Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

Apple  has officially discontinued the 12-inch MacBook today. It was a computer that never had an update since June 2017 and can be said as one of the most contentious Macs in Apple’s lineup. The 12-inch MacBook at one time seemed to be Apple’s path forward (plenty of Apple fans and analysts saw it as a sign of things to come when it launched in 2015), but at the end it ended up representing some of Apple’s biggest challenges with its Macs in general.

It was never the laptop meant for video editors or feven photographers. It sure as heck wasn’t the MacBook for gamers. However, it was the MacBook aiming for those of us who valued portability above all else. Weighing only two pounds and boasting a profile that was slimmer than some legal pads, it basically disappeared into my bag. (I sometimes worried I’d accidentally left it at home.) Even the only slightly heavier weight and larger size of the new MacBook Air is enough to keep me aware of its presence in my bag, and that makes a difference when you spend afternoons hauling a laptop (and other junk) up the steep hills of San Francisco as I do. I found myself bringing it along in situations when I might have otherwise left a laptop at home, and I was always happy it was there.

However, this profile requires some sacrifices. We can even take the single USB-C port on the side. But theoretically, it was an annoyance, since you had to use the same port for charging and other peripherals, dongles, or even while hooking it up to an external monitor. If you wanted to download files from an SD card, for instance, you had to stop charging it further.

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