512 Pixels

Apple is currently selling a lot of notebooks, and its more than a little confusing. Long gone are the days of a more simple product matrix, when the line between what was for consumers and what was for professionals was more clear.

Three out of the five portable machines on this page sport a 13-inch screen. The new MacBook is thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air. The MacBook Pro and MacBook Air actually have ports, but the Air doesn’t come with a Retina display like the MacBook Pro and MacBook.

Whew.

So, who are all of these computers for? If you’re in the market, where should you be looking in Apple’s line up?

The MacBook Air

Starting at $899, the MacBook Air may be the cheapest of Apple’s notebook offerings, but it is no slouch. Even the base models are more than powerful enough for the everyday user.

The MacBook Air offers a wide range of customizable options for those who may need more, though. A fully-loaded 13-inch MacBook Air with a 2.2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD runs $1,749, which is more than the MacBook several SKUs of the MacBook Pro with Retina display.

That aside, most people may only need to bump up the SSD option for a great machine that will serve them well for years.

The MacBook Air also offers crazy battery life. Users of the 11.6-inch and 13-inch models will enjoy up to 9 or 12 hours of battery life, respectively, making it a great option for students or other people on the go.

What’s Hot:

• The best battery life in the family
• Lots of ports, including an SD card slot on the 13-inch model
• Thinnest i7-powered Apple notebook

What’s Not:

• The 11.6-inch model may be small, but it’s chunky in weird ways with a huge bezel
• 4 GB RAM as default; no 16 GB option
• 128 GB base storage option is crazy
• Non-Retina display isn’t as sharp or color-accurate

Who is it for?

The 13-inch MacBook Air is my default answer for most people wondering what portable Mac to buy. It’s thin and light with great battery life and offers lots of options for those who may need more power or storage.

The MacBook

Apple’s newest notebook computer isn’t even for sale yet, and people are already talking about it, myself included. It’s not hard to see why; the 12-inch Retina display and crazy thin chassis would be enough to consider before remembering the machine has just one USB C port.

That port is really the decisive thing here, as it will define the MacBook experience. If owning a thin and light machine is your goal, the MacBook is for you, but it comes at a cost — using adaptor for common tasks and kissing goodbye Thunderbolt peripherals.

That said, the MacBook may become less annoying as time moves forward. For a while, people complained about the MacBook Air ditching optical media, but now I can’t remember the last time I burned a CD for anything.

There’s also a question as to how the MacBook will perform. With a slower chipset than the rest of the line, it’s going to struggle under loads that the MacBook Air and Pros will handle more gracefully.

What’s Hot:

• It’s the smallest Retina Mac money can buy
• The Force Touch trackpad seems like magic
• Fanless design (this isn’t a pun!)

What’s Not:

• Expensive dongles and adaptors are required to do common tasks, like charge the computer and an iPhone at the same time or just simply use a USB drive
• Lower CPU clock speeds
• That gold option

Who is it for?

If you live life on the road or have a desktop Mac as your primary system, the MacBook looks like a great option.

The MacBook Pro

Not that you would know without digging around Apple’s site, but the company still sells a single SKU of a non-Retina MacBook Pro.

The $1,099, 13-inch machine comes with a spinning 500 GB hard drive and has an 8 GB RAM ceiling. It’s a relic of a time gone past, and while I love the 13-inch MacBook Pro I had several years ago, it’s not a compelling machine today. Even Apple’s press image of the machine hasn’t been updated in a long time.

What’s Hot:

• Uhhhhh…

What’s Not:

• Everything about this computer

Who is it for?

I’m convinced this machine is only still around for schools to buy them in bulk. Please don’t buy it.

The MacBook Pro with Retina display

At the top of the notebook family tree sits the MacBook Pro with Retina display. Available with 13-inch and 15-inch Retina displays with high-powered chipsets and lots of RAM, these machines are for those of us who value portable power above all else.

That’s not to say these machines aren’t modern. They get thinner every couple of years, and are getting better battery life than ever. They may not be as sexy as that new MacBook, but they can get any job done thrown at them.

Starting at $1,299 for the entry-level 13-inch model, the MacBook Pro with Retina display is more expensive than the other models, but even the $1,999 price for the base 15-inch model is a far cry from the several thousand dollars Apple used to require for these machines. Yes, you may spend more, but you’ll get what you pay for when it comes to performance.

What’s Hot:

• Lots of power
• Flexible options when customizing one to order

What’s Not:

• The 15-inch hasn’t gotten the Force Touch trackpad yet.
• The only discrete GPU option is $2,499.

Who is it for?

If you need all the power you can get out of a portable Mac, this is the line for you. People working with multimedia or who are looking for a great notebook to use as a desktop machine shouldn’t look any further.

