Apple refreshes 13-inch MacBook Air, Pro, discontinues 12-inch MacBook

Sad Professor

Apple was busy this morning:

- 13-inch Retina MacBook Air updated with True Tone display and €100 lower starting price
- 2017 non-Retina MacBook Air discontinued
- 13-inch MacBook Pro updated with latest quad core processors, Touch bar, True tone Display, Touch ID and T2 security chip (no change in price that i can see)
- 12-inch Retina MacBook discontinued
- Back to School promotion launched - free Beats headphones with purchase of qualifying Macs/iPads

Sad to see the end of the 12-inch MacBook. Still Apple's lightest and most portable notebook.

calum

Also sad to see you can't buy a MacBook Pro with a proper Escape key any more. But along with losing the 12" MacBook, the laptop range does now look rather more sensible on paper at least, hopefully ahead of a facelift and some better keyboards.

Doodah7

calum wrote: »

and some better keyboards.

This plus 1000!!! I am still rocking a mid-2012 (albeit with upgraded RAM, SSD instead of original HDD and another SSD instead of the disc drive) and it has a fantastic keyboard and still does everything I wanted it to. I have held off buying a newer Mac in the hope that they will see sense with the current crop of keyboards.

There are rumours that new Macs will indeed have a new keyboard that, hopefully, will be alittle more spaced out and most importantly, further travel.

hetuzozaho

calum wrote: »

Also sad to see you can't buy a MacBook Pro with a proper Escape key any more.

Caps Lock is the proper proper Escape Key

calum

hetuzozaho wrote: »

Caps Lock is the proper proper Escape Key

Feck that, I use Caps Lock for typing long constant and macro names when I'm coding!

hetuzozaho

calum wrote: »

Feck that, I use Caps Lock for typing long constant and macro names when I'm coding!

I'm lucky to be in the Java world and Intellij manages that for me (and pretty much everything else, it will make me redundant someday I fear!)

IamMetaldave

Sad Professor wrote: »

Apple was busy this morning:

- 13-inch Retina MacBook Air updated with True Tone display and €100 lower starting price.

Interesting, I’ve been thinking about a new Air, my 2013 is just getting more sluggish as time goes on. However this keyboard conversation puts me off somewhat, are they really that bad? I do love the keyboard on my current Air, it’s the easiest typing ever!

Horusire

I have 2018 MacBook Air and find the keyboard fine. Came over from a Windows machine however so I could just be blinded to its issues by its many pros.

calum

IamMetaldave wrote: »

Interesting, I’ve been thinking about a new Air, my 2013 is just getting more sluggish as time goes on. However this keyboard conversation puts me off somewhat, are they really that bad? I do love the keyboard on my current Air, it’s the easiest typing ever!

It's not so much the action of the new keyboards... that'll always be subjective, but a lot of people do seem to like it. It's the reliability issues they've had with the butterfly mechanism since they introduced it in 2015... keys stick and fail far more than they should, and they're not designed to be individually replaced.

Apple are on about their fourth revision of the mechanism now, and while it seems to have improved, nobody's really convinced that it's totally fixed. And the fact that even brand new Apple laptops are instantly eligible for a free keyboard replacement for the next 4 years doesn't inspire confidence...

IamMetaldave

calum wrote: »

It's not so much the action of the new keyboards... that'll always be subjective, but a lot of people do seem to like it. It's the reliability issues they've had with the butterfly mechanism since they introduced it in 2015... keys stick and fail far more than they should, and they're not designed to be individually replaced.

Apple are on about their fourth revision of the mechanism now, and while it seems to have improved, nobody's really convinced that it's totally fixed. And the fact that even brand new Apple laptops are instantly eligible for a free keyboard replacement for the next 4 years doesn't inspire confidence...

Thanks for the info! The instant eligibility really is off putting!

QikBax

Butterfly keys have been nothing but trouble for me