“While Apple was busy unveiling a new 12-inch MacBook without any full-sized USB ports, PC makers took the opportunity to mock the future they’ll inevitably adopt,” Tom Warren reports for The Verge.
“Lenovo was first out the gate by calling the new MacBook ‘so last year,’ the ultimate insult to any fashion-conscious laptop buyers,” Warren reports. “Dell followed Lenovo in its response to the Macbook with a tweet dismissing its Retina display… The final entry in the PC market response is Asus with its ZenBook UX305.”
Warren reports, “If there’s anything these comparisons teach us it’s that… the PC market doesn’t have an answer to the new 12-inch MacBook just yet — a good combination of weight, thickness, trackpad, and high-resolution display.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s the OS and the ecosystems, stupid.
The PC makers continue to offer no answers, just tweets attempting to soothe the few hapless sheep they have left and keep them bleating in their pens of antiquity.
It must suck to constantly be years behind, fighting it out with the other riff raff to scrape the cheapest, least knowledgeable, and least profitable customers off the bottom of the barrel.
With Apple, you get the future. The pinnacle of design. The state-of-the-art. Hardware and software designed to complement each other, not pulled off random racks and bolted together with an upside-down and backwards pretend Mac OS slapped in at the last minute along with all of the bloatware, adware, and crapware.
Those who can’t hack the state-of-the-art deserve to wallow in their miserable tweets of self-delusion.
Related articles:
AnandTech hands on Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook: ‘By far the most portable Mac Apple has ever created’ – March 12, 2015
Apple’s revolutionary new 12-inch MacBook heralds world without wires and cables – March 11, 2015
PC Mag hands on Apple’s all-new 12-Inch MacBook: ‘You’ll want to carry it with you everywhere’ – March 10, 2015
Hands-on with Apple’s One-port wonder, the amazing MacBook with 12-inch Retina display – March 9, 2015
Apple unveils all-new MacBook, the thinnest and lightest Mac ever made – March 9, 2015
Apple Macintosh owns 45% of PC market profits – April 16, 2013
That MDN headline is misleading – you forgot to mention Apple retail stores, which were also mocked by their rivals.
Lenovo didn’t mention that their laptops come with Adware at no extra cost?
Gave me a chuckle in the middle of an otherwise mundane morning.
You would think there would be a more heightened sense of historical comeuppance with foolish statements regarding Apple in the light of continued Michael Dell & Steve Ballmer ridicule, oft-quoted disingenuous inanities and fates.
These self-serving competitors would serve themselves best not looking stupid by just shutting-TFU or removing all doubt.
I wouldn’t like to be in a leadership position of any company whose business is potentially threatened by Apple. Unless they have a truly more attractive offering, what are their options for keeping their shareholders happy and employees motivated? Puffing up one’s chest and blustering seems to be one of the few. Trying to copy Apple is one option. However, trying to develop for the future (skating to where the puck will be) seems to be quite difficult, especially since Apple seems to be controlling the puck.
Some will fall for those doofesses mouthing off…the rest of the planet sits back and laugh their assess off at them. 😛
Amazing how little in touch they are with their own foolish hubris and how bad it actually makes THEM look, as if anyone’s really listening to such utterly desperate buffoons, except as you say, for comedy relief. D)
Owning a “first gen” Apple anything is usually an adjustment with some workflows. In this case, flash drives and other accessories will be an annoyance.
But, also in my experience, every time I’ve taken that leap of faith I’ve found out that the joys of doing so far outweigh the negatives. Of course, being first is never cheap (but the joys outweigh those negatives, too, if you’re in a position to do it).
The best “knock” I’ve seen was someone calling it a $1300 netbook. While that a bit unfair, there is a ring of truth in that. If there hadn’t been a class of low-powered, extremely limited performing laptops already called “netbook”, the new MacBook could have described as such. I need to see some reviews that do some real world testing with various applications that test performance to know whether there is value there. With my MB Pro the only ports I use regularly are power, USB, video output and headphones. I’ve already seen one adaptor that combined Power, HDMI and a USB (I think) in a single dongle. One adaptor is not too much to toss in a briefcase.
