The MacBook has been reborn. After abandoning its “entry-level” laptop marque in 2011, the company has reinvented the MacBook for 2015 – it now stands apart as the smallest, lightest laptop to ever wear the Apple logo. This is the company’s attempt to redefine the ultraportable.
On the face of it, Apple hasn’t had to do anything groundbreaking: it’s simply taken its traditional formula and, with the help of Intel’s Core M processor and a tiny motherboard, shrunk it down into a 12in chassis. There’s a Retina display with an aspect ratio of 16:10, just as you’d expect to find on one of Apple’s MacBook Pro models; a full-sized keyboard; and a huge Force Touch trackpad beneath.
The result is one very light, very slim laptop. At 923g and 13.1mm thick – and that’s including the rubber feet on the underside – the MacBook is only 125g heavier than the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 without its Type Cover attached. What’s more, it’s slimmer, lighter and has a smaller footprint than Apple’s 11in MacBook Air. The MacBook is an alluringly petite laptop, but the fashion-conscious have another reason to rejoice: it now comes in a choice of Space Grey, Silver and Gold, so you can finally buy a MacBook to match your iPhone 6 and/or iPad Air.
Apple MacBook 2015 ergonomics
The MacBook’s attraction is more than skin-deep, however. This is a 12in laptop that, much of the time, is as comfortable to work upon as larger laptops. Set the MacBook side by side with its more powerful cousin, the MacBook Pro 13in with Retina Display, and you’ll see that the MacBook’s keyboard and touchpad are the larger of the two.
Each of the backlit keys is 40% bigger, and although they have very little travel, that’s something I very quickly got used to. A feather-light yet crisp dig of feedback leaves no doubt as to whether you’ve hit a key or not, and I was soon typing as comfortably and quickly as on my long-suffering office ThinkPad.
However, not everyone who has tried out the MacBook has made such an easy transition. Anyone used to using a mechanical keyboard, or indeed any other keyboard at all, may find that the MacBook keyboard takes a lot of getting used to. Developer Marco Arment, in his review of the MacBook, described the keys as feeling clicky, "almost like the iPhone’s Home button", and there is something in what he's saying.
In short, if you are considering the MacBook then I strongly advise you spend some time in your nearest Apple store trying the keyboard out - and for as long a period as possible. You may think it's exactly what you have been waiting for – in which case, Jony Ive will probably personally send his thanks – but you may also recoil in the kind of revulsion which will take a lot of time to get over.
The Force Touch trackpad is a different matter, and is far less likely to divide opinion. It is wider, if a little less tall, than that of the 13in MacBook Pro. But it’s every bit as good. Once you get used to Force-clicking documents, pictures and hyperlinks in Safari to bring up quick previews in OS X, it becomes something you instinctively miss on a Boot Camp installation of Windows 8. And despite the fact that the pad sits a mere couple of millimetres below the spacebar, it never caused any accidental clicks or errant cursor movements – it just works.
Apple MacBook 2015 Retina display
Meanwhile, the 12in, 2,304 x 1,440-resolution display is superb. Crisp, vivacious images and pin-sharp text gleam from corner to corner, and set next to Apple’s MacBook Airs, which still use old TN panel technology, the two generations look light years apart.
The high pixel density causes little in the way of practical problems, either. I preferred the extra desktop space afforded by the More Space setting in OS X, as it felt a touch cramped with scaling left at the default size, but it’s easy to tweak the setting to best suit your individual needs, or indeed the limits of your eyesight.
Whichever setting you choose, however, image quality is top-notch. Brightness soars to a very respectable 381cd/m2, bright enough to remain legible on sunnier days, and the contrast ratio of 1,063:1 is highly respectable too.
Apple MacBook 2015 performance and battery life
The MacBook is the first Apple device to be powered by Intel’s Core M processors. The £1,049 model comes with a 1.1GHz Core M CPU and a 256GB SSD, while the £1,299 model ups the ante with a 1.2GHz Core M CPU and 512GB SSD. In either case, it’s possible to upgrade to a 1.3GHz Core M CPU for £200 and £120 respectively. Whichever specification you choose, though, the MacBook is equipped with 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM - there's no option to upgrade it.
Bafflingly, the 1.1GHz CPU in our review unit turned out to be a Core M-5Y31 – this is nominally a 900MHz processor that’s capable of boosting up to 2.4GHz. However, there’s good reason for this discrepancy: Intel allows manufacturers to increase or decrease the power consumption of its Core M chips to suit the cooling capabilities of each individual device. In this instance, Intel provides the option to increase the CPU’s TDP from 4.5W to 6W; a change that effectively increases the CPU’s base clock speed to the 1.1GHz figure quoted by Apple.
That aside, the MacBook feels pretty sprightly in everyday use. The PCI Express SSD certainly helps a great deal here. With sequential read and write speeds of 777MB/sec and 461MB/sec respectively, application-load times and boot times are seriously swift. Yet the Core M CPU does its bit, too. Indeed, it wasn’t until I tasked the MacBook with more heavyweight photo- and video-editing duties that it started to show its limitations.
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