying this for a few years now, that I saw the future as just MacBooks and MacBook Pros, and that the MacBook Air remained in the lineup only until the 12-inch MacBook could drop in price.
But the more I think about it, the more I think that something along the lines of the “just put a retina display in the MacBook Air” scenario seems the most likely.
These callouts are just snippets from an unusually long Daring Fireball column. When the MacBook Air came into being, it represented a huge change, filled a hole in the market. But the MacBook and MacBook Pro have taken advantage of the technology and material science gains MacBook Air brought to the market.
What will a new MacBook Air look like? Good question. Gruber’s take does a nice job exploring the tree of possibilities.