“When Apple redesigned the MacBook Air in 2010, it created one of the best machines to ever carry its Mac label. That new laptop was a revelation: extremely thin and light, like the original Air, yet also powerful enough for most tasks and equipped with a long-lasting battery,” Vlad Savov writes for The Verge. “For years, the MacBook Air has been a standard-bearer, the role model for every Windows ultrabook, but 2015 has not been so kind to its leadership position. Apple introduced the new 12-inch MacBook and updated the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, both directly competing with the Air… And this week there’s the looming threat of the iPad Pro on the horizon. Has Apple forsaken what was once its best PC?”
“Apple is not a company that can be accused of doing things thoughtlessly, and the decision to leave the Air’s display at the lower quality and resolution must be taken as a deliberate one,” Savov writes. “In other words, Apple is comfortable with keeping the Air as a technological straggler in its lineup. That leaves us with a choice of two most likely scenarios: either the Air is destined for a future overhaul and its first redesign in five years or it has no future at all.”
“There’s not enough room in Apple’s lineup for a MacBook, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro — the MacBook is Apple’s ultraportable machine of the future and the MacBook Pro is the do-it-all laptop of today,” Savov writes. “The MacBook Air’s position seems tenuous already, and if the alleged iPad Pro does indeed materialize, then we may as well bid adieu to the Air entirely.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Our favorite Mac of all time: the 11-inch MacBook Air. But, our next road machines won’t be Airs (unless there’s some radical overhaul set to debut). Our next road machines will either be new 12-inch MacBooks or, quite possibly, 12.9-inch iPad Pros. We can’t think of a single reason for the MacBook Air, as its currently formulated, given the current Mac notebook lineup, to exist.