“The results aren’t pretty. After falling from first place to fifth place in Laptop Mag’s Best and Worst Laptop Brands survey last year, the company has dropped even further, to 7th place out of 10 brands in this year’s report,” Mark Spoonauer writes for Tom’s Guide. “Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer, Asus and Microsoft all finished ahead of Apple.”
“Yup, the MacBook line is in serious need of a reboot,” Spoonauer writes. “Why did Apple score so poorly? The brand simply hasn’t innovated enough, using the past year to trot out minor spec bumps to existing designs. And these designs continue to be polarizing, with the dearth of ports on the MacBook and MacBook Pro forcing owners to schlep around dongles if they want to plug in peripherals. In addition, the flat butterfly keyboards on these systems offer less travel and comfort than the Windows competition.”
“There’s a reason Apple has been keeping its classic 3-year-old 15-inch MacBook Pro around. That $1,999 machine has a cushy keyboard, plenty of full-size USB ports and an SD Card slot, as well as the clever MagSafe power adapter the company has since abandoned,” Spoonauer writes. “There could be hope on the immediate horizon, as Apple is rumored to be launching a 13-inch MacBook with a Retina display at around the same price as the Air this June. But will it be more of the same or a true leap forward?”
