The highly-touted Apple Watch officially launched on March 9 came with the widely-anticipated 12-inch MacBook Air with Retina display. But instead of calling it the new MacBook Air, the American tech company has officially named it as the new Apple MacBook.
But based on earlier specifications that have already made the rounds on the internet the new Apple MacBook is the very same Apple laptop that was rumored to be the MacBook Air with Retina display.
Apple claims that the new MacBook is the thinnest Mac ever made with thickness of only 13.1 millimeters and is also very light too, weighing only 2.03 pounds, notes Firstpost.
The new laptop is currently the lightest among Apple’s present roster of laptops as it is even lighter than the 11-inch MacBook Air which weighs 2.38 pounds. But the company refuses to lay claim that the new MacBook is one of the lightest laptops in the market today, knowing too well that the Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers can easily dismiss such notion.
Sharp screen and other major features
The new Apple MacBook has a diagonal 12-inch diagonal LED-backlit Retina display 2304 x 1440-pixel resolution, and a 16:10 aspect ratio that attribute for its very sharp screen which is better than the 1400 x 900-pixel resolution of the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Despite its very slim build, the new Apple MacBook also has excellent stereo-quality speakers which blast sound upward at the user instead of coming from the vents near the hinge with the MacBook Air.
The MacBook’s keyboard is also 34 percent thinner compared to its predecessor and is four times more stable and more precise through keys that work on butterfly mechanism.
Apart from the fact that each key is individually backlit with its own single LED and really looks nice, there is also stainless steel dome switches located beneath each key that deliver a crisp and responsive feel when typing.
In addition, the new Apple MacBook also features the all-new Force Touch trackpad which has built-in force sensors that enable the users to customize the trackpad based on the pressure exerted on it. An interesting new feature is the Force Click which is a click followed by a deeper press which can be set for specific tasks and has been designed in place of the right click.
The major downsides
In terms of downsides, the new Apple MacBook uses Intel Core M processors which are not the fastest in the market today. The 11-inch MacBook Air is being powered by Intel Core i5 with speed of 1.6GHz, which is faster than the Intel Core M’s 1.1GHz, 1.2GHz, and 1.3GHz speeds.
Apple has also done away with the ports on the side of the laptop and it is now using the USB-C port for data transfer, video out, and charging in a single connector. While this feature may be unique, it will also come out costly. If the user for instance wants to charge the MacBook and connect a USB drive at the same time, he would need to spend an additional $79 for the charger and $19 for the USB drive.
There are still a couple more downsides to the new Apple MacBook including its unchanged 720-pixel front-facing camera, limited battery life, and most of all, it’s prohibitive price of $1,299.