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by seane 2791 days ago
Genuine question:

Why would someone choose the new MacBook Air over the 12" Macbook? I have the 12" (it's my everyday computer and I love it, not looking to switch) but wondering why choose one over the other, size of screen? Thanks.

6 comments

It's a bit strange, but I don't see why anyone would choose the 12" Macbook over the new Air:

https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/results/?product1=macbook&...

The Air has more ports, Thunderbolt, a larger screen, a lower price, a faster CPU/GPU, a better battery and some modern touches.

Thunderbolt is the reason for me.

I'd own a 12", but no Thunderbolt limits my usage (I do a lot of audio work, and the Thunderbolt sound cards are my current favourite)

Two Thunderbolt ports, a bit more power, and a fan, which should allow for heavier sustained workloads.
thanks! I just bought my upgraded 12" in March 16gb RAM, 1.4 processor, so I likely won't be upgrading anytime soon. :)
I've been doing web-design work on a 13" MBA, and while I love the 12" Macbook form factor and would have loved to adopt that machine, I find that the base resolution offered on the 12" display is just too small in screen real estate and throws me off completely when I'm designing things. (I'm aware that you can set it to display an artificially higher resolution but I find the fonts and the whole experience way too small to look at comfortably in that setting)
It's close to my perfect laptop, but no Thunderbolt (so no 4K @ 60 Hz external display), and the CPU limitations (you can't put a fast CPU in a chassis with no fan) are the two deal breakers. I went to the 13" Pro in 2016 because the Air didn't have Retina display, but now the new 13" looks like it's the machine that checks all the boxes for me.
A second port and it should be noticeably faster.
one usb-c port on the smaller macbook was of course just a silly stupid idea. But I think 2 is less good than 3 or 4. I'd rather have multiple. next apple needs to convert the phone to use usb-c so we can all move over to one port type.
With the iPad Pro now using USB-C, I think it's a given that the next iPhone will do the same. If only my next Kindle would do the same.
another possibility is that it will not have any ports at all. BT, WiFI and Qi for wireless charging.
thanks for the info!