Apple kills the MacBook and non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
Bye-Bye 12” MacBooks. Now you’ll have to deal with that touch bar.
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@mayer - I think it was silly keeping the MacBook this long! The Air is the better and in some cases cheaper system!
The new low end MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar makes sense! More of the low end users wanted it.
Now that clears the deck for the new 16.5” MacBook Pro!
Being in Boston I’ll yell out from my trusty stead on my way to the Apple Store “The Pro’s Pro is coming, the Pro’s Pro is coming! The Pro’s Pro is coming”!! ;-}
If we’re lucky it will have a full row of Fn keys! At worse just a real Escape key!
If it has the ports I want it on my Xmas list for Santa ;-} Or, maybe St. Valentines will send me the Love!
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Do you remember the 13" Unibody MacBook Pro was re-stamped the MacBook back in late 2008?
I had wished the 2016 MacBook Pro was spun then as the new MacBook instead of the mess we are in now. So the new 16.5" is still a MacBook Pro? Or does Apple need to give this series a clean name so people understand its not for them! Like the new Mac Pro is not something a person who does email needs! I vote of MacBook Pro EX
Yes, Apple has now created a hole between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro as the new Mac Pro is so high in the stratosphere! It's still a good move for Apple as the market it's aiming for has been clamoring for it.
Now if Apple is smart, in 6 months or a good year from the release of the Mac Pro they need to give us a 2013 Trash Can replacement based on the 2019 Mac Pro! "For the Rest of Us" At least I have my Trash Can for now.
@danj When I was looking to purchase a laptop for college around five years ago, I'm pretty sure the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air were the only options for Mac products. Even though the MacBook was released only a year later, I don't remember seeing anyone on campus carrying around an ordinary MacBook. Everyone was using the MacBook Pro or the Air since they were better/more popular systems and (presumably) gave the most bang-for-buck. I think it's a good move that they're scrapping the MacBook line, but I do wonder which market they're going to focus on now that their "entry-level" model is over $1000.
@jogihara I was never a fan of the plastic MacBook - it has always rubbed off as a school purchase order machine even with the polycarb unibody. When new, the compromises were much harder to excuse when they were new. After my time with a A1181 before it became clear mine was on death row and needed a lot of work, my theory it's a school PO system was further proven to hold some ground. The plastic generation was okay new but they age horribly.
The aluminum MB without FireWire was a turn off at the time and to this day, remains as a huge negative but not as much now as long as the price matches the age and hard drive limitations. That being said if the MBP was too expensive I'd recommend the aluminum MB over plastic.
For me at least I will always prefer the MBP - it has few compromises relative to the plastic MBs and the aluminum MB.
@jogihara -Both the MacBook and the premium MacBook Pro came out in 2006. The MacBook Air came out later in 2008.
The early White or Black plastic MacBook's where both great systems! But the speed of applications being made quickly out paced the slower Core Duo and then Core 2 Duo and the limits of RAM these systems had (2, 4 and finially 6 MB).
Even the older MacBook Pro's where limited. The first 13" 8 MB system came out in 2010 and then shortly in the i Series 16 MB was possible!
The Air's being so much smaller and lighter made sense for collage or even high school seniors.
Sadly, The best I had for school was a Bowmar Brain, a four function calculator and a K&E 20" slide rule! My first access to a real computer was a Wang 3300 mini computer in high school (a donation from Wang)!
I quickly learned Basic and Cobol, during the weekends I was taking courses at MIT, I did manage to meet Grace Hopper during a lecture she was doing at MIT. I was very impressed and it was her lecture which helped push me into micro-electronics.
@danj I had a Compaq CQ56-219WM (Celeron 900) and a Asus X53E (i5 2450M) in school. They were more of a burden to carry but the ULV CPUs are too compromised for me to live with. The soldered RAM was such a negative I never liked the MBA. It's because I have bad handwriting even the school gave up.
Oh yes - mine is a 3GB. I could tell easily and it was bad. It's the reason I got away from the Core 2 series and went to the i5 on the Mac side. The plastic machines have always felt like they were second rate.