Apples latest MacBook isnt a spec update. Its not an incremental upgrade. Its a totally different machine, for a different kind of person. Its also kind of ridiculous.
First of all, it is incredibly, impossibly thin. Ive been using a MacBook Air for years, and this 13.1-millimeter, 2-pound device feels like an entirely different category of not-there-ness. Its amazingly sturdy for being so thin, too. The screen, the 2304 x 1400 display that I wish desperately would have also come to the Air, is lovely. Its the most important upgrade this device offers, honestly: once you start using a Retina display its hard to go back.
In every way, this is a thing of beauty; its no wonder Apple spent so much time talking about the engineering behind it. Everything about the MacBook is about beauty, whether its the single USB-C port on the left sidethe only port on the entire device save for a headphone jack on the rightor the new Gold, Space Gray, and Silver colors. The Gold is actually much more handsome than gaudy, but the Space Gray is my favorite of the options. Its dark and sleek, fitting for a device thats so, so very thin.
But then you use it, and the positive feelings fade a bit. For all the talk about the new butterfly keys, the new, better keyboard, I immediately hated using the keys. Theres basically no travel, no movement. Its not that different from tapping on a touchscreen. I initially felt the same way about the new Force Touch trackpad, which is in most ways the same as ever, except for the new ability to sense different levels of pressure placed on it. For a minute, it was hard to get just right. I kept pressing too hard, or not hard enough, trying to select a word and get it to pop up a Wikipedia page for Kelly Slater, or to show all the Numbers documents I had open by mashing on the app icon. It only took a minute or so to figure it out, though, and once you get the hang of it, quickly fast-forwarding through a video or looking something up on Wikipedia is actually quite easy. I may come around to the butterfly keyboard in time as well, but it doesnt give a great first impression.
The MacBook itself, meanwhile, runs quite well for a device powered by a Core M processor and with no fan inside. Based on a few minutes of web browsing, typing my name over and over in a Pages document, and poking through Numbers, it seems like its up to the tasks for which it is clearly meant. Its not for gaming, its probably not for editing video, but it does the basics really well.
Its hard to say for sure without using the laptop more, which well do as soon as possible, but for the moment the new MacBook feels a bit like the Apple Watch: its beautiful, a status symbol Id be desperate to show to everyone I know and kind of already want to frame. Its a clear indication that Apple values form and beauty first and foremost. But its expensivethe oddest moment of the event was when Phil Schiller announced the $1,299 starting price, and the room just deflated. Its also a little underpowered for such an expensive machine. But good lord is it beautiful.
Source: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/new-macbook-hands-on/
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