Netbooks had little storage, small screens and Atom processors. This is a Core M processor – different family. Very nice screen and lots of storage. You can run applications on the web or locally. I think that one of the Lenovo models used this processor and performance was very poor but that might have been a problem with Lenovo or Microsoft. Never saw the resolution to that.
Agreed. My reference to using the “netbook” term was IF those low powered pieces of junk had never existed and the “netbook” term was not tarnished by them. The MacBook is certainly a far more capable laptop than any of those old “netbooks” ever were. But with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, etc. this is truly a machine designed for a wireless world.
I can’t wait to see some benchmarks and an Anandtech review, but with the Core M, this does seem like an overpriced netbook.
“One adaptor is not too much to toss in a briefcase.”
I agree, but why should you need to? Either:
1) This isn’t the MacBook for you, or
2) You’ll quickly learn that the power cord is all you really need on the road (in the briefcase).
Or, unfortunately, perhaps Apple should have left a couple more ports on it. That’s actually where I feel the correct answer likely is, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.
Desperational products.
MDN take: — nice twist on the “sheep” label so often applied to Apple customers. — There are no “iSheep” or “sheeple”, only intelligent, discerning consumers flocking to superior, appealing products. The real sheep are shorn and shivering in their pens of antiquity, as you cutely put it.
Give me an adapter that includes a USB port, charger and video out and I’m good. I have a MacBook Pro now with HDMI and I still carry adapters for DVI and VGA.
They forgot to mention battery life as well. None of those PC makers have an existing product that matches the specs of this new MacBook.
That is why sales of Mac notebooks will show an increase in sales, while the PC notebooks will continue their slump. 😀
Might want to take a look at the Asus UX305. It’s thinner, is available with a higher-resolution screen, and has the same processor, RAM and memory configurations. Available for hundreds less, and announced last year – well before “MacBook Stealth” rumors started circulating.
You might want to consider that many think that a fatal flaw of the Asus UX305 is that it runs Windows. For those, any arguments about comparable features are going to fall on deaf ears. I’m one of those. I just flat out don’t like Windows.
A perfect Mac Book for my 17 year old granddaughter who does not do graphics CPU intensive work nor need a bunch of hookups. She’s thrilled by the gold color, size and RD screen coming her way soon. That’s why Apple has a range of products to serve the need you have.
I only hope they upgrade the Mac Pro at WWDC this year.
Looks like apple had a close partnership with intel designing the net CoreM platform or they just used what intel already had.
In the following video, intel presented in Sep 14, 2014 an ASUS transformer 3 that looks shocking similar to the new MacBook. (time 17:40)
they even made the same comparison of the old board and the new board like Apple did during the last presentation (time 24:36).
Collaboration?
But, but, but….its GOLD! That will make it alllllll worth it..lol
While I wouldn’t want a MacBook 1.0 (1.0 of this new type), I like the overall direction being taken. I practically scoff at encyclopedia-width laptops that need their Atari 2600 joystick ports. 😛
I also did not want a MacBook Air 1.0, but I have a new one from last year that I got on sale for my son. It’s a great machine and I only feel the different from my MBP when it becomes a CPU-intensive task (hello, Handbrake, and Garageband).
I look forward to my 2017 or 2018 MBP that weighs 1.8 lbs.
So, exactly how many devices can be daisy chained or dubbed off of that single port?
No seeing an explanation on Apple’s website.
In the very near future, people saying “how can I get my files off my flash drive?” will sound as antiquated as saying “how do I get my files off this floppy disk?”
Any particular reason flash drives can’t be fitted with a USB-C connector?
Was that actually a problem with floppy drives? I remember there being very cheap external floppy drives that made the transition extremely easy.
This reminds me of the revision when Apple stopped building modems into their laptops (2006?), going to an optional USB dongle modem. I was a little skeptical, but decided to wait until I actually needed the modem to buy one. Almost 10 years later, still no modem.