My new favorite tumbleog.

Glenn Fleishman:

But how likely is a cord-tripper to yank a new MacBook off a surface versus the USB-C cable coming out first? My calculations, vetted by Mack and a variety of engineers, show it’s almost certain the MacBook will move a bit or a lot unless all your stars perfectly align.

Hold on! Some math’s coming, but it’s worth it.

This week on Connected:

On the heels of Apple’s Spring Forward event, the boys talk about Federico’s trip to San Francisco, the new MacBook, the Apple Watch and more.

It was made possible by:

• Swift Summit: A two day conference on the State of Swift.
• Hover: Simplified Domain Management. Use code ‘TIMEZONES’ for 10% off your first purchase.
• Sanebox: Clean up your inbox and spend less time on email.

As of this writing, the iOS and Mac App Stores are down, as well as the iBook and iTunes Stores. Yikes.

Update: Apple has isssued a statement on the matter:

BREAKING: Apple apologizes to users for outage that took down iTunes & other services. http://t.co/61NJWHH7pY pic.twitter.com/yZGQCRudYl

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) March 11, 2015

My very beardy Relay FM co-founder recently gave a talk at the Covent Garden Apple Store on his podcast career. Check it out.

As rumored, today’s event included the unveiling of an all-new Apple portable. While the rumor mill was calling it a MacBook Air, the new machine returns to familiar ground and is just called MacBook.

(It even comes in colors, and my, the Space Gray looks good.)

Specs-wise, the machine is a 12-inch notebook with a 226 pixels per inch Retina display and an Intel Core M processor with 8 GB RAM, which allows it to run fanless. It forgoes all ports ever shipped on an Apple notebook for a single, solitary USB C port across from a headphone jack.

The limited I/O is interesting. The trend started with the original MacBook Air has reached its logical conclusion ¹ in this machine. Almost everything will require a dongle, ² and with no hub in sight, this machine could be annoying to live with for the power user. (Oh yeah, there’s no Thunderbolt here.)

The keyboard is all new and ditches Apple’s traditional switch design for something far thinner, meaning the travel on this keyboard is going to be less than what we’ve been used to for several years.

More importantly, the trackpad is all new. Gone is the hardware that allows the glass surface to click. It now stays in place, and uses haptic feedback and force sensors, not unlike the Apple Watch. Here’s how Apple describes it:

Force sensors detect how much pressure you’re applying, and the new Taptic Engine provides a click sensation when you press anywhere on the surface. Now the click that once was a single, mechanical function is just the start of what you can do with Force Touch. The sensory capabilities of the Force Touch trackpad allow you to tell your MacBook what you want it to do based on subtle differences in the amount of pressure you apply. This makes it possible to perform a variety of different actions in different apps, all on the same surface. And it can respond with haptic feedback you can actually feel, making your MacBook more usable and personal than ever before.

Hands-on reports are mixed as far as if this change is a good one, and there’s no doubt that it will take some getting used to, but I remember complaining when Apple took the button away, and now I’m fine. Time heals all temporary growing pains.

Priced at $1299 for the 1.1GHz/256GB model or $1599 for the 1.2 GHz/512 GB, it’s the simplest machine Apple has shipped in a while. In fact, the ordering page looks like that of an iPad or iPhone:

I don’t think that’s by accident. Everything about this computer screams “simplification.”

It’s easy to think about the original MacBook Air when looking at this thing, and I’m sure that technology found here will bubble its way up. ³

That’s not to say that I think we’ll all be using fanless, low clockspeed machines in a few years. I think the MacBook Pro will pick up some of the tech here, but remain bigger, heavier and more powerful than this thing.

The real question is what happens to the MacBook Air. I’ve seen countless tweets from people freaking out that this new MacBook is thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air, which existed on such claims for so long.

As it stands today, the MacBook Air is a much more flexible machine with a better CPU and the inclusion of Thunderbolt. Can the fanless MacBook ever catch up and offer something equivalent to i5s and i7s found in the Airs these days? I can’t help but think it can, and at some point, the lines will merge. Until then, there are a lot of great Apple notebooks in the sub-$1500 space, and even though my needs couldn’t be met by the new MacBook, it doesn’t keep me from wanting one.

Apple:

Apple Watch is so capable you’ll want to wear it all day long. So we made sure we gave it a battery that lasts all day, too. Our goal for battery life was 18 hours after an overnight charge, factoring in things like checking the time, receiving notifications, using apps, and doing a 30-minute workout. And because everyone will use Apple Watch differently, we tested several other metrics as well.

