I finally got around to looking at The New MacBook in store today, and I must say it’s rather impressive. Nothing really took me by surprise, although I was pleasantly surprised to find I like the new keyboard.
I need to say this… MARCO WAS WRONG!!! (If you have no idea what I’m taking about, read this: http://www.marco.org/2015/05/19/mistake-one)
I typed extensively on it, and there were a few typos here and there that I wouldn’t usually make, but after a while I got into a pleasant rhythm. I feel as though with a bit more time, I’d be significantly faster and more accurate typing on this thing that on the keyboard of my current MacBook Pro.
It’s still a “no buy” for me at the moment, for two primary reasons:
- A 12″ screen is just too small. There’s no two ways about it. Using a scaled resolution doesn’t help much either – it’s just too small. I’d be a lot more serious about a similar MacBook with a 13 or 14″ screen. But as it is, the 13″ screen on my current MacBook Pro does the job, albeit a little on the small side, and I certainly couldn’t move to anything smaller.
- It was noticeably slower than my current MacBook Pro. Not in a bad way and certainly not in a way that would be perceived as slow for most users, but coming from a computer with a powerful i7 processor, a 1.1GHz Core M chip just doesn’t cut it. Even adding an extra second or two onto the opening of most applications on the computer is enough of a performance loss for me not to be interested. And I didn’t even begin to compile code on it…
This is not to say the MacBook isn’t a good machine, because it is. It’s also not to say it won’t get better in future models over time, but at this point I don’t think the hits in screen real estate and performance are worth the benefit of a stunningly thin and light design.
There’s certainly a lot of potential for the MacBook – a computer that’s right for 80% of people, 80% of the time.