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I enjoyed this video of a modern-day DeLorean owner. Watching his car in motion is simply stunning. From the doors’ crazy hinges to the way the light moves across the stainless steel panels, it’s hard to believe the DMC-12 is as old as it actually is.

Chris Enns, the host of the Show Me Your Mic podcast:

Myke Hurley is back on the show to talk about Relay.fm and the new version of Inquisitive he’s recently launched that’s telling the story behind app development on iOS.

Myke’s interview provides a great behind-the-scenes look at how we run — and why we founded — Relay FM.

Early last month, I visited a local jewelry store to buy a necklace for my wife. Her birthday is just a few days before Valentine’s Day, and this year I wanted to do something nicer for the occasion than usual.

I walked in wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and sneakers, but was helped immediately by the staff. The woman who helped me was knowledgeable and helpful, and even though I spent shy of four figures, the level of service was phenomenal. We had a conversation about Merri’s likes and dislikes, and walked through some options together.

With the Apple Watch just around the corner, there’s been a lot of talk about how Apple may sell the devices to a new class of customers. Regardless of the price, it’s clear that the gold-enclosed Edition collection is going to be unlike anything the company has sold before.

While many of the products at the Apple Store today are expensive, the Apple Watch Edition will be in a bracket all its own.

I don’t think the current version of the Apple Store is going to adjust well to the high-end Watch. Consider this paragraph from Ian Parker’s profile of Jony Ive in The New Yorker:

The table previously covered with a flat cloth was now uncovered: it was a glass-topped Apple Watch display cabinet, accessible to staff from below, via a descending, motorized flap, like the ramp at the rear of a cargo plane. Ive has begun to work with Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, on a redesign—as yet unannounced—of the Apple Stores. These new spaces will surely become a more natural setting for vitrines filled with gold (and perhaps less welcoming, at least in some corners, to tourists and truants). Apple had not, overnight, become an élite-oriented company—and it would sell seventy-five million iPhones in the final quarter of 2014, many of them in China—but I wondered how rational, and pure of purpose, one can make the design of a V.I.P. area. Ive later told me that he had overheard someone saying, “I’m not going to buy a watch if I can’t stand on carpet.”

While its clear that Apple is doing something to address this, the Apple Store of today isn’t at all the type of store I purchased my wife’s gift in last month.

The Apple Stores are informal at best, and confusing at worst. We’ve all walked into a busy store just to feel frustrated at trying to grab someone’s attention. Even in stores that have a greeter to help pair customers with sales associates, it’s a far cry from the one-on-one, high-touch experience someone looking to buy jewelry is used to having.

If you think Apple isn’t considering every detail of the Apple Watch experience, look no further than this piece for The Financial Times by Nick Foulkes:

Apple is far from the first company to tackle the smart watch, but it is tackling it like only Apple can, with metallurgists, engineers, chemists, mathematicians, tanneries, testing facilities and all the other resources at the disposal of the world’s most valuable company – resources that are then passed through the filter of a design culture shaped by Ive.

[…]

Nothing escapes this forensic level of thinking. Nothing is left to chance. Nothing goes uncalculated and untested. Before I leave, Ive holds up the watch’s white outer box. Almost imperceptibly, the bottom begins to move, obeying the law of gravity that pulls it away from its other half. It is graceful, calming… and far from accidental. “We work out what we feel is the optimum time for it to drop and then we back off that and work on the tolerances, and even work on the friction of the materials we use. I mean, that’s fanaticism,” he says, with a little smile. If only more fanatics were like Jony Ive.

The Apple Store is open, loud and mostly lacks the professionalism — the gravity, even — of a high-end jewelry store.

My best guess is that Apple will be turning part of its square footage into some sort of Watch-only pop-up store-within-a-store, but many of the company’s retail locations — including the one here in Memphis — don’t have much space for that. Not every store is multi-level, and while the last mini-store is now gone, not every store is all that big.

The staffing question is more interesting, and, perhaps, more complex. If Apple does carve out some private space in all of its stores for high-end clientele, I think the company may have a problem here as well. Many stores I have visited are staffed by mostly young people, and while they may be wearing polo shirts these days, there’s no getting around the fact that Apple Stores may just have the wrong kind of sales clerks to sell a $10,000 watch. That’s delicate and awkward, but I think it’s true.

I’m starting to think the Apple Watch Edition will not be available at all of Apple’s stores immediately. ¹ I can see it being in select Apple Stores in cities like New York, L.A., London and Paris.

I think there’s a chance that the gold Apple Watches may end up in other high-end retailers as well that are already set up to sell such products. It would be a break from the normal, but so far, the Apple Watch Edition is far from Apple’s norm.

No matter what happens in Retail, Monday should be interesting. I’m